Amazon’s Kindle is the world’s most popular e-book reader, light, versatile and high-quality, the device has been refined and has helped many people to migrate from reading physical books to reading on electronic devices. But since November 2007, when it was launched on the market, it has a limitation: the Kindle does not accept files in EPUB format .
The EPUB (short for Electronic Publishing) format has the ability to adjust to different screen sizes, fonts and font sizes and is supported by a large number of devices used for reading, including cell phones, tablets and other book readers such as Noble’s Nook and Rakuten Kobo.
The Kindle uses its own format (called AZW) and the MOBI format, and although files can be transferred in EPUB format, it is necessary to do a manual process using a package like Caliber.
But things are about to change. Amazon updated the documentation on the Kindle support page and finally lists epub as one of the supported formats for the device. However, the process is not transparent: through the “Send to Kindle” function, the user will be able to send and open epub files on their device, however, these will be automatically converted to a format called AZW3, which is nothing else than EPUB, but with some technical features of Amazon. While this means there won’t be full support for EPUB files, it’s good news, as we’ll finally be able to import books purchased on other platforms to the Kindle.
The news is not only good for users, but also for independent authors and publishers who seek to offer their titles through electronic reading devices and who sometimes had to choose which format to bet on.
