moving any file into your Kindle or other device

People have asked if Seeking North can be gotten onto a Kindle.

Just treat your Kindle or other device as a flash drive: first download a file (swipe it to your notepad), then convert it via your word processor to pdf, then use the USB cord to transfer the pdf, as I understand it, to your Kindle…but if you have any trouble, ask Jane: she does it routinely. Certain readers, like the Nook, have their own protocols for this, and anyone knowing the Nook routine, please comment.

Any HTML file can be converted to .prc, which Kindle also reads; (it's the same as .mobi.) EPub is the format for the Nook and many European devices.

To do your own conversions, you need three programs resident on your computer: any wordprocessor; Calibre; and Mobipocket Creator: I have links to them in the left sidebar. The last two are shareware. They'd like a little donation, but don't demand it.

With Mobipocket Creator, you can convert any html file to .prc.

With Calibre you can convert any .prc (or any of a dozen formats) to any OTHER of a dozen formats. The native and preferred format of Calibre is ePub, but its converter reads any format commonly used in the industry, and converts it to any other in the list. There's a mild learning curve, but basically, if your conversion produces an artifact you don't like, get into the 'other' screens of Calibre and set a few toggles to prevent those happening. Notorious is the appearance of a few odd symbols in some of the less common formats. Setting the 'ascii' toggle in the set-up for the conversion, as I dimly remember, takes care of that. Ask: somebody, including us, has probably run into the problem.

If you have a really stubborn file, using your word processor to take it into html can help clean it up.