Photo: Andrew Liszewski – Gizmodo
A potential blow to all the apps and websites that came with Amazon Kindle to streamline the process of converting EPUB e-book files to a decent e-reader file format, starting in late 2022. Kindle Personal Documents will finally support EPUB files, expanding where users can retrieve their content.
Amazon Kindle’s original AZW e-book file format is based on the MOBI format, created for an e-reader application called Mobipocket, which was first launched in 2000 for a wide variety of PDAs and older mobile devices. Over the years, it has evolved into the KF8 / AZW3 format, and now the KFX format, all owned by the Kindle. For those who rely solely on Kindle e-readers and apps and buy ebooks from Amazon alone, their own file format is no problem, especially when Amazon offers one of the largest choices of ebooks currently available and a simple way to receive files on your devices.
But there are countless e-readers on the market that offer better features than the Kindle, including color screens with E Ink, and they all instead support the EPUB e-book file format (among others), which is the most popular format in the world. . This is also a format that Amazon has so far refused to support. This usually means that someone who wants to buy an e-book reader must either be fully committed to the Amazon Kindle ecosystem, or choose one of the many alternatives and stick to their choice, as e-book files which have purchased or withdrawn are not cross-compatible.
This is still mostly the case, but according to a recently updated help page on Amazon’s Kindle Personal Documentation Service website, which streamlines the process of sending files and documents to Kindle e-readers, there will soon be a workaround. From the end of 2022, users will be able to either email EPUB files to their device or use one of the Send to Kindle apps to receive EPUB eBooks from their Amazon eReaders. Kindle still can’t load EPUB files, so connecting the e-reader to a computer and copying EPUB files manually is still not an option, but the Send to Kindle service will convert EPUB files to Kindle-friendly KF8 / AZW3 files. This isn’t the perfect solution, but it’s still a welcome place for users sitting on a mountain of EPUB files who want to choose a Kindle device.
The help page also states that Amazon plans to discontinue support for sending older MOBI files through the Send to Kindle service. “From the end of 2022, you will no longer be able to send MOBI (.AZW, .MOBI) files to your library using Send to Kindle,” the page said. “This change will not affect any MOBI files already in your Kindle library. MOBI is an older file format and will not support the latest Kindle document features. Why Amazon doesn’t just convert older MOBI files to KF8 / AZW3s isn’t known, but for those who refuse to release an old collection of ebook files, there are always free apps like Caliber to convert between any ebook format that you want.
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