…do I lose the books I have purchased and loaded onto it?
Or can I buy a new Kindle and load it with all my ‘lost’ books?
mmm
You can re-download the books you bought from Amazon onto a new one.
(And I might add that besides downloading it to a new Kindle, you can also always read your purchased content via the Kindle app on a computer, tablet, smartphone, etc.)
You can have up to six Kindles (includes Kindle apps or Kindle for PC/Mac) registered to a single Amazon account and you can load the books purchased by that account to the various Kindles at any time.
:eek: Really? I hadn’t heard that beore.
So if I understand you correctly. Husband, wife and teen child share an Amazon account. It’s a family account. DL book to Mom’s Kindle and she reads it. Move it to Dads Kindle and he reads it. Then teen child’s Kindle gets it.
Is that what you’re saying can be done with no extra fees? Up to, six kindles which is plenty for any one family.
Real life, that’s how families used books for hundreds of years. Books always got passed around and read.
I heard some people complaining about not being able to do this for books no longer on sale. Is this still the case?
You can, as I noted in another thread a couple of hours ago, copy everything from your Kindle onto your computer, and make as many backup copies as you like.
You won’t be able to use the book files except on Kindles registered to your account, but you can back them up all you like. Which means lost or stolen Kindles make no difference, you can get a new one and simply load everything back on to it.
Yes, except they don’t need to “move” it or “pass it around” - assuming Mom and Dad and Child’s Kindles are registered to the same account they can all have/read it at the same time.
(You also might be interested to know that (if supported locally) you can “borrow” library books via Kindle.)
You can’t use them in the Kindle program for PC? That sucks.
If you have your Kindle books backed up on your computer - which is a very basic precaution - then Amazon can’t do a damn thing about it even if they wanted to, which they don’t.
Now, it may be that if an edition of an ebook is taken off the market, then Amazon can’t re-supply it to you, but if you bought it and you made a back up of it, you can load it onto your Kindle any time you like.
The Kindle works as an external drive, not that different from a USB drive. You plug the Kindle into your computer with the USB cable provided, and your computer sees it as an external media device. You can copy/paste anything you like to/from the Kindle. That’s how you put MOBI format books from Project Gutenberg on your Kindle, for example.
As I keep saying; back up your ebook files. Back them up properly and you will never lose them, despite anything Amazon might conceivably do including going out of business. You might have to break the DRM to access them, but you will certainly never lose them if you back them up.
Sorry, I should have made it clear that “Kindles registered to your account” includes any Kindle programs like Kindle for PC, Kindle for iPad, etc.
They all count - I have Kindle for PC on both my computers, and Amazon simply lists the programs as “Kindle for PC” and “Kindle for PC 2” on its list of Kindle “devices” that I own.
I thought it was up to 8, but I could be wrong. But yes, my whole family shares one account and we have all the same books loaded (at the same time) on all of our Kindles.
How about Google Books?
I downloaded a book to my Kindle Fire both as an epub and as a pdf. It took me a while to figure out where they went but after doing so I started up the pdf fine although I didn’t get all the ebook functionality I was expecting.
I’m getting a message that the file type doesn’t work when I try to read the epub version.
I don’t know anything about Google Books…but in my experience/opinion .pdfs don’t work all that well on the Kindle.
I don’t think Kindles support epubs…I would convert it to mobi with something like Calibre.
I think we have addressed the issue of multiple Kindle readers (I have the same books and magazines [new feature, used to be magazines were only available on actual Kindle devices] on my Kindle, my wife’s Kindle Fire, my Android phone Kindle reader, and my PC Kindle reader).
But the other side of the question that the OP didn’t ask: How do you prevent the finder/stealer of a Kindle device from reading your books, and worse, buying more on your account?
Go to www.amazon.com, click “Your Account”, scroll down to the “Digital Content” section and click “Your Apps and Devices”, then you should have a “Your Devices” link on the left menubar. You can deregister devices from there, and they will no longer have access to your Kindle books or your Amazon account.
Actually, you can. There are techniques by which you can remove the DRM, allowing you to read the files on other devices such as Nooks. I’ve got a number of Kindle-purchased ebooks (bought to read via the Kindle app on my iTouch / Android), and I’ve now got them converted to ePub and can read them on my Nook.
What if they don’t connect the Kindle to wi-fi (or 3G)? Wouldn’t the books still be there and readable until they did so?
I’d assume that once the device reconnects, it’ll “phone home” and delete all the Kindle-purchased stuff. My Nook seems to periodically delete stuff and I have to reconnect and re-download it (like when my credit card expired).
You’ve always (?) been able to do this with books bought from Amazon. More recently, you can also do this with “personal documents” (which would include e-books obtained from other sources) that have been emailed to your Kindle, if I understand correctly.
This wikipedia page says that the Fire does work with epubs (but not the other Kindles).