Putting Non-book and Personal Content onto Your Kindle

As my students and I continue learning how to use Amazon's Kindle in the pursuit of literary study, I'd like to draw attention to how it's possible to use the Kindle to read, archive, and manage certain kinds of personal and non-ebook content. Amazon would like people to use their Kindle as a go-to reading device, and not just for ebooks they sell. What are the implications? First, let's see what you can do.

(Note: I've digested much of this from official pages at Amazon, so consult these for additional details not covered here: "Kindle Personal Documents Service" and "Send to Kindle")

Save and Send Web Pages to Your Kindle

There are many read-it-later apps that allow you to save online content to consume at your leisure (Instapaper, Pocket, etc.). They may even do a better job in some respects. But they are also apps, which means they are part of a tablet or smartphone experience that comes with the web and lots of distractions. Not so with Kindle (except perhaps the Kindle Fire tablet).

This is how to set yourself up to send web pages to your Kindle. First, you add an extension to your web browser (Chrome or Firefox). Click on the image to go to where you can get PC or Mac extensions for Chrome or Firefox:

(There are also third-party extensions available. I use a Chrome extension from fivefilters called Push to Kindle. In fact, you don't even have to use the extension if you don't want to. Just copy the URL of the site you want sent to your Kindle and paste it into their web form. You will be prompted to put in your Kindle email address-- more on that below).

So, once you find a blog post or website of interest, click on the Kindle icon in your browser bar. Here's an example. I looked up a site that lists where I can find literary ebooks:

I clicked on the Kindle icon in my web browser's window. This took me to an intermediary screen where I confirmed my Kindle email address. (This will look different depending on which extension and browser you use):

Note that I have circled where I have to insert my Kindle email address. I'll get to that in a second. But once I hit send, in a few seconds the website shows up as a document on my Kindle:

Note that on my Kindle even the images come through (in black and white on my Kindle Voyager). What does not come through, however, are the hyperlinks. I don't know if this works differently on the Kindle Fire media tablets. No active hyperlinks could be a bad thing; but it also could be a good thing, keeping me from wandering from my reading.

Your Kindle email Address

I pointed out that my Chrome extension required me to enter my Amazon Kindle email address (just once). You can find out your assigned Kindle email address at Amazon by logging into Amazon and going to Manage My Content and Devices, then clicking on the Your Devices tab:

It turns out that you have separate email addresses for each Kindle device or app that you use, and these can be customized to an extent.

This is just half of the equation, however. In order to avoid spam going to Kindle devices, you have to put your email address from which you will be sending content onto an approved sender list. Again, this is handled in the Manage My Content and Devices area on Amazon. These are the instructions from Amazon:

Your Approved Personal Document E-mail List

You can only receive documents from e-mail addresses you have approved.

To add an approved e-mail address:
Go to Manage Your Content and Devices.
From Settings, scroll down to Personal Document Settings.
Under Approved Personal Document List, check if your e-mail address is listed. If your e-mail address is not listed, select Add a new approved e-mail address.
 Enter the desired e-mail address and click Add Address.
Tip: To remove an approved e-mail address, select Delete next to the address you wish to remove.

Send Documents via Email

Once you know your Kindle email address and you have your sending email address listed as approved, you are set up to send many kind of documents from your computer to your Kindle. I saved my Kindle email Address as a contact in my Gmail, and now I can email Word documents, PDFs, and image files to my Kindle simply by attaching these to the email. Nothing is required to be put in the subject line. (One can also add ebook files, but one cannot send PowerPoint, Excel, or many other standard file types).

For example, I found this scholarly article about the Goodreads social network for reading. I saved the PDF, then emailed it to my Kindle:

Being able to send documents authored by others to one's Kindle raises an important intellectual property issue. The article above was obtained through a subscription database at my university. I know I am within fair use to put this copy of the article onto my device for personal consumption, but a grey area quickly develops if one starts to use the Kindle as a distribution mechanism.

Send Documents - Other Ways

I've discussed sending documents to one's Kindle either through a web browser or via email. But there are additional alternatives. You can have "Send to Kindle' set up as a default for context menus within one's operating system (right clicking on a file). You can also send to Kindle by setting up the Kindle as a print option on any app that can print in Windows or Mac. There is also a drag-and-drop--to-icon option and a Finder option (in Mac). See details here (and for PC, here).

A very quick and simple way of sending notes or less formal content to one's Kindle is through FiveFilters.org's "PastePad."

There's something interesting about seeing one's informal content show up on one's Kindle. In some ways it doesn't seem to belong; in other ways, it's super-convenient. I plan to keep trying it out. (By the way, using PastePad for me was inconsistent: Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.)

On one's Kindle, it's easy to keep ebook and other content separate. From the main menu, use the dropdown menu that allows you to choose "All items" or "Books" "Periodicals" "Docs" or "Collections."

Formats and Convert to Kindle

It's great to be able to shoot a common file format like the PDF to my Kindle. Until it's not, that is. Unlike native format eBooks, changing the size of the text in a PDF on Kindle is awkward (it works more like a photo than text), and I cannot highlight or take notes. (In contrast, when I sent a Word file to my Kindle, I could highlight and annotate that text, and I also could follow hyperlinks). Sending documents to Kindle may require some thought as to which format you wish to have it in depending on your intended use. Some items can be sent either as web pages, or as PDFs, or as Word documents. It all depends on what you want to do with it on your Kindle.

A solution to this issue is Kindle Convert. If you want to be able to have many of the features of native Kindle ebooks in personal documents that you are sending to your device (such as the ability to highlight, annotate, or use dictionaries), then it is possible to first convert the file to a Kindle format. Instructions here for the Kindle Convert program.

What I have not covered in this blog post that may be of importance in this area include the following (check the links at the top of this post for more info):

• Amazon cloud (your personal content can be saved to and managed in Amazon's cloud service)
• Fees (for distributing personal documents via Amazon's Whispernet -- if you don't download via WiFi, which is free)

Implications

I'm going to have to try doing more of this to see if transferring documents and websites to my Kindle is something that works for me.

Does having a dedicated reading device -- not just for ebooks but for web content and personal documents -- make sense? Is it simple and natural enough? Are the inconveniences too big of a trade off for the benefit? Let's figure it out.