The Kindle question, and why it stopped being a reason not to sell direct

Someone on your newsletter clicks through to buy the book. They have the card out. Then a thought arrives — I read on my Kindle — and because they are not sure the file will get there, they decide to "get it on Amazon later," which means they get it never, or they get it and you keep half of it.

That thought is the single most common thing standing between a warm reader and a direct purchase. For years the answer to it was genuinely awkward. It is not awkward any more, and most guidance has not caught up.

What the answer used to be

Until 2022, getting a non-Amazon ebook onto a Kindle meant handling a format Amazon invented and only Amazon used. You sold an EPUB; the Kindle wanted a MOBI, and later an AZW. The reader had to install Calibre, convert the file, plug in a cable or wrestle with email, and hope the result was not visibly broken. Every step in that chain shed readers, and the ones it shed were the least technical — which is to say, most of them.

So the honest answer to "will this work on my Kindle" was "yes, but you will have to want it to." That is not an answer that closes a sale.

What the answer is now

Amazon's Send to Kindle accepts EPUB. Directly. You email the .epub to your @kindle.com address, or drop it into the Send to Kindle web page, or use the phone app's share sheet, and it arrives on the device reflowed and indexed like any store purchase. Amazon converts it on their end, to their own internal format, and the reader never sees that happen.

The MOBI era is over. Amazon stopped accepting MOBI for Send to Kindle at the same time it added EPUB, and the conversion tools that defined the old workflow are now solving a problem nobody has.

This means the file you already should be selling — a plain EPUB, no DRM — is the file that works. Nothing special, no "Kindle version," no second upload.

The three routes, in the order readers actually use them

1. The button on the download page. If your shop delivers to a permanent page rather than an email attachment, that page can carry a send-to-Kindle control that hands the file straight to Amazon. One tap. This is the route that converts, because it removes the part where the reader has to know their own @kindle.com address.
2. The Send to Kindle app or web page. The reader saves your EPUB, opens Amazon's Send to Kindle page, drops the file in, done. Works from a laptop.
3. Email. The reader forwards your delivery email, or the EPUB itself, to their personal Kindle address. Oldest method, still fine, still the one support articles lead with.

All three end in the same place. The difference is how many readers make it to the end, and that is entirely a function of how few decisions you left them.

The one thing that breaks it

DRM. An EPUB wrapped in Adobe's DRM, or a store's, will not go through Send to Kindle — Amazon will not convert a file it cannot open, and neither can the reader.

This is the part a direct sale gets right almost by accident. On a retailer you take whatever wrapper the store applies. On your own shop the file is what you say it is, and the correct thing to say is: DRM-free, watermarked per buyer. Watermarking writes the purchaser's name and a licence code into the file and locks nothing, so it travels to a Kindle, a Kobo, Apple Books, or a phone without a single prompt. That is the whole trade — the honest reader carries the book wherever they read, and a leaked copy still points back to one purchase.

The verdict: the reason to sell an EPUB with no DRM is not principle. It is that the DRM-free file is the one that reaches the device your buyer actually reads on, and the wrapped one is the one that makes them give up and buy it somewhere you keep less.

"But I want it in the Kindle store"

Then put it there. Selling direct is not an exit from Amazon unless you signed an exclusivity deal — KDP Select is the usual one — and outside that, nothing stops a book being on KDP, Kobo, Apple, and your own shop on the same afternoon. The direct channel is the one where a reader who came from your link buys at your margin; the retail channel is the one where a stranger types the title into a search box. They are not in competition. They are different readers.

What each channel is actually worth to you, per copy, dated and sourced, is in what every ebook platform keeps, per sale, and the take-rate calculator runs it on your own price and volume.

What this looks like assembled

A reader clicks your link, pays with an email address and a card, and lands on a permanent page: the EPUB to download, an in-browser reader for the ones who do not want to think about files at all, and a send-to-Kindle button for the ones who do read on a Kindle and now have no reason to hesitate. The same page is still there in two years when they open a new device — see how buying works for what that side looks like.

The four decisions this one sits inside — where the money lands, what the reader gets, the checkout, and the recovery page — are in how to sell ebooks from your own website.

Open a shop — DRM-free EPUB, a send-to-Kindle button on every download page, and no exclusivity in either direction.