3 Easy Ways to Load Non-Amazon Books on Your Kindle Fire

Transfer all kinds of books to your Kindle in no time flat

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by Marziah Karch
Updated September 28, 2018

Your Kindle Fire works great as an Amazon shopping device, but you shouldn't be stuck with only books you buy through Amazon. If you buy legal copies of books from other sellers, you can usually transfer them to your Kindle. 

Just to be clear, I'm talking about single eBooks, such as books you legally purchase and download from Tor or other bookstores that offer non-DRM protected files. If you want to read eBooks directly from a different book reader, like Nook or Kobo, you can do that, too. Here are the instructions on installing the Nook or Kobo app on your Kindle Fire. 

File Formats for Kindle Fire

Amazon Kindle natively reads .mobi files. If you have a book in ePub format, you can still read it, but you'll either need to convert it using a program like Calibre or install a separate reading app like Aldiko on your Fire. 

Supported files for Kindle books are:

  • KF8 Kindle Format 8 
  • MOBI
  • AZW (This is essentially a copy protected version of .mobi) 
  • PRC

Supported files for Kindle Fire Personal Documents are:

  • TXT
  • PDF
  • DOC
  • DOCX

You can open and read PDF books, but you cannot do so under the Books tab on your Kindle or your Kindle app on your mobile device. Those are under Docs. That's why your Kindle Fire user guide is located in Docs instead of under Books. 

Easy Method #1: Transferring Your Files by Email

You can email your Kindle files as attachments. This is, by far, the easiest and most convenient way to do it. The files must be in one of the supported formats, and they'll be added to the Docs section of your Kindle. To set this up, log into Amazon.com and then go to Manage Your Content and Devices: Personal Document Settings

You'll need to set up the authorized email account and address. Generally, it will be something like "your_name_here@kindle.com." Only emails coming from approved email addresses will work.

Easy Method #2: Transferring Your Files by USB

If you use a micro-USB cable and connect it to your computer, you can transfer files to and from your Kindle just like it was an external hard drive. Place any .mobi files in the Books folder, and place .pdf and other formats in the Documents folder. Once you've added your files, you may need to restart the Kindle to get it to recognize your new books.

Easy Method #3: Transferring Using Dropbox

You can use Dropbox to transfer files. 

  1. If you use Dropbox, you'll want to navigate to your eBook file and rather than just tapping to open it, you'll want to select the triangle to the right of the file name.

  2. Next, tap Export.

  3. Choose Save to SD Card (your Kindle doesn't actually have an SD card, but this gets you to the internal storage space).

  4. Select either Books (for .mobi files) or Documents (for .pdf, .txt, .doc, and other files).

  5. Tap Export.

Once you've done this, you should restart your Kindle Fire. Your books will appear after that. If your book does not appear, double check that you waited for the book to fully copy to your Kindle's hard drive and double check that you chose the correct folder for the file format.

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