After 15 years, Amazon will finally bend to the competition and support on its Kindle readers the ePub ebook format used by the vast majority of online bookstores, publishers and competing services.
As with video and music formats, there are a number of different formats for eBooks. Since their release, Amazon uses its own proprietary format on its Kindle e-readerswhich means that if you buy a book outside of Amazon’s ecosystem and want to read it on your Kindle, you had to change the file format to add it.
However, as spotted by Good E-Reader, Amazon now plans to roll out a new “Send to Kindle” app update in 2022 that will integrate ePub files and convert them to a file type compatible with Kindle before send them to your eReader. This change in policy could therefore solve the biggest flaw of Kindle devices: their proprietary format.
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Kindles will be able to accommodate e-books purchased outside of Amazon
Until now, Kindle devices could not read ePub format. Only books in KF8/AZW3 format, or e-books purchased on Amazon were accepted. As a reminder, Amazon also supports files in “.Mobi” format, which it acquired with the French company Mobipocket in 2005, the precursor to the “.AZW” format. Kindle owners then until now had to manually convert their library of ebooks to a format more suitable for Amazon with an app like Calibre, but the process was not within everyone’s reach.
Thanks to the app Send to Kindle on Android, PC, Mac, Chromeso it will soon be easier than ever tosend your books via the email address associated with your Kindle. We imagine that such a change could allow Amazon to boost sales of its e-reader, which recently received new Kindle Paperbook 2021 versions with larger screens and USB-C connectivity.
The update is expected to roll out in late 2022, but no specific date has yet been communicated. We will also have to wait for Amazon to confirm the arrival of such a change.