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How to Send an Epub eBook to Your Kindle by Email

Amazon offers a free conversion service where you can send documents to your Kindle, but there is a problem: it doesn’t work with Epub files.

Even though there are services you can use to automatically send DRM-free files to your Kindle account from Dropbox and other cloud services, Amazon still won’t let you send an Epub file to your Kindle.

Fortunately, there are several work-arounds.

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Your first option is to use a website like Send Epub to Kindle.

Send Epub to Kindle

This site will let you upload an Epub file and provide your email address, after which it will convert the ebook into a Kindle format and send the ebook to your Kindle account.

  • Pro: It’s the easiest option.
  • Con: Do you really want to trust your ebook to a site you don’t know?

If your answer to that question is no then there are other options.

Send a ZIP File

For example, eReader Palace brings our attention to the fact that you can send a ZIP file to your Kindle account. In other words, you can rename the Epub file by giving it a ZIP suffix and then email the ZIP file to your Kindle account.

Yes, that does work – to a limited degree. I’ve tried it, and I found that Amazon will accept the ZIP file only if you have fewer than 25 files in the ZIP file. This means that Amazon will reject more complex Epub files if they are made of too many parts.

If that happens then your next best option will be to use calibre to convert the ebook so you can send it to your Kindle account.

Calibre

The ebook library tool calibre is fully capable of converting your ebook to and from Kindle, Epub, and other ebook formats. This tool can even email your documents directly to your Kindle account.

I have never used that feature, though, so I can’t tell you how well it works.

Addendum

The reason I have never used calibre’s email feature is that I keep a copy of my ebook files in both Kindle and Epub, and I send the Kindle file to my Kindle account whenever I want to upload an ebook to my Kindle account.

It’s just less hassle that, way, in my opinion.

Do you have a preferred method for sending Epub ebooks to your Kindle account? Let us know in the comments!

image by Jamais Cascio

 

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Comments


Frank April 27, 2016 um 2:40 pm

I have used calibre to email documents directly to your Kindle account. It needs to be given email account access and it uses that to email to the Kindle address. It works fine.


Tom Semple April 29, 2016 um 4:50 pm

That is cool about renaming to .zip. Probably not too difficult to create a script to reduce number of files to 25. But by then one might as well use calibre. I’d always assumed .zip was for image archives (comic books etc.), and that there was no limit on number of files. Does the limit apply only to .html, or to any type of file?

online-convert.com will let you upload an .epub (or pick something from Dropbox or Google Drive) and convert it to '.azw', which then downloads to your computer where you could use Send To Kindle; no need to provide email address.

There are mobile apps for this as well (on iOS, 'The Ebook Converter' for example). Once the converted file is generated, you can email it to the send to kindle address, or Open With… Kindle app.


visitor May 4, 2016 um 11:07 am

I add my Dutch e-books, which are sold as epub without DRM, to calibre, convert them to azw3, and sideload (through a USB cable) the azw3 to my kindle with calibre. Works perfectly on my kindles (basic kindle & kindle paperwhite). The azw3 may not always look completely identical to the epub, but it will be a good imitation.
E-mailing to your kindle account has the advantage that the book is safely stored in your kindle cloud. But as far as I know, you can’t e-mail azw3 files to a kindle account. You can e-mail azw and mobi formats, but in my experience you lose quality when converting epub to mobi, sometimes a lot. I’ve never used azw, but as it’s an older format much like mobi, I think it’ll lose quality too.
If you really want to have the best of both worlds (storage in kindle cloud and azw3), you could try to convert to mobi with the mobi output settings in calibre to "both" or "new" which should create a mobi file that can be sent to the cloud and is as good as an azw3, but calibre warns "various kindle devices have trouble displaying the new or both mobi filetypes. If you wish to use the new format on your device, convert to azw3 instead of mobi." But it might work for you.


Why Amazon Doesn't Add ePub Support to the Kindle | The Digital Reader June 19, 2016 um 12:25 pm

[…] on the Kindle platform, or at least through the email conversion service. (Other services will take an Epub and send it to your Kindle, but not Amazon). This would help me a […]


Here's a Nifty Hack for Sending Your Epub eBooks to Kindle Without Conversion | The Digital Reader July 27, 2017 um 11:59 am

[…] restriction makes sense, but it has frustrated users and forced them to come up with workarounds. For example, there are services that will email your epub ebooks to your Kindle […]


Sergej September 30, 2017 um 6:34 pm

i found a website that could convert and send files directly to your kindle

https://uptokindle.com/


Andrea August 30, 2019 um 6:09 pm

Now there is a new android app Send to Kindle.
It convert epub to mobi and also pdf to mobi.
It also send web articles and any news from the web.
Heare download link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luciosoft.sendtokindle


Mike Scir September 16, 2019 um 11:48 pm

Here’s a New Way to Quickly Send ePub eBooks to Your Kindle

Basically all you have to do is change the extension of a DRM-free ePub book from .epub to .png.

I just tried it and it worked.

https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2017/07/25/heres-a-new-way-to-quickly-send-epub-ebooks-to-your-kindle/#comment-292754


Phyllis Barton March 10, 2020 um 7:12 pm

You can easily use Calibre to "side load" epubs to your Kindle. You just connect your Kindle to your computer using a standard cable. You highlight the book you want and click "send to device". It will be automatically converted.


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