User:Jeepday/Ebook

From Wiki to Kindle for free in a bunch of steps & a USB cable.


 * 1) Export (download) the Wiki book as .odt (OpenDocument Text)
 * 2) Open the .odt with "wordpad"
 * 3) Save as .rtf (or .txt)
 * 4) Email the .rtf (or .txt) as an attachment to "name"@free.kindle.com
 * 5) (5 or 10 minutes pass)
 * 6) Receive email from amazon with .azw
 * 7) Log on to Amazon account
 * 8) Click link in Amazon email, and save file (.azw) to your computer
 * 9) Connect Kindle to Computer with USB cable
 * 10) Drag (.azw) file to Document folder on Kindle.

=Lessons learned=

Set up Kindle account
Log on to Kindle
 * 1) Your Account > Manage Your Kindle > Your Kindle Account > Personal Document Settings
 * 2) Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings See what your Kindle email "name" is, change it to something else or not
 * 3) Approved Personal Document E-mail List add the email account you will be using to send documents to be converted. If it is the same as your registered email, no problem it is there already.

Build and export your book
See Help:Books

Wikipedia export as
 * PDF
 * ODT
 * zim

Kindle likes

 * Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
 * Rich Text Format (.rtf)
 * HTML (.htm, .html)
 * Text (.txt) documents

ODT --> rtf = Seems like the best choice, Words with decent formatting on Kindle. Amazon converted .rtf to .azw

Not so much

 * PDF = A picture of the page in the kindle, not reader friendly for a Wikipedia article
 * PDF --> WORD = Not good
 * ODT or zim to --> WORD = failed (Microsoft error)

Large File
Wiki Book with 29 articles exports to odt. at about 23MB, convert to .rft at about 400MB, Email does not like to send it this big. So now convert the .rtf to .txt (excle 2003) which seems to be ok with Microsoft. Still a big file at about 95MB. (300+ pages) Go through and delete most pictures and most of the tables. Got the file down to 18MB, emails ok. Amazon sends it back as azw 1MB.