I put the kindle app on my nexus 7, and the books I bought from Amazon are all there but there are others that I want to bring across that are on my PC. I tried to copy one to the download file on the nexus which I can see on the PC when the nexus is connected to the PC but when I disconnect and open up the kindle app and look for the book I can’t find it. Can somebody tell me where I have done wrong?

Off the top of my head, are you looking at ‘All’ or ‘on device’ on your Nexus? Should show up on ‘all’ (refresh/sync to be sure) surely, and then download to device by clicking on the pin icon thing. Otherwise, I’m stumped.

EDIT: This is presuming you’re connected to a wifi network at the time.
EDIT2: Didn’t realise you were talking about non-amazon ebooks. Surely there’s another app for them?

Nothing, kindle app only looks at your kindle account. Haven’t gone looking yet but there might be an app that reads e-book format files natively. TBH i carry my nexus for everything else but still use the kindle for e-books.

They need to be .mobi format (or .pdf) for the Kindle app to understand them. If they need converting, Calibre is your badger.

You can also email some file types to an email address associated with your kindle account. Something like username@Kindle.com, you have to authorise the address you are sending from in your Amazon account. I use it to get pdf files onto my kindle.

Thanks guys. These are books which work on my kindle OK but which were not purchased from Amazon. I am hoping not to have to carry the kindle and nexus on holiday. The kindle screen is much better for reading in sunlight but it would be a pain to take both devices on holiday. Still , less of a pain than it used to be taking 20 books in the suitcase.

Should just work, then. Copy the files to the /kindle folder and the app should pick them up.

Have you tried switching it off and back on again?

Another possibility: if you install a file browser (OI File Manager or whatever) and click on the mobi files do they open?

There is a hidden “kindle” folder on the nexus, the books need to be put in there, I can’t remember off the top of my head where it is though & my nexus is at home.

Think I will give it another go again tonight and switch off and on.

Mogrim, sorry I am a simpleton with IT stuff so I don’t actually understand your suggestion.

Another option in case you can’t find the kindle folder:

If you can navigate to the file on your nexus, select the file and then use the “share” or “send” option there should be a “send to kindle” button. Do that and providing you are on a wi-fi network it should appear in your kindle library.

This is what I have done using ES file explorer (free on the Android store, it is essentially windows explorer for Android and allows you to rummage around through all of your files on the device). It is essentially the same as the email option but done through the app rather than you having to do it all yourself.

Mogrim, sorry I am a simpleton with IT stuff so I don’t actually understand your suggestion

My fault, as a fully paid up IT worker I’m not always as clear as I could be 🙂

Basically you can install apps which allow you to check out and open the files on your device, the same way you do on a normal computer (on Windows, for example: open My Documents folder, then double click on a Word document to open it.)

You would copy the books over from your computer to a folder on the Nexus, then using the app you would “click” (touch with your finger) the file – at which point the Kindle app should automatically open it. (Or if not Kindle, Google Books or whatever).

Just playing with this myself, and I see your problem.

There’s no “kindle” folder that I can see, but also I can’t create one; it’s as though there’s something there named “kindle” that’s hidden. Very odd.

Ah, wait a minute.

After I’ve run the Kindle app and synced it, a “kindle” folder has appeared in the root of user-level storage (so that’s in /sdcard/ alongside folders like DCIM and Ringtones). Bizarrely though, it doesn’t appear in an Explorer window if I plug the tablet into the PC; all the other folders show up apart from that one.

So, what I’d suggest doing perhaps is pulling files from the PC rather than pushing to the tablet. Ie,

Get ES File Manager.

Browse to your PC under Network / LAN. Copy the books.

Go to the kindle directory, paste.

that’s more or less what I did, I just created a new folder on the nexus, “temp” or something similar, then copied books to that, then used es file manager to drag them into the correct folder on the nexus

Slight left field suggestion ,use another e-book app.

The Kobo and Fabrik e-reader apps both allow you to sync your books via dropbox.

Put all your ebooks in a dropbox folder on your pc,
fire up one of the above e-reader apps on your Nexus and then navigate/sync to the relevant dropbox folder job done.

I use the above and never have to connect my Nexus to the PC/Laptop to receive new books you will obviously need dropbox on both you PC and Nexus but all the apps are free so no harm in trying it out.

Plus 1 for dropbox. Even had some success on my daughter’s iPad using this method!