Can I Buy Kindle Books On Amazon Without A Kindle?

No, you cannot purchase and download books within the Kindle reading app without having an Amazon account (since the app is a doorway to Amazon’s e-bookstore). However, you can add e-books to your Kindle library by sending them to your Kindle email address (with the appropriate file extensions) or by using the “Send to Kindle” button found on many websites that sell e-books. Many of the classic works that are in the public domain can be downloaded for free from various non Amazon sites to read on your Kindle. Modern works of literature can often be purchased by using your Amazon account.

I just tried to set up a Kindle without creating an Amazon account and the initial setup wizard apparently forces Wi-Fi setup and account creation (login or sign up). Will the Kindle then still work (take you to Home screen)? Can you then load books via USB as well? (I set up my Kindle years ago so have never tried this).

Many people use sideloading to add content to their Kindles that is not sold by Amazon. You can email personal documents such as PDF and Word files to your Kindle email address. Files can also be added via the USB connection and copied into the Documents folder on the device. I use my Kindle to read work reports, academic papers and even fanfiction that I have written. In particular, it makes your Kindle app into a universal document viewer. While it may not display very complex PDF files optimally, documents with a lot of text are read perfectly using the reflowable text and reading features of your Kindle. Thus all your reading material is now located in one place.

The core transaction is a sale. You pay for a permanent license to a digital book. The act of downloading a book is simply how you get the book onto your reading device, e.g. your eReader, your computer, your Kindle app on your tablet etc. Note that we are not talking about a stream – a stream requires you to have an active internet connection and for you to subscribe to a service. But once downloaded, you can read the book offline, so for example, you could purchase and download a bunch of books before a flight, turn off your phone in airplane mode and then read the books offline on your phone or tablet.

Yes, I find it really convenient that I can read Amazon ebooks on all of my devices. Since I don’t have a Kindle, I read all of my ebooks on my mobile devices and on my PC using the Amazon apps. For reading on the go, I download the ebook to my mobile device and then read it offline. If I’m at home and want to read but don’t want any distractions, I switch to the Amazon desktop app or use Cloud Reader. Oh and by the way – if you buy ebooks as gifts to yourself, you can actually download the PDF version of the ebook from the email receipt. (Not all ebooks will allow this – but its nice when they do!) In general, I really like how I can organize my books in collections on my various apps, and how my books are generally just organized nicely. There is one downside to non-Kindle devices for Amazon ebooks – some of the illustrated/books with a lot of special formatting do not translate very well. But for regular novels etc. – no problem.

I just come here to read and all that tech talk gives me a headache. I am good with my library and my used paperbacks.

A book to recommend to the members of my book club has to be shared, too. Kindle sharing is a topic which I always come back to. No, Amazon Prime is not needed to share Kindle books. How the sharing of Kindle books is possible, I explain in this post. Lending books to your friends and family is a bit of an oddity as well. As I mentioned above, not all books can be lent, and you can only lend each book once. I have found it generally works best to email them a DRM-free EPUB copy of the book and then send it to their Kindle via email. It’s not perfect, but it works quite well for me and I’ve managed to recommend a large number of books to friends and family without having to get them a Prime subscription.

You can still get loads of free Kindle books even if you don't have a Prime membership. Many of these will be listed in the ‘Top 100 Free’ section of the Kindle Store, but there are also many free books promoted by individual authors. You can also find many free books on certain platforms, where you can download them in exchange for leaving a honest review. Recently I downloaded ‘SINFUL PLEASURES: Short Filthy Stories’ to my Kindle for example – it’s a collection of very short, but very filthy, stories that can be read in a few minutes and are perfect for popping on your Kindle to read on your daily commute or while you’re taking a break from work.

The most practical way to access Free Kindle Books is through your existing Amazon account. Go to the Kindle Store on your computer browser (not through the Kindle app on your devices – the restrictions around platforms don’t currently allow this). In the search box at the top of the screen of the Kindle Store, type ‘free kindle books’ and press Enter. Then on the left of the screen, click on the word Filter by; in the drop-down menu that appears, click on Departments and select the relevant genre. Next, click on one of the Featured Categories on the left, such as Kindle eBooks, and finally click on the word Price in the panel on the left and select $0.00 to $0.00. This will display a long list of ALL currently free Kindle books in that genre. Note that there are thousands of Free Kindle Books in the most popular genres, so you will have to scroll through page after page. However, the books are listed in order of newest publications, and by average customer review. So, while not as easy to access as some of the other methods to find Free Kindle Books, it’s the most direct way to access ALL the currently available Free Kindle Books of any genre.

Most of the people here seem to answer “yes” to the question above. But then there's the perceived pressure to sign up for KU. Even with the latest Kindles, the home screen now shows an ad for KU. The stores are full of KU-related banners. Even when you are viewing your own library, KU books that you have “borrowed” are intermixed with your own. Non-tech-savvy readers may feel that the Kindle store is a subscription-first business, requiring them to sign up for KU in order to use their Kindle. This would be an unfortunate misperception, and one that is sure to annoy many readers. To be able to feel in control of your own content, you have to manage your view of your books to deliberately avoid seeing ads for KU.