Amazon is probably the largest source of legal e-books in the world, whether it’s through the various Kindle apps you can find on your mobile device or even your computer, or through the Kindle e-book reader. We’ve used both the Kindle Paperwhite and the new Kindle 7th generation, and love using Amazon’s ebook readers, but storing all your books on a single device or in the cloud isn’t ideal. Luckily, if you want to back up the books you legally purchased for your Kindle, it’s easy. This might be useful, for example, if you accidentally deleted a book while on vacation without internet access. If you have a backup of your books on your laptop, such issues are not a problem at all.
So it’s very useful to make this backup, and it won’t take more than five minutes to do it. Here’s how:
If you have a Kindle e-book reader, please follow the steps below.
-
Connect your Kindle to your computer via USB cable. The device will appear as an external drive.
-
Go to my computer Then open the drive as you would any pen drive connected to your computer.
-
All of your eBooks will be in folders labeled document.
-
Copy this folder to your computer.
-
If you accidentally delete a book from your Kindle, you can always paste the backed up content document Folder returned to Kindle.
If you don’t use an e-book reader but still want to make backups, you’ll need Internet access to view your books stored in the cloud. You can read these books on any device—your phone, computer, or even an e-reader; all the books you buy through Amazon are available over the Internet.
Please follow the steps below to back up your e-book:
-
Download the Kindle app for Windows or Mac.
-
Open the app and log in with your Amazon account.
-
You will see all the books listed in the app. right click any book and click download. This will download the book to your computer so you can read it offline.
-
To make a backup, you simply copy the folder where Amazon saves the book.
On Windows 8, you can find these books at: C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\application\content. Windows XP, Vista and 7 require access C:\Users\your username\Documents\My Kindle Contents. On Mac, you can find the book at: ~/Documents/My Kindle Contents.
-
Copy the e-book from these locations to another location on your computer.
By taking these simple steps, you can back up all your books, whether they’re from your Kindle e-reader or you’re using one of the Kindle apps. You can read these books on your computer now using the Amazon app, but what if you want to send those files to your phone or tablet after they’re backed up? While Amazon’s Windows app lets you read Kindle ebooks offline, Caliber is a good choice. Using Caliber is easy, just follow these steps:
-
Install Caliber, then connect your e-reader or mobile device to your computer using a USB cable.
-
At the top of the screen, you’ll see an icon showing stacks of books – this is your Caliber library. Next, you’ll see a small picture of your mobile device or e-reader. To transfer books from your computer to another device, select the books you want to transfer and click send button in the top bar.
-
To back up books from your device to your computer, click on your device’s icon and find the book you want. Select the books you want to transfer and click save to disk button in the top bar.
Caliber lets you read, back up, and manage books on your device, and it can convert books in different formats if your old device can’t read the e-book format. Alternatively, you can download PDF files from free sources like Gutenberg and convert them to epub or mobi files for your e-reader. It can even help fill in incomplete metadata you may see on older files you purchased. We recommend installing Caliber on your computer as it can read almost all e-book formats, making it ideal for people who purchase e-books from multiple sources.
For more tutorials, head to our how-to section.