Kindle Fire--problems adding non-Amazon books

[curtw]

I've just spent the last two hours trying to load a book onto my daughter's Fire, and I ended up *way* beyond frustrated. I'm hoping that some wise soul here can enlighten me as to what I'm doing wrong, so I can make it go more quickly next time.

The book I was working with is the Mobi version of Anne of Avonlea, from the Library here (thanks, crutledge!).

First, I tried e-mailing the book to her @kindle.com address. No book in either the Books or Documents area. Then I attached the Kindle to our PC via USB, and tried sideloading into the "Books" directory. Still nothing. Then, I visited MobileRead in the browser, and tried a direct download. Still no book (swiping down on the screen said download was successful, but tapping on the title gave me a response that Kindle doesn't have an app to handle .prc files). Throughout all of this, following advice I saw on one site about sideloading, I was shutting down and restarting several times. I also hit the "sync" icon after every attempt.

Then I went back and tried all three methods again, and again with power cycles and "sync."

Eventually, ONE copy of the book showed up, in the Documents area of the Fire. I have no idea which of the six attempts was the successful one.

What in the world did I do wrong, and how can I avoid this pain in the future? (and if the answer is to sideload using Calibre, I will probably kill myself, because that's about the only thing I did not try).

Thanks,

Curt

[Blossom]

You didn't do nothing wrong.

Sideloading books is easy as you mentioned. I always send mine by uploading then through the Send to Kindle app which is the same as emailing the book. I also sideload by using Dropbox to download the book then putting the book in the Documents or Books folder and restart the Fire for them to show up.
USB transfer shouldn't need a restart for a book to show up.

Just saw it's a prc file. Rename it to mobi and see if that fixes it. If it does this on mobi extension books then do the factory reset otherwise it's that the Kindle Fire doesn't know what to do with a PRC book.

[curtw]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Just saw it's a prc file. Rename it to mobi and see if that fixes it.

Doh. That should have occurred to me.