Convert a PDF for your Kindle
Kindles are miserable at PDFs and excellent at reflowable books. This turns one into the other, in your browser, and hands you the EPUB that Send to Kindle actually wants.
Read in this tab. Never uploaded. Here's why that's true.
This looks like a scan.
We found page images but no selectable text. Convert it and you'll get a book with nothing in it. Run it through OCR software first. We don't do OCR here.
These become the title and author in your library, which is what your device sorts by. Worth thirty seconds.
Working…
This runs on your machine, so the speed is down to your machine. Keep the tab open.
Your EPUB is ready
Getting it onto your e-reader
Kindle, pick any one
- USB. Plug the Kindle in and copy the file into the documents folder. No account, no internet, and the book never goes near Amazon. It does stay on that one device though.
- Send to Kindle. Drop it into the uploader. Easiest, and it syncs everywhere, but Amazon gets a copy.
- Email. Send it to your @kindle.com address from an approved sender. Same trade as above.
Kobo, Nook, PocketBook
Plug the device in over USB and copy the file across. EPUB is their native format, so there's no conversion step at all.
Routes 2 and 3 send the file to Amazon, who convert it on arrival and keep it in your library. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to want, since it is what gets you syncing across devices. It is just worth choosing on purpose.
Something went wrong
- EPUB
- what Send to Kindle wants
- 0
- bytes uploaded
- Free
- no account, no cap
The format to send in 2026
EPUB. Amazon stopped taking MOBI for new documents at the end of 2022, and Send to Kindle now handles EPUB directly, converting it to their own internal format once it lands. This trips a lot of people up, because MOBI was the Kindle format for fifteen years and plenty of converters still offer it first. Send a MOBI today and it bounces.
You don't need AZW3 or KFX either. Amazon makes those on their side from whatever you send, and their converter targets their own hardware better than anything you'd run at home.
Getting it onto the device
USB, if you'd rather Amazon didn't have a copy
Plug the Kindle in, copy the file into the documents folder, eject. No account
involved, no internet needed, and the book never leaves your own hardware. Given the conversion
already happened on your machine, this is the route that keeps the whole thing private
end to end.
The catch is real though: sideloaded books live on that device alone. No syncing, no reading position on your phone, and nothing comes back after a factory reset.
Send to Kindle on the web
The easy one. Go to amazon.com/sendtokindle, sign in, drag the EPUB on, pick your devices. It shows up in your library in a couple of minutes and syncs everywhere, which is exactly what USB won't do for you. The trade is that Amazon receives the file and keeps it.
Better from a phone, or if you do this a lot. Same trade as the uploader. Every Kindle account
has an address ending in @kindle.com, under Manage Your Content and
Devices → Preferences → Personal Document Settings.
The step everyone misses: on that same page there's an Approved Personal Document E-mail List. Amazon quietly bins anything sent from an address that isn't on it. No bounce, no error, nothing. Add your address before you send anything, or you'll be refreshing an empty library wondering what went wrong.
Your file stays on your computer
Most converters want you to upload your document to a server you know nothing about. This one can't, because there's no server to upload it to. The whole thing is JavaScript running in this tab. Open your devtools Network panel and watch it stay silent, or load the page, turn off your wifi and convert anyway. It still works.
That matters more than usual for books, which are often the one copy you own.
If the book arrives looking wrong
Amazon converts your EPUB on receipt, so broken chapters or run-together paragraphs were almost certainly in the EPUB already. That's a conversion problem, not a transfer one, and this guide covers what to change.
Related
Questions
Can I just send the PDF straight to my Kindle?
You can, and Amazon will accept it, but reading it is unpleasant. A PDF has a fixed page, so a six-inch screen shrinks an A4 page to roughly 40% and the type ends up around four points. Converting to EPUB first is what lets the text reflow to your font size.
Why not convert to MOBI?
Amazon stopped accepting MOBI for new documents at the end of 2022. Send it and it bounces. Any converter still pushing MOBI at you is working from old information. EPUB is what Send to Kindle wants now.
Why did my emailed book never arrive?
Almost always the approved sender list. Amazon silently discards documents from any address that isn't on your Approved Personal Document E-mail List, with no bounce and no warning. Add the address you send from first, under Manage Your Content and Devices.
Does this work with Kindle Paperwhite, Oasis and Scribe?
Yes. The output is a standard EPUB, and every current Kindle accepts EPUB through Send to Kindle. Amazon converts it to their own internal format when it arrives, so the device never sees the EPUB itself.
Will my books sync across devices?
If you send them through the web uploader or by email, yes: they land in your library and sync everywhere, including your reading position. Copy a file over USB instead and it lives on that one device only, with no syncing and nothing surviving a factory reset.