Every File Format Compatible With Your Amazon Kindle

As one of the most popular e-readers in the world, the Amazon Kindle has become a must-have for bibliophiles who prefer the convenience of digital reading over physical books. When the first Kindle was released back in 2007, it forever changed how people consumed books. No longer was it necessary to lug around heavy books while traveling or commuting; instead, hundreds of texts could be stored on a Kindle and easily accessed anytime, anywhere. The Kindle has changed a lot over the intervening years, keeping pace with technology and offering us new ways to read on the go.

Today, we have the Kindle Scribe for note-taking and productivity and the Kindle Colorsoft and Paperwhite Signature Edition for those who want to focus only on reading. When you purchase and download books from the Kindle Store, they arrive on your device without you having to give the file format a second thought. That's because all Kindle Store purchases are delivered in Amazon's proprietary formats, such as AZW3 and KFX. 

However, at some point, you may want to venture beyond the Amazon ecosystem and read books on your Kindle that you've picked up elsewhere, whether that be a free e-book or a PDF document. If that's the case, you'll want to know exactly which file formats are compatible with your Kindle, so you can be sure you can open them on your device without any trouble.

The issue of file format compatibility usually doesn't come up until you need to send books in PDF, EPUB, and other formats to your Kindle. While the Kindle supports many e-book formats, it doesn't support them all. That's why, before you download a book or document to read on your Kindle, you want to be sure it's compatible with your device. Your Kindle supports the following file types: 

1. Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
2. HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
3. RTF (.RTF)
4. Text (.TXT)
5. JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
6. GIF (.GIF)
7. PNG (.PNG)
8. BMP (.BMP)
9. PDF (.PDF)
10. EPUB (.EPUB)

If you download a book in an unsupported format and try to load it onto your Kindle, you won't be able to read it. However, not all is lost. You can use the open source e-book management software Calibre to convert them to EPUB format before sending them to your Kindle. Once you've converted and transferred them, you'll be able to find them in your Amazon Digital Library and access them along with your other books. Do note that for many of these file types, simply copying them to your Kindle via USB isn't enough, so you'll need to use Calibre to convert and copy them over or email them to your Kindle.