The new update also gives Android phone owners the ability to customize their margin and line spacing settings more conveniently. The app will work better on Android 4.0 devices too. It seems Amazon has fixed several bugs along the way.  The PDF feature is basic at best but a good start by Amazon.

The guys at Adobe are made, and they want Amazon to know they are. We all know the reasons behind Amazon not supporting PDF at this time. Amazon wants to protect its customer experience by exerting more control on what goes on its device. But Adobe has been pushing to get on the Kindle and the iPhone for quite some time now. Apple doesn’t seem too interested to work with Adobe. Amazon doesn’t have any plans to do so. Where does that leave Adobe? Not where it wants to be.

Adobe is working with Amazon’s competitors to bring PDF on competing devices. Not only that, the new Adobe Reader Mobile 9 makes it easy for mobile users to read PDF content on their smart phones. Adobe is not going to get into the hardware business. We won’t see a physical Adobe PDF Reader. But Adobe is targeting all kinds of mobile devices to put pressure on Amazon. There are a lot of folks who are using their iPhone to read e-books. Sony Reader and other e-book readers have their following and Adobe can still reach out to those folks. Kindle is going to be a bit tricky. Adobe and Amazon are both controlling. Adobe wants to dominate the world. Amazon wants to protect its investment. I am not sure these guys are ready to meet half way to get something done.

I am not sure Kindle needs PDF to grow. Amazon Kindle store is already the place to get content for Kindle. Jeff Bezoz’s vision (digitizing all books in the world) is very ambitious and the progress the company has made so far is promising. Having PDF and other formats can make things a bit easier for Kindle users but is not a deal breaker. Will Amazon and Adobe work together on Kindle 3.0 or Kindle 4.0? Nobody knows. But the pressure is more on Adobe.

Your thoughts: would you like to see support for PDF on Kindle? Is the lack of PDF support a deal breaker?

Are you still struggling with putting your favorite eBooks on your Amazon Kindle. Well, you are not alone. While Amazon has assured us Kindle fans that it will support pdf and other ebook formats in the future, there are many ebooks that simply can’t be converted to a format that Kindle can understand. In an earlier post I mentioned there is a way to fix/rebuild your pdf in a way that are understandable to Amazon Kindle. That has worked for me every time, but if you are not interested in doing that, then you can use a lifesaver service called Koolwire. Koolwire.com allows you to send your pdf documents to be converted to word documents (.doc), which is coincidentally Kindle compatible.

Koolwire works similar to Amazon Kindle’s PDF conversion system in some ways. All you have to is send an email to doc@koolwire.com, and it will be converted and returned to you as a word document. Then you can use a SD card or your USB cable to put the file on your Amazon Kindle. Life with Amazon Kindle just got a little bit sweeter with this super cool online service.

I remember a few months ago, in the pre-Kindle era, people were complaining about the fact that Amazon uses a proprietary eBook format on the Kindle device. What people didn’t know then was that there would be indeed a way to convert PDF document to a format compatible with the Amazon Kindle. So basically there are two ways to go about this:

Simple Way: The most simple way to convert a PDF document to .AZW format is by emailing your PDF documents to your Kindle email address. If you go to manage your Kindle section on Amazon, you can see the e-mail that is authorized by you to receive document for your Kindle. Let’s say it’s paul@kindle.com. If you send a blank email you that email with your eBook as an attachment, it will be converted to the right format and will be sent to your Kindle automatically (don’t forget to turn your wireless on!). Amazon will charge you .10 for every wireless delivery but that’s not too much really. Also, you can follow the same process and use paul@free.kindle.com. That way, you will receive an email back from Amazon with your converted book as an attachment. This time though you won’t be charged, but you will have to put the book on your Kindle yourself.

Not So Simple Way: If you have done the above process before, you probably have seen eBooks that Amazon system fails to convert. You will usually get a message that says amazon system is unable to convert your file and try other file formats next time. Well, there is a way around this problem. The first way is to print the whole eBook to Adobe PDF. In other words, if you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, then you can choose File | Print and choose Adobe PDF as your printer. By printing your eBook to PDF you can fix any potential structural issues that your original file may have.

But if you think all eBooks can be fixed this way, you are obviously a wishful thinker. There are some eBooks that won’t be convertible even after you go through this process. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this post if I didn’t know how to fix those eBooks as well, now would I? This method is what I like to call a Ninja’s way to fixing bad eBooks for Kindle. So here is the deal. Almost all eBooks come with a front page image or what you would call a book cover. The trick I have found that has worked for me every time is to get rid of the book cover. You can do so by printing the file to PDF and choose from page 2. Also, I always get rid of the index at the end of the book the same way. This trick has worked for me on every single eBook that I own. But I am open to tackle eBooks that do not get converted using this method as soon as I found one that is.