There are, however, many sources of books for the Kindle. Books are made available by various people or societies, and they may usually be downloaded for free.
Users of these services should satisfy themselves that they are happy to download these books from the Internet.
As discussed on many occassions throughout this series of Blogs, all computer files consist of a name, followed by a dot, followed by another set of characters known as the extension. Examples include winword.exe, A Tale of Two Cities.doc, Dracula.prc. The extensions are exe, doc, and prc respectively.
Kindle files from Amazon have an extension of azw and they are usually the PROTECTED files downloaded from Amazon and which may only be used on Kindles by the registered owner of the files. A good idea is if you and your partner have Kindles, and each have an installation of Kindle on your iPhones, iPads, PCs, or Android Tablets, it pays to have them all registered to ONE Amazon Account Holder so as to make all the protected titles which you purchase available to each Kindle or installation.
There are ebooks with extensions other than azw which are compatible with and which may be read on Kindles. (I will now refer to Kindles and mean physical Kindle ebook readers or any other Kindle installation on a phone or PC).
Files with the extension mobi or prc are perfectly compatible with Kindles and may be downloaded from various sources. A good source for out-of-copyright books and classics is The Guttenburg Project. Here hundreds of volunteers work to make thousands of books available for either reading on line or downloading to ebook readers. Go to their website and see what is available and you may even volunteer to become a proof reader and help with the project. There are many other sources, some of which may not be legal, where users share files and allow their downloading.
All your Kindle-compatible books should be stored in logically named folders, as previously discussed, to allow for easy finding at a later date. An excellent way to do this (and you can transfer books to your Kindle directly) is to download and install the free software "Calibre e-book Management". This will allow you to store and organise your ebooks of any variety and load them to your device. Read on for the manual method.
Amazon allow the reading of Kindle books on your PC or other devices via their downloadable applications such as Kindle for PC, Kindle for iPad etc. If you log on to the Amazon web site and navigate to the Kindle section you will be able to download these free of charge. Once downloaded they need to be registered on first use using your standard Amazon account before you can use them.
Having downloaded the books from your chosen source, or received them from a friend on a disc or memory stick, the method of transferring them to your Kindle ebook reader is as follows. (To read them on Kindle for PC you may simply double click on the downloaded files and they will open automatically).
First of all connect your Kindle to your PC using the USB cable provided.
Open Windows Explorer and locate the folder containing your downloaded Kindle files. If you have installed Kindle for PC (which you should do) all the files will appear with a little blue book icon at the start of each file.
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| Kindle Folders Click on these pictures for a larger view. |
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| The Kindle in Windows Explorer |
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| The expanded view of the Kindle showing its folders. |
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| Selected files ready for transfer. |
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| Right click on the documents folder and select Paste to complete the transfer. |
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| The three files safely transferred. |
When you have finished copying files onto the Kindle, right-click on the Kindle in Explorer and select Eject. This will ensure that any copying is completed and then make the Kindle available for reading etc. Of course you may leave it connected to the PC if you wish to complete the charging of the battery.
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| Complete the process by right clicking on the Kindle and select Eject. |
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