For over three years now, Amazon has offered Kindle users free cloud storage for their ebooks.
This Kindle Cloud supports many of the same reading features that you get with ebooks bought from Amazon, including highlights, notes, bookmarks, dictionary lookup, and syncing your reading position across all of Amazon’s Kindle apps and ereaders.
It’s pretty useful, and here’s how you can set it up.
First things first: Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?
The hard way is much more useful and works from any email account, but the easy way works just as well and is less hassle.
I’ll show you the easy way, and then the hard way. You tell me which is better.
The Easy Way
The easy way to send ebooks and documents to your Kindle Cloud is to install an app called Send2Kindle. There’s a version for Windows, OSX, and Android, and once it is installed and configured it is dead simply to use.
For the PC app, simply select the file you wish to send (in Windows explorer, for example), right click on it, and choose the Send2Kindle option. This should also show up as a print option when viewing a file in MSWord, Adobe Reader, etc.
And do you know the best part about Send2Kindle? When you run the app, it will create a window. Any compatible file which you drag to that window and release will be sent to your Kindle Cloud.
For more details on this app, visit the Send2Kindle on sachvui.co. Or you can launch the app and click on the help button.
That’s the easy way; here’s the hard way.
The Hard Way
Setup
To start, open the Manage Your Kindle page on sachvui.co:
Log in to your account, and switch to the settings tab:
Scroll down the page until you see the section labeled “Approved Personal Document E-mail List”. This is the section where you will need to list all of the email addresses which you will be using to send content to the Kindle Cloud.
It looks like this:
Amazon wants you to tell them all the email addresses which are authorized to send content to your account. I bet they want to limit spam, so think of the email addresses which you plan to use to send content to the Kindle Cloud and add them one at a time.
One you’ve done that, scroll up that manage your Kindle page and find the section titled “Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings”. It looks like this:
This is where you’ll find the specific email addresses for each of the Kindle apps and hardware. Did you know that you can send a document or ebook to a specific app or Kindle? That’s why they each have their own email address.
Edit: And as a reader reminded me, not all apps have a unique email address. The Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle Windows 8 app, and the Kindle for PC app do not. The Cloud Reader and Windows 8 app also do not support reading your personal ebooks. Thanks, Timothy!
If you’re like me, you’ll have a number of devices and apps on your account. Make a note of which ones you use the most, and add the email addresses to the address book in your email account.
That’s It
You’ve now finished all of the steps to get ready to send ebooks to the Kindle Cloud.
In contrast to the setup process, sending the ebooks is very simple. All you have to do is choose one of the email addresses you just added to your address book and send an email to it with the ebook attached.
Addendum
Here are the documents you can send (the files have to be under 50MB in size):
- Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
- HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
- RTF (.RTF)
- JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
- Kindle Format (.MOBI, .AZW)
- GIF (.GIF)
- PNG (.PNG)
- BMP (.BMP)
- PDF (.PDF)
The PDF files will be sent without alteration, but all the rest will be converted to Kindle format. Also, the Kindle format ebooks will be mangled when you email them, so don’t be surprised if your pretty ebooks come out looking ugly.
It Could Cost You
Before you send any files, let me warn you that Amazon sometimes charges delivery fees. If you have a 3G-equipped Kindle, Amazon will charge $.15 per megabyte. Also, if you are sending content to your smartphone or tablet over a 3G or 4G data connection, your service provider might charge you for delivery.
Luckily Amazon offers the option of limiting to only delivering to Kindles over Wifi. You can find it on the Manage Your Kindle page under the settings tab (Whispernet Delivery Options). You can also set a limit on how much you’re willing to pay for the delivery cost.
Don’t Forget to Enable the Archive Option
One of the features I like the most is that way that Amazon will add your ebooks to your Kindle account. It’s useful, but it also has to be enabled. You can do that on the settings tab of the Manage your Kindle page.
