After 15 years, Amazon has finally decided to bring support for the ePub ebook format to Kindle. It will still not be the native support for the ePub format, but the company will convert ePub files into Amazon’s digital book file format KF8.
Amazon has updated Kindle documentation to confirm the changes. The documentation confirms that the support is coming via the ‘Send to Kindle’ application.
Most online bookstores and publishers use the ePub ebook format. The ePub format was launched back in 2007 and rival e-readers already support it. But Amazon was still pushing its own AZW format which is basically rebranded Mobi format that it acquired with Mobipocket in 2005.
Send Kindle is also losing the ability to load in MOBI because it is an older file format and won’t support the newest Kindle features. If you already have MOBI books on your Kindle, you can keep accessing them. You will not be able to load new MOBI books to Kindle using Send to Kindle feature.
So, Kindle users who wanted to read ePub books on kindle needed to first convert them to a supported format. Although converters work well the process is actually annoying.
The update will come later this year.
