You can build the shop, price the book sensibly and write a decent sales page, and still lose the sale at the last click, because the reader is holding a Kindle and cannot picture how a file from your website gets onto it. Amazon has trained a generation of readers to expect a book to appear on the device by itself. Anything else feels like homework.
The fix is unglamorous. Answer the question on the page, before the buy button, in language a reader can follow while standing in a kitchen. Here is what is true in 2025, and then the wording you can lift.
What you are actually selling
For direct sales you sell an EPUB. Amazon's Send to Kindle service accepts EPUB alongside PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTML and image files, and it converts the EPUB to its own format on the way in, so the reader gets reflowable text with adjustable fonts rather than a fixed page. MOBI is done: Amazon stopped accepting it for Send to Kindle in 2022, so there is no reason to build one, and offering it now mainly confuses people.
There are three routes in, and all of them land the file in the reader's Kindle library, where it syncs to their devices and apps.
- The web uploader at sendtokindle.amazon.com, which works in a phone browser as well as on a laptop. Drag the file in, pick a device, send.
- The Send to Kindle desktop app for Windows and Mac.
- Email, to the reader's own @kindle.com address. Amazon's limits here are worth knowing: up to 25 attachments per email, 50 MB total, and up to 15 approved sending addresses per account.
The approved-sender list, and why it matters to you
Amazon only accepts emailed documents from addresses on the reader's Approved Personal Document Email List, found under Manage Your Content and Devices, then Preferences, then Personal Document Settings. That rule exists to stop spam, and it is the single biggest reason authors who email files by hand end up doing tech support. If you send the attachment from your own address, every single buyer has to add you to their list first, and the ones who do not will simply never receive anything and will assume you took their money.
Point readers at the web uploader as the default instead. It uses the account they are already signed into, so there is no list to edit.
The wording to paste on your thank-you page
Put this on the page they hit after paying, and in the receipt email as well, because people close tabs.
- Download the EPUB file to your phone or computer.
- Kindle, quickest route: go to sendtokindle.amazon.com, sign in with the same Amazon account your Kindle uses, drop the EPUB in and choose your device. It usually appears within a few minutes.
- Kindle by email: find your Send to Kindle address in Manage Your Content and Devices under Personal Document Settings, add the address you are sending from to your Approved Personal Document Email List, then email the file to yourself as an attachment.
- Kobo: plug it into a computer with a USB cable and copy the EPUB into the Kobo drive, or use the Dropbox or Google Drive option in the Kobo app if your model has it.
- iPhone, iPad or Mac: open the downloaded file and choose Apple Books.
- Android: upload the EPUB to Google Play Books, or open it in a reading app such as Moon+ Reader or Lithium.
- Nothing arrived? Check the device is on wifi, and check the sending address is on your approved list.
Older Kindles
Send to Kindle handles the conversion at Amazon's end, so a Kindle that still receives firmware updates and syncs with the library will cope with an EPUB fine. Genuinely old hardware that no longer updates is the awkward case, and there are two honest answers: read it in the free Kindle app on a phone or tablet, or convert the EPUB to AZW3 with Calibre and copy it over by USB. Do not tell readers to drag a raw EPUB onto a Kindle over USB, because Kindles do not read EPUB natively and the file will not show up.
Why a delivery app usually wins
You can email files yourself. Most authors who try it stop, because attachments get spam-filtered, the approved-sender rule bites, and every failure lands in your inbox at eleven at night from someone who is not sure which Amazon account their Kindle uses. A delivery service such as BookFunnel or StoryOrigin gives the reader one link, detects their device, walks them through it and answers the support email itself. That is the part you are buying, more than the hosting.
The trade-off is another subscription on top of your store, your list and your website. That is the stack the •BulletPoint Toolchest replaces with one flat monthly fee: direct ebook sales, delivery, mailing list, ARC distribution and author site in one place. Have a look at what is in the Toolchest.