Convert your books into Kindle’s format in just thousands of menial steps

4 Feb 2015

Amazon Kindle

Kindle Convert, a new piece of software that allows people to convert tangible books into digital copies, has just been launched and it’s laborious.

Available to US customers, the Windows program allows customers to manually scan every page of the book, highlight the text on every page, mark headings, subheadings and edit where needed.

Given that, at most, you can only ever scan spreads, and highlighting areas of text on every page will require endless hours of clickety click.

After all of that, Amazon, the company behind the Kindle e-book reader, will process the book onto your cloud space, letting you download it to any of your Kindle devices, with your book’s ‘look and feel’ maintained somehow.

E-books created using Kindle Convert are intended for personal use only and cannot be commercially distributed or sold, with the popularity of Kindle Convert surely in the domain of truly die hard fans.

Pretty much any scanner will do the job in terms of machine requirements, with 300-600dpi required in .jpeg, .pdf or .tiff formats. The cost of the program is US$19 at the moment (US$49 is the full price, but it’s discounted for now).

It’s quite the laborious task to complete and it really will only suit those with the time and willpower to follow though on a project right to the end, but in truth the results could look pretty cool to many book readers.

Inside Sleeve

The Kindle Convert software allows you to digitise your favourite books

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com