Download Free eBooks to the Amazon Fire 5

I just got a Kindle Fire (5th Gen) for Christmas – So far I like it a lot.   I wanted a cheap tablet to use as a web browser and book reader, with occasional email or video watching.  After seeing how easy it is to crack the screen on my Wife’s iPad mimi (and how expensive the screen is to replace) I opted for the Kindle Fire 5.

I was perfectly ready to accept being bombarded with advertisements on the Fire 5, as Amazon has heavily subsidized the $100+ manufacturing cost of the $34 sales price on my Kindle Fire 5, knowing that I will be a captive, revenue-generating member of the Amazon and Amazon Prime ecosystem if I frequently use the Fire 5.

What I was NOT ready for was how painful it is to download free eBooks from Feedbooks.com or Gutenberg.org.   There’s some nasty writeups on the Gutenberg webpage about the stinginess of the Amazon Fire- Gutenberg’s website all-out recommends you get a Nexus 7 Tablet as the alternative free e-book reader and stay away from the Kindle Fire 5.

Fortunately I figured out a free eBook download work-around that is not too annoying.

Note that this is NOT a full review of the Amazon Kindle 5 – I MAY post my notes on my Kindle Fire 5 if this post gets a lot of interest from readers.

I decided I wanted to read Joshua Slocums’ Sailing Alone Around the World, which I knew was free in the public domain.  Amazon wanted $9 in the Kindle Fire Store for this free book.  I don’t think so.

I did some searching and figured it out the easiest way to do this (without tethering to a computer) on my own.

So here’s the tutorial/workaround for Free E-Books on the Kindle Fire 5

Go to your App Store and download the free version of eLibrary Manager (the one in the upper left):

Then go to the Gutenberg.org website in your Silk Browser and search for free eBook titles you want.  In my case I did the search for ‘Slocum’.   Download the EPUB version of the book (NOT the Kindle version of the book!)

Now open the eLibrary Manager app in your Kindle Fire and search for the book in the ‘Downloads’ folder (this is where the Silk Browser stashes stuff).  In the top right corner there’s a thingy that looks like a barcode.  Click on the barcode and tell eLibrary app where to search for your downloaded book:

Click ‘Ok’ and now you’re reading your free eBook on the Kindle Fire 5!