Skip to Main Content
Michigan State University

E-books and E-readers at the MSU Libraries: Using a Kindle

Kindles and Library e-Books

 

Amazon's Kindle e-Readers, while very popular and easy to use with titles purchased directly from Amazon, are probably the most difficult to use with MSU Library ebooks.  This is because Amazon has decided to use its own proprietary e-book format instead of EPUB.   That means e-books that MSU Libraries purchases are not optimized for Kindle e-readers because we do not purchase Kindle editions. 

MSU Libraries' e-books are nearly all available as PDF documents, which can be used on Kindle devices.  While you can't download an entire book as a pdf, you can download individual chapters.  The Send to Kindle application allows you to download pdfs to your laptop or desktop computer, then send them to your Kindle using Amazon's Cloud technology.  Unfortunately, this can take some time for the download to actually happen (minutes to hours!)

You can use Amazon's Personal Document Service to have files converted automatically to Amazon compatible file formats.

Proquest Ebook Central Kindle compatibility

How can I checkout and download an EBSCO eBook to a Kindle Fire?