Enjoying the Best of E-Books: How to Read AZW4 Format on Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage

Read AZW4 on Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage

Posted by Ada Wang on 12/6/2018 9:44:13 AM.

5 (4 comments)

As we know, Kindle eBooks are usually in Amazon unique format, such as AZW, Mobi, AZW3, AZW4, etc. We can read our downloaded AZW, Mobi or AZW3 files on Kindle devices(Kindle e-Ink readers and Kindle tablets) and Kindle app. But we are not allowed to view AZW4 files via Kindle e-Ink readers. So cannot we read AZW4 on Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Voyage? I guess as a KPW or KV user, you may less or more has this doubt. But don’t worry, though we cannot read AZW4 on KPW or KV directly, we still can find the way to solve this problem and make Kindle Paperwhite support AZW4.

What’s an AZW4 file?

AZW4 is an Amazon proprietary format for textbooks. Amazon also calls this format “Print Replica”, which are always Kindle DRM protected. Compared with Mobi, AZW or AZW3 files, it’s not common Kindle format. So far it’s only supported by Kindle for PC/Mac, Kindle tablet such as Kindle Fire and Kindle for iPad/Android. Actually, we can say it’s PDF file essentially. Owing to Kindle’s small screen, reading AZW4 files on Kindle e-Ink devices, we cannot get a good reading experience. So this may be one of the reasons that Kindle e-Ink readers don’t support AZW4 format.

But if we really need to read AZW4 books on Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage, there is also a way to help us deal with the issue. We can remove DRM from AZW4 files, convert them to PDF format, then transfer converted Kindle books to our KPW or KV and read AZW4 on Kindle Voyage. Next part, I will tell you how to for details.

How to read AZW4 on Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage

Remove DRM from Kindle AZW4 books

As I have mentioned above, downloaded AZW4 books are always DRMed, in order to convert AZW4 to PDF, the first thing we need to do is removing DRM from AZW4 files. So a professional DRM removal tool is needed. Here I prefer a Kindle DRM removal–Epubor Ultimate program and want to share it with you. You may ask me why not removing Kindle DRM via Calibre. In fact, compared with Calibre, based on its friendly and clean interface, I feel this software is easier to use. What’s more, the processing speed is very fast, we can decrypt Kindle books within a few seconds. This is exactly the reason I like it. You can download it for free trial. Now let’s start removing Kindle DRM with it.

Download the tool for free:

Step1: Sync AZW4 books via Kindle for PC/Mac

Download Kindle for PC/Mac and install it on your computer, enter your Amazon account to register it. Then please double-click the cover of AZW4 file and download it. This is very important, which can help the tool find the key to decrypt Kindle books.

Step2: Remove DRM from AZW4 files

Launch the software, then you will find all your Kindle books will show up under “Kindle” icon, just drag books from the left side to the main interface of this program, then all the AZW4 files will be removed DRM soon. You can see the “Decrypted” status on the right side. For detailed information, please refer to the guide easily remove Kindle DRM with Kindle DRM removal .

When the azw4 file has been decrypted, it will be in PDF format because it is actually the PDF which bas been added the DRM by Amazon.

Convert AZW4 to PDF with Calibre

After we have removed Kindle DRM successfully, now we can start converting decrypted AZW4 to PDF, then read AZW4 books on Kindle Paperwhite. As AZW4 is a PDF format in a PDB wrapper, many eBook converters can not guarantee the quality of conversion. Here I suggest you convert AZW4 to PDF with Calibre for better conversion result.

To get a perfect PDF, we need a Calibre plugin–Kindle unpack to help us. Now let’s get this plugin ready.

Launch Calibre , then click drop-down list of “Preference”, choose “Get plugins to enhance calibre”.

Then a window below will appear, please input “unpack” in the search box to find the plugin called “KindleUnpack—The Plugin”. Then click “Install” to install it to Calibre.

After the installation has been finished, we should restart Calibre, then we can see “KindleUnpack” button in Calibre top navigation bar.

Now that we have got Calibre and KindleUnpack plugin prepared, we can start converting AZW4 to PDF. It’s easy. Just drag your AZW4 files to Calibre, click “KindleUnpack” button, choose AZW4—>Extract PDF, then your added AZW4 files will be converted PDF perfectly. We can see “PDF” appearing in “Formats” besides “AZW4” under the book cover on the right side, tap “click to open” to open the folder that saves converted PDF files and to check them.

Have converted AZW4 to perfect PDF successfully, now what we have to do is just to transfer converted Kindle books to our KPW or KV, then read AZW4 on Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage. You can read the guide transfer Mobi and PDF books to Kindle for details.

That’s all I want to share with you. Don’t forget to remove DRM from Kindle AZW4 files first, or you cannot convert them to PDF successfully.

Start my free trial Now

Read your AZW4 files freely on KPW and KV


Ada Wang works for Epubor and writes articles for a collection of blogs such as ebookconverter.blogspot.com.

SHARING IS GREAT!

Tweet

SAVE PAGE AS PDF

4 Comments

reply

reply

Reda Rafi

Re:Read AZW4 on Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage

08/24/2020 23:16:12

When I use the Epubor Ultimate to convert kindle book in azw4 format to epub format, I got 2 files as a result, the first in epub format, which I prefer and use all the time, and the second file is in pdf format; my problem isthat both files are with the original cover, did I do something wrong or with the azw4 we have to accept a conversion of any azw4 book without a cover? That wasn’t what Epubor Ultimate did in the past in converting azw3 books!

Please advise, thank you,
Reda.

reply

Epubor

Re:Reda Rafi

08/25/2020 09:16:27

Does you mean both converted epub and pdf files are without cover?
Please note the AZW4 format actually is the pdf file. So when you convert it, you will get the pdf as well as the epub files.
For the cover issue, please let us know does them have or have not have the cover.

reply

Reda Rafi

Re:Read AZW4 on Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage

08/25/2020 01:20:01

A correction to my previous comment, which should read like this:
When I used the Epubor Ultimate to convert a kindle book in azw4 format to epub format, I got 2 files as a result, the first in epub format, which I prefer and use all the time, and the second file is in pdf format; my problem is that both resulting files are without the original cover image, did I do something wrong or do we have to accept a conversion of any azw4 book to an equivalent epub but without the original cover image? That wasn’t what Epubor Ultimate did in the past when converting azw3 books!
Please advise, thank you,
Reda.

reply

Epubor

Re:Reda Rafi

08/25/2020 09:17:48

Thank you for follow-up. The cover issue, since all the pdf books are without cover, this is decided by the publisher and amazon. That’s why they are missing cover.

reply

Leave a comment

| Rating | |
| —— | |