Why it issues: For years, Kindle customers have been unable to purchase books printed within the ePub format and browse them on their e-Reader — at the very least not with out manually changing them to an Amazon-approved format. That’s set to vary later this yr, however these hoping for native assist for ePub can be disenchanted.
Because the first technology Kindle launched in 2007, the model has change into nearly synonymous with the time period e-Reader. With the unique Kindle and its later incarnations, Amazon additionally pushed its proprietary e book codecs onto customers — a limitation that persists to this present day.
Final weekend, a report from Good E-Reader supplied a glimmer of hope that Amazon would possibly quickly begin supporting ePub recordsdata. After 15 years of stubbornness in direction of a format that’s supported and utilized by nearly everybody else within the enterprise of constructing eBooks and e-Readers, a small replace within the official Kindle documentation appeared to point that customers will be capable to use books purchased from competing companies.
Nevertheless, it seems Amazon is not including native assist for ePub recordsdata, however somewhat making it simpler for non-technical customers to transform ePub recordsdata right into a Kindle-specific e-book file format. In different phrases, you may quickly be capable to use the Ship to Kindle function to do one thing that usually requires a instrument like Calibre, which is not the most user-friendly software program on the market.
The brand new performance is predicted to land someday later this yr, but it surely is not the one change that is coming. Amazon may also drop assist for .mobi and .azw (primarily Amazon’s rebranded model of .mobi) recordsdata. Meaning you may nonetheless be capable to entry books utilizing both of these codecs which might be already in your Kindle, however you will not be capable to load any new ones utilizing the Ship to Kindle function.
