How Kindle works

By following my advice, you have finally found out which Kindle to choose. So you ordered an Amazon-branded ebook reader and now you would like some clarification about how it works. No problem, you’ve come to the right place at the right time!

Below you will find a complete overview of the Kindle family ebook readers, their most important functions and how you can download or purchase books about them. I’ll tell you: it’s all extremely simple, much simpler than you imagine. So rest assured, read this guide on how Kindle works and I assure you that within a few minutes you will be able to use your new device without the slightest problem.

I made the tutorial using a Kindle Paperwhite from 2013, but the instructions in it are valid for all models of the Amazon ebook reader, even the most recent ones (on the other hand, the operating system to be used is always the same ). At this point, I just have to wish you a good read and invite you to take action immediately: here’s how to set up and use a newly purchased Kindle.

Kindle initial setup

The first thing to do after purchasing a Kindle is – guess what? – switch on the device and configure it to connect to the Internet. The connection can be made in two ways: via Wi-Fi or, only on models with 3G support, via the cellular data network. Kindles with 3G support include a “locked” SIM that allows free access to the Kindle Store and Wikipedia from around the world. The other Internet sites, on the other hand, are inaccessible: they can only be visited via Wi-Fi.

The initial setup of the Kindle is extremely intuitive. All you have to do is choose the language in which to use the ebook reader, wait a few seconds for the main menu of the device to load and press the button to start the actual configuration. Next, you have to select the Wi-Fi network to connect the Kindle to, you have to choose whether to log into your Amazon account or create a new one and, if you want, you can follow a short tutorial that explains how the various menus work.

If you want to change the settings of a Kindle on which the initial configuration procedure has already been completed, press the button  (…)  located at the top right and select the Settings item from the menu that appears.

Then go to Wi-Fi networks and select the wireless network to connect the ebook reader to. Subsequently, to associate the device with an Amazon account and/or change the account associated with the latter, select the item  Registration and follow the instructions on the screen.

At this point you are ready to use your Kindle making the most of all its potential, so you are ready to download and read books in electronic format on the latter. To find out how, read the next chapter of the tutorial.

Download books

The next step we face in this guide on how Kindle works is the one related to the purchase (or download) of books from the Internet.

The main tool through which you can download ebooks on Kindle is the  Kindle Store, Amazon’s digital showcase that offers many titles written in all the languages ​​of the world, but you can also contact external sources and upload the books to your own. Kindle. We will see shortly how. Now let’s try to go in order.

Kindle Store

The prices of the works on the Kindle Store are quite varied: there are the great classics of literature that can be downloaded at no cost (find the complete list here ); the one-day Kindle flash offers that generally have prices between € 0.99 and € 2.49; and then there is everything else. We can say that, on average, the most recent ebooks cost between 4.99 and 9.99 euros but, as easily understood, it is not possible to make a precise average for all the thousands of titles available on the store.

Then there is Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service that for 9.99 euros/month after a 30-day free trial gives free access to over 1 million works (of which over 15,000 in Italian): a little as happens with Spotify for music, so to speak. Find more information about it here.

As an alternative to Kindle Unlimited there is  Amazon Prime Reading, which allows all Amazon Prime subscribers to access a catalog (smaller than that of Kindle Unlimited) consisting of hundreds of ebooks and comics in electronic format. Find more info here.

To buy or download a book from the Kindle Store using your Kindle directly, press the shopping cart icon in the main menu of the device (top left) and locate the works of your interest. If you are asked to take out a subscription to Kindle Unlimited, you can decline without any problem by pressing the No thanks button, continue without Kindle Unlimited.

Once in the Kindle store, you can choose to browse the categories of books available in the store using the appropriate drop-down menu (top left), you can consult the rankings with the best sellers,  new releases or titles chosen for you or you can take a look at the most interesting offers of the moment by clicking on  Lightning offers (to view the offers of the day) or  Offers of the month (to view the offers of the month). Alternatively, if you prefer, you can also press on the search bar located at the top right and search directly for a work or an author.

Once you have identified an ebook of your interest, first presses on its cover image and then on the Buy button on the screen that opens to buy/download it. If instead of buying the work you want to download a free extract (generally two or three chapters long), “tap” on  Send extract now and only an extract of the selected ebook will be added to your library.

If you are an Amazon  Prime customer and want to access the selection of free titles included in your subscription, go to the store on your Kindle, press the item relating to Amazon Prime Reading and select the book or comic of your interest. At this point, tap the Read Now button and the title will automatically appear in your library.

If you want, you can also buy/download ebooks on the Kindle Store via your PC. All you have to do is connect to  Amazon from your computer, authenticate with the account you have configured on your Kindle and click on the Buy Now 1-click button on the page dedicated to the ebook you want to buy/download. If before buying the work you want to read an extract at no cost, press the Send extract now button  (make sure your Kindle is selected in the menu below) and some pages of the book will be downloaded for free on the ebook reader.

Other sites to download ebooks

As mentioned above, Kindle Store isn’t the only service that allows you to download ebooks to Kindle. You can also download ebooks from third-party sites and upload them to Amazon’s ebook reader. If you want to know which third-party sites offer the most interesting ebooks, and offer them at no cost, take a look at my tutorial on how to download books for free from the Internet.

Transfer books from PC to Kindle

Now let’s see how to transfer books downloaded from third-party sites to a Kindle. To transfer a book from your PC to your Kindle, connect the ebook reader to your computer via USB cable, open the Kindle drive that appears in Computer / This PC (Windows) or in the Finder sidebar (Mac) and copy the ebook in the Documents (or Internal documents ) folder on your device.

The supported file types are: PDF, MOBI, AZW, DOC / DOCX, RTF and TXT. The ePub is missing but, do not panic, you can fill this gap thanks to Caliber, a free and open-source software compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux that allows you to convert all the main ebook formats together. I told you about it in several tutorials, such as the one related to how to convert AZW to PDF.

A little gem – which not everyone knows – concerns the transfer of books to Kindle via email. Each Kindle is associated with an e-mail address and, if necessary, it is possible to use the latter to send books to the reader without physically connecting it to the computer. To find your Kindle’s email address, go to this webpage and select the Settings tab.

Dictionary, Wikipedia and other functions

Among the many advantages of using an ebook reader instead of a paper book, there is the possibility of interacting with the content of the work, discovering the meaning of the most particular terms and translating the words into a foreign language without distracting the attention from your own reading.

On Kindle, for example, by selecting a word with your finger, you can instantly view its definition in the Dictionary or Wikipedia; by selecting phrases you can highlight them, add notes or share them on social networks. And that’s not all.

Another interesting feature of the Kindle is the one called Enrich your vocabulary (accessible from the menu at the top right) which allows you to review all the words whose definition you have searched for in the dictionary in a single screen.

Don’t forget to take a look at the Experimental Browser that allows you to browse the Internet directly from your Kindle and the Kindle FreeTime feature that allows parents to follow their children’s progress in reading.

As for the reading preferences, if you want to change the font, screen brightness (for Kindle models with screen lighting system) or want to add a bookmark to the ebook you are reading, press on the top of the screen and select the icon relating to the function of your interest. If you want to change the type and/or size of the reading font, select the Aa icon; if you want to add a bookmark to the ebook you are reading, press the appropriate icon (the one that portrays a bookmark), while if you want to adjust the brightness of the screen and/or want to activate the airplane mode on the Kindle, press the sun icon.

Note: the functions relating to text highlighting and sharing are not available in the free ebook extracts.

Access from other devices

When you buy or download an ebook from the Kindle Store, it is saved in an unlimited cloud space that every Amazon user has at their disposal. This means that by downloading the official Kindle application for your computer, smartphone or tablet, you can access your books at any time and continue reading them from where you left them on the ebook reader.

All reading progress is automatically synchronized via the Internet: in this way, when you pick up your Kindle, you can start from the last page opened on your computer, tablet or mobile phone and vice versa. In addition, thanks to the Kindle Cloud Reader you can connect to this web page from any computer and continue with your reading even via browser.

 

 

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