It looks like after 15 years, Amazon will finally introduce support for the ePub e-book format in its Kindle reader. This format is used by the vast majority of online bookstores, publishers and their main competitors. The bad news is that the support will not be native, but conversion.

Huawei MatePad paper half
tablet and half e-book

As per update from Amazon documentation related to the Send to Kindle app, from the end of 2022 it will support sending files in ePub format, which will then be converted to the format used by Amazon. While this may be a disappointment to anyone hoping for built-in support for ePub files, there’s always the possibility that Amazon will change its mind in the future.

Reproduction / Fabio Roselin

Since its launch in 2007, the ePub format has been quickly adopted by several companies as the best choice for e-books because it is based on the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) technical standards. Amazon chose to go the other way and adopted other formats such as Mobi, originally developed by the French company Mobipocket, and AZW. Because of this, Kindle readers wishing to read ePub books on their devices have first had to convert them to an Amazon-supported format using software like Caliber, but not everyone is willing to take the time to do so.

Reproduction / Amazon

With support for sending ePub files using the Send to Kindle app, they will be converted to KF8 format, which is only supported by the Amazon reader. The process seems a bit more intuitive compared to converting with the Caliber software, it would be much better if Kindle readers natively supported the ePub format.

For those who don’t want to spend time converting files, there are other native ePub readers on the market, such as the Pocketbook and the Kobo range, for example.

…..

Source: Amazon, The Verge, Good E-Reader.