Leo, I bought one of your books and I see that I can download the book in .mobi format from you. You say that’s the Kindle native format, which is great since I have both a Kindle reader and a Kindle reading application on my smartphone. Only one question: after I download it how do I get the book from my computer to my Kindle?

Turns out there are at least two different ways to get that book onto your Kindle.

And then of course you can also read the book without a Kindle device at all.

Email it to your Kindle

Not everyone realizes it, but every Kindle activated with an Amazon account is assigned a unique email address. You can simply email the “.mobi” file as an attachment to the email address associated with your Kindle.

To find the email address of your Kindle, login to your Amazon account and visit the Manage Your Content & Devices (http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle) page:

It defaults to showing you “Your Content,” the Kindle books and other items in your library. Click on the “Your Devices” tab to see the Kindle devices and applications that are associated with your account:

As you can see, I’ve clicked on one of my Kindles (we have several), and beneath it the page lists the email address associated with that Kindle. It’ll be of the form [something] @ kindle.com, where “[something]” is probably a combination of name and numbers.

Save that email address. I actually have it in my address book as “Leo’s Kindle Fire” so I can quickly compose a message to it.

There’s one more step: authorizing the sender.

Click on the Settings tab. First scroll down to the “Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings” portion of the page:

This gives you another overview list of all the email addresses associated with all of your Kindle devices and mobile applications (I told you we had several 🙂 ), but without the device picture for easy identification.

Scroll down further to the “Approved Personal Document E-mail List”:

You must send your document from one of these email addresses in order for it to be accepted. If the address you want to use isn’t listed, you can add it.

The email message Subject and Body are optional, and completely ignored. All that matters is the “.mobi” file attached.

Once you send the .mobi file to your Kindle, two things should happen:

The .mobi file will be delivered to that Kindle the same way that purchased books are delivered. The .mobi file will also be placed in your Kindle library. You can then download it to any of your other Kindle devices without needing to email it again.

Note that either or both of these can take a little time before they appear, and before they appear across all your devices. And of course your Kindle must be online in order to receive the download.

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Copy it to your Kindle

The other approach is relatively simple, but in my experience a tad less reliable.

Connect your Kindle device to your PC using a USB cable.

In Windows Explorer / File Explorer your Kindle will either appear as an additional drive, or as a Kindle device. In either case copy the “.mobi” file into the folder “Books” (Kindle Fire devices) or “Documents” (Kindle Paperwhite and older devices) in the device’s internal storage.

After it has been copied safely disconnect your Kindle and the book should appear on the device’s list of books.

Note: in my experience the various lists of books provided by the Kindle device can sometimes take a while to update. Also note that copying a book to the device in this manner does not place it in your Kindle library for other devices.

I personally find the email approach above to be much more reliable.

Don’t use your Kindle at all

For completeness you can, of course, read the “.mobi” book on your computer or laptop without needing a Kindle at all.

Download and install the Kindle Reader application for your computer, laptop, tablet or any number of other devices. On your PC, for example, you can then just double-click the “.mobi” file in File Explorer to open it in that application and begin reading.

As a side-effect, you can also login to your Amazon account using that application and have access to your entire Kindle library as well. This is what I use on my Android-based smartphone, and as a result I have an entire library in my pocket wherever I go.