Amazon Kindle E-Readers Will Now Make It Easier to Load EBooks You Didn't Buy From Amazon

In a potential blow to all the apps and websites that have popped up alongside the Amazon Kindle to streamline the process of converting EPUB ebook files to the e-reader's propriety file format, starting in "late 2022," the Kindle Personal Documents Service will finally support EPUB files, expanding where users can source their content. From a report: The Amazon Kindle's original AZW ebook file format was based on the MOBI format created for an e-reader app called Mobipocket, which was first released back in 2000 for a wide variety of PDAs and older mobile devices. Over the years it has evolved into the KF8/AZW3 format, and now the KFX format, which are all proprietary to the Kindle. For those who solely rely on Kindle e-readers and apps and only buy ebooks from Amazon, a proprietary file format isn't an issue, particularly when Amazon offers one of the largest selections of ebooks currently available, and a streamlined way to get the files onto its devices. But there are countless e-readers available on the market that offer better features than the Kindle does, including color E Ink screens, and all of them instead support the EPUB ebook file format (among others), which is the most popular format in the world. It's also a format that Amazon, to date, has refused to support. This has typically meant that someone looking to buy an ebook reader has had to either fully commit to the Amazon Kindle ecosystem, or choose one of the many alternatives and stick with their choice, because ebook files they'd purchased or downloaded weren't cross-compatible.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.