How to read your tutorials on a Kindle

Instructions for SaveYourself.ca customers who prefer to read on a Kindle

Reading my tutorials on a Kindle is not ideal, but definitely possible. Bear in mind that the tutorials are actually built to take advantage of the universal accessibility of the internet, and thus they are at their best when viewed online, using a device that does a reasonably good job of displaying web pages: laptops and iPads are especially good, for instance. However, Kindles do work, and their portability and beautiful e-ink screens cannot be beat (especially in bright sunlight). Just bear in mind that some features of the tutorials, especially footnotes, will not be at their best.

Works on Kindle. With a little work…

Works on Kindle. With a little work…

Method 1: Simpler, but less good

The simplest thing to do is just to view my books in the Kindle web browser. This is very easy in principle: you’re just visiting a webpage. But the Kindle web browser just sucks. It’s really not built for scrolling, and there’s a lot of scrolling involved in reading one of my books. You can do it, but this is certainly not the best way to use a Kindle.

Access to my books depends on a customer code tacked onto the end of the web address, which looks like “?id=63402.” Normally you don’t have to think about that code. You don’t normally have to type the address or the code. But with the Kindle, you are going to have to type it to get to the tutorial, and that makes this kind of awkward. Here’s how:

Find the access link that I sent you by email after purchase. You will need to type that address into your Kindle exactly.
Go to SaveYourself.ca on your Kindle, and then find the ebook that you bought.
Select "Enter URL" at the top of the Web browser. (“URL” is an internet address.)
Use the keypad to enter the address and press submit. You know it’s worked if you see a big “SUBSCRIBED!” at the top of the document.

Kind of a pain, eh? Once you are there, it works fine. But it’s definitely a bit fussy to enter that addess!

Method 2: Harder to set up, but more gooder

Amazon has a service for getting just about any document onto your Kindle (or Kindle app on other iPhone, etc), and converting it into a more Kindle-friendly form. Basically you just send the book page to a special address, and it gets converted and automagically sent to your Kindle account. This only took me about ten minutes to figure out the first time I tried it, and of course it will be useful many times now that I know how to do it.

First you convert your book to PDF format. If you don’t know how to convert a webpage (the tutorial is a webpage) into a PDF file, then you are going to need to go learn how to do that first. I’ll wait right here.
Then, once you have a PDF file, it’s no big deal to get it converted to Kindle format and onto your Kindle. You can either

pay (literally just a few pennies per document) to have a document automatically wirelessly distributed to all your Kindle devices, or you can
do it yourself “manually” at no charge by sending the PDF file to yourKindleNameHere@free.kindle.com with the word “convert” in the subject line. Within minutes, Amazon will email you the converted document, which you can then easily put on your Kindle “manually” (plug it in via USB, drag and drop).

If any of that was mysterious to you, Amazon has very detailed instructions. If that link doesn’t work (such links have a habit of changing) just Google for site:amazon.com kindle personal documents.