Amazon Kindle Now Supports EPUB

I wasn’t aware that Amazon was transitioning away from the MOBI format on its Kindle eBook readers, but now it’s making another change too: it will finally allow customers to send EPUB content to their Kindles too.

“Starting August 2022, you’ll no longer be able to send MOBI (.mobi, .azw) files to your library,” an Amazon email to Kindle users notes. “Any MOBI files already in your Kindle library will not be affected by this change.”

According to Amazon, MOBI is an older file format and it doesn’t support new Kindle features for documents. So anyone who sent MOBI files to their Kindle using the Send to Kindle service will eventually need to resend them in a different, compatible format.

Among those compatible formats, suddenly, is EPUB, so you can now send EPUB files to your Kindle for the first time using your Send to Kindle email address. Amazon will soon add native support for EPUB to the free Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.

I’m curious if this means that EPUB will become the default file format on Kindle now. My understanding is that the MOBI-based AZW format is currently the default format.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • bassoprofundo

    Premium Member
    04 May, 2022 - 10:13 am

    <p>I’d seen the part of the announcement that said they’d accept EPUBs directly from Send to Kindle now, but I missed the fact that they won’t take MOBIs anymore. After years of collecting .MOBI files or converting other formats to MOBI with Calibre prior to sending, now it looks like we’re going to have to do the reverse (convert MOBI to EPUB)? Not sure what that saves the target audience? </p><p><br></p><p>Even worse, the EPUB support is gimped anyway in that it isn’t natively supported. It looks like they’re doing EPUB to KF8 (AZW3) conversion on the backend before sending to the Kindle itself.</p>

    • will

      Premium Member
      04 May, 2022 - 10:39 am

      <p>Maybe they would have an option for both in the software? A location to view items from Amazon store and then a separate location to view your items you send but keep the epub format support on the device?</p>

      • bassoprofundo

        Premium Member
        04 May, 2022 - 11:36 am

        <p>If you’re talking about on the Kindle devices themselves, you can filter on "Docs" <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">(which still gets me since everything I’ve sent are literally "books", but the Kindle insists on treating them separately)</span> to see the things you’ve sent via "Send to Kindle", but it doesn’t give you any insight into the underlying format or anything. The conversion happens on the backend and is transparent to the device.</p><p><br></p><p>It’s not a huge deal so long as it ends out readable on the device. It’s more that this changes nothing really from a functional perspective other than you no longer have to convert before sending to the Kindle’s assigned email address. If they ever natively supported EPUB on the device, you’d simply be able to drag and drop from a PC or possibly even buy from other bookstores.</p>

    • jgraebner

      Premium Member
      04 May, 2022 - 12:42 pm

      <p>I don’t think it had been widely reported in the press that they were dropping MOBI support, but I received an email notification about it from Amazon this morning. It does sound like they will still work, but you will no longer be able to use "Send to Kindle" to get them onto the device and some features won’t work. I do have a ton of MOBI books from sources other than Amazon in my library.</p><p><br></p><p>I wonder if they are shifting to a native format that is basically EPUB+DRM. EPUB is an open standard, isn’t it?</p>

      • iAlrakis

        Premium Member
        04 May, 2022 - 1:23 pm

        <p>Epub is indeed an open standard.</p>

  • ebraiter

    04 May, 2022 - 3:20 pm

    <p>It took them how many years? Of course my Kindle Paper White is still going after 12 years….</p>

  • mattbg

    Premium Member
    08 May, 2022 - 11:00 am

    <p>Hardly any libraries (if any at all) in Canada support Kindle e-ink readers for e-book borrowing, often citing the lack of EPUB support. For that, you have to get Kobo or something else.</p><p><br></p><p>From that perspective, that is interesting.</p>

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