Amazon has revealed huge changes to its Send to Kindle feature, a process that lets you email documents to your trusty e-reader. While these new changes make PDFs much nicer, they also restrict those who like to pirate ebooks.
Revealed in an email to Kindle users, the Send to Kindle feature will no longer support a number of file formats. The affected file formats are those that are typically used for pirating ebooks, comic books and more. (I mean, they might be used for that, who knows?)
The Send to Kindle service will no longer support AZW files, Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format that stores bookmarks, last position read and more. Furthermore, the service will no longer PRC files, a format for 3D data in a PDF file.
Finally, the Send to Kindle feature will no longer support MOBI files, one of the most popular formats for ebooks. This format is typically used by ebook pirates for downloading the latest novels. However, there are alternatives that are still supported.
At the time of writing, the Send to Kindle feature will still support EPUB, HTM, HTML, TXT,RTF, DOC, DOCX and PDF files. Furthermore, these files will benefit from multiple additional features that have been absent from prior versions of the e-reader’s operating system.
While three whole file formats will no longer be supported, PDF support is finally getting years-requested improvements. No longer will PDFs be weirdly converted into bad books, but they’ll be actually readable on a kindle device.
Kindle users will now be able to adjust their PDF layout, adding page flip, removing it and being able to make the documents more usable on Amazon’s e-reader.
The removal of three file formats, well, mostly MOBI, is a shame to see on Kindle devices. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem that those who like to acquire documents on their e-readers are that badly affected. Yet.