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Read PDF on Kindle, and other cool Kindle Tips

When ebooks arrived, many people feared they will be the end of print books. But that didn’t happen. Many book lovers still prefer print books over ebooks. At the same time, ebooks are gaining popularity because of the convenience they provide. Ebooks can be read on smartphones, web browsers, and dedicated reading devices like Kindle.

While there are several eReaders available, Kindle devices are the most popular. Kindle devices, with their E Ink technology make reading eBooks less stressful for the eyes. And Kindle’s features like Word Wise help users in quickly find the meaning of any word in the book. As Kindle allows users to add highlights and notes to the book, it helps in saving favorite sections of the book.

I too bought a Kindle Paperwhite recently and love it. Based on my experience, here are some cool  Kindle tips that you can use to get the best out of your Kindle

Kindle tips & tricks

Kindle Tips & Tricks

Send to Kindle:

If you have some ebooks that you’d want to transfer to Kindle, you can. One way is connecting your Kindle to your computer using USB cable and transferring the file to the Kindle’s folder. But I find it more convenient to just mail it to my Kindle. Every Kindle device or app has a unique email ID. You can easily find this Send-to-Kindle email ID in the settings. It’s best to save this mail ID in your email contacts so you don’t have to look for it again and again. Now, every time you need to transfer a document to your Kindle, just mail it to Kindle mail ID from the email account registered on Kindle. You cannot send the e-book to Kindle from any other email account. Only the authorized email account will work. You can change or add additional authorized email address by going to your Content and Devices settings on Amazon and scrolling down to Personal Document settings. Here, you’ll find your Kindle’s email, as well as your authorized email address. (More Info)

Convert PDF for Kindle:

Using the above mentioned method, you can easily send PDF files to Kindle. However, reading PDF on Kindle is not as convenient as reading a mobi ebook. To convert your PDF to Kindle friendly format, just type convert in the subject line of the mail you send to Kindle. The file that will get delivered to your Kindle device or app would be in Kindle friendly format and easy to read.

Kindle Highlights and Notes:

While reading, book lovers may want to highlight a favourite passage and note down their thoughts about it. While book lovers may hesitate to do so on a print book because we don’t like our precious books getting dirty, there’s no such hesitation when it comes to ebooks. So, Kindle devices make it super easy to add highlights and notes. Just long press and slide your finger to highlight, then tap on the Note to add notes. All these highlights and notes can be accessed by using the GoTo tool. Highlights and Notes can be a great help especially for students.

Kindle & Goodreads:

Since Amazon has bought Goodreads, Kindle devices now let you link to your Goodreads profile (check out mine). If you have connected your Kindle with Goodreads, all the highlights and notes you make on Kindle will get synced to Goodreads. By default, these notes and highlights will be private. But you can make them public and share them with your friends on Goodreads by opening the Goodreads menu and going to Kindle Notes & Highlights.

Kindle Vocabulary Builder:

You may already know this, Kindle makes it super easy to check out the word meanings. Its Word Wise feature keeps on providing word meaning as you read. It is a great feature, but if you don’t like it, you can turn it off. You can always check the meaning of a word by long-pressing on it. All the words you have checked out get stored in the Vocabulary Builder. You can revise the word meanings any time from there and improve your vocabulary. Sometimes, accidental long-presses might add unnecessary words to the Vocabulary Builder too. Just press on any such word and tap on Delete.

Translate:

Some times, books may have some sentences in a language that you do not know. I faced this problem while I was reading Villette. It’s an awesome novel (my review of Villette). But it has several sentences in French. As I was reading a print edition, I had no option but to skip over these sentences. But if you use a Kindle eReader or app, you can use the easy Translate feature. Just highlight the text, tap on the more option of the menu that opens, and tap on Translation. The utility will detect the language of the text you have selected. You can set the language you want it to translate too. Not all languages are available for translation, but all the major ones are included like French, Germain, Chinese, Russian, English, Hindi. You need to be connected to the internet to use this feature.

Kindle Cloud Reader:

Whether you use a Kindle eReader or Kindle app, you can access all your ebooks on computer too. Just head to read.amazon.com. Sign in with your Amazon account and you’ll find all your Kindle ebooks synced with your Kindle device or app.

Choose the right Kindle App:

Kindle ebooks can also be read on phones using a Kindle app. You can easily download the Kindle app from Google Play Store or iTunes. However, if you own a Samsung smartphone, I’d recommend you download the Kindle for Samsung app from the Samsung’s app store. This app offers all the features of the main Kindle app. In addition, Samsung users can download one free ebook every month from the offered selection. If your smartphone has less storage, try the newly launched Kindle Lite app.

So, these were my Kindle tips. Do you know of any Kindle trick not listed here? Let me know!


Check out Jyoti Arora’s Books

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Author Jyoti Arora's website and books

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