Seamless Reading Experience: Downloading & Viewing Kindle eBooks on Windows 8 Systems

How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

Posted by Ada Wang on 6/21/2019 11:27:21 AM.

More and more people have moved to the camp of Windows 8 nowadays partly due to its chic combination of traditional PC interface and Touchscreen-oriented tile style. It was reported recently that Microsoft would stop support for Windows XP in 2014, which might push more people to Windows 8 OS. As to eBook reading, what should we do when we want to read Amazon Kindle books on Windows 8? This is what will be discussed in this article.

Note: If you are using any other Windows system, here are three methods to read Kindle books on PC .

Read Kindle books on Windows 8

To read Kindle eBooks on Windows 8, you need to first install corresponding Kindle for Windows 8 app on your device, which works on Windows 8 PCs, Windows 8 Surface Pro / RT, other Windows 8-based tablets and Windows Phone 8 (with Kindle for Windows Phone 8 app). Then register the Kindle app with your Amazon account and you are able to read Kindle books on Windows 8 as with other Kindle reading apps.

Step 1: Click the “Store” icon (shopping bag) on the Windows 8 Start screen to enter Windows 8 app store.

If you can’t find the “store” icon on the Start screen, right-click to select “All Apps”. Right-click “Store” and select “Pin” to make the Store show on the Start screen.

Step 2: Search for “Kindle” on Windows 8 app store, select Amazon Kindle app and click download.

Make sure there is a Microsoft (Windows) Live account associated with your Win 8 computer, then you can easily download and install free Kindle for Windows 8 app on it (with Internet connection).

Create a Microsoft Live account

Step 3: The first time you launch Kindle for Windows 8 app, you will be required to sign in with your Amazon account. Once the registration is done, all Kindle books under your account will be synced in seconds. You can also right-click and select synchronize to sync your books if there is any delay.

To transfer your personal Kindle MOBI books to Surface Pro or other Win 8 device, you can use Microsoft SkyDrive to do the upload & download.

Kindle for Windows 8 app enables readers to pin favorite Kindle books to the Start screen, customize the reading interface including background color, font size, reading columns and the like, use web-based Dictionary and sync books, reading progress, bookmarks, notes, highlights across multi platforms (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Blackberry).

Follow above steps when you want to read Kindle books on Windows 8 (Pro) PC, Surface RT / Pro as well as other tablets running Windows 8 RT OS.

Besides Kindle books, you can follow this guide to read eBooks on Windows 8 / Surface RT / Pro.

Read Kindle books on Windows 8 mobile

To read Kindle books on Windows Phone 8 such as Nokia Lumia 920, simply tap “Marketplace” icon on the phone, search for “Kindle” and follow the instructions to install. The latest version of Kindle for Windows Phone 8 app is 2.0.0.2, which comes with a resizable live tile and additional formatting options.

Troubleshooting: Can’t install kindle app on windows 8

#1 Provided you have no access to Microsoft app store and can’t install Kindle for Windows 8 app, you can also read Kindle books on your Win 8 device by installing Kindle for PC app from Amazon’s official site . Press “Windows” key on the keyboard (next to “Alt” key) to go back to desktop if necessary.

#2 Can’t find Kindle content files under kindle device folder on win 8

![author](https://www.epubor.com/images/uppic/1-22-2013 12-03-06 AM.png)

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

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12 Comments

Steve Paynter

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

12/6/2013 10:16:06

Your article doesn’t address how to use kindle on the PC not in the Metro mode.

Nor how to download a PC kindle when using one’s laptop on a local account (not a Microsoft account). It doesn’t seem to be merely a question of logging into one’s Microsoft account, but one has to convert one’s laptop account to a Microsoft account … which many of us are not happy doing. Even if we do … does kindle still work if we convert back to a local account.

Moses

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

08/3/2014 18:14:57

How do you remove books from your kindle app once finished?

tom v.

Re:Moses

09/7/2014 20:45:01

look at your amazon account find the listing of all your books on kindle and remove them here

peter

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

12/22/2014 16:39:11

kindle on win 8 doesnt let you go back home once you get to the end of the book . you are stuck there with no way to load a new book

Anne

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

01/4/2015 02:16:45

Where do I find functions for Kindle on my Surface 2.i can’t see hot to highlight or rake notes on passages.

Anne

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

01/4/2015 02:29:05

How do I highlight and take notes when reading Kindle on my surface?

calvinm

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

02/26/2015 18:35:25

This doesn’t tell me how to get in and out of the reader. I am a reading a book and I want to get out of it and start reading another. Opening the Kindle app just takes me back to the book. Help.

Bruce

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

03/13/2015 13:52:47

I use the Kindle app on my Microsoft Surface 3. I’d like to change the default dictionary to German-English (tap on a word in German and bring up the English translation). Is there a way to do this? I’m trying to read German novels.
Thank you!

Gary

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

12/30/2015 15:16:30

The Kindle for Win8 app is a crippled app.

#1 It does not support collections. So all you have is a single pool of books, with no way to organize them. You only have by title or by author. There is no way to organize by subject, which is what the collections could do. This is fine if you only have a few books on your device. But once you get over a few dozen books, or even trying to look at the hundreds or thousands of books in your cloud, for get it, again, one single large pool with no way to sift through it by subject/collection. It is the old library card catalog but with only an author and title sort, no subject sort.

#2 The Kindle for Win8 will periodically “call home to Amazon” requiring you to log into your Amazon account. The problem with this is, Amazon neglected to understand that many of us use the Win8 app on a tablet. And said tablet does not always have internet access, sometimes for days. What that means is, when the app decides it wants to “call home to Amazon” and you have no internet access, the program will terminate. At that point, the app is dead, and you CANNOT read your downloaded books. I don’t know why the app wants to call home to Amazon, but the failure mode, when it cannot access the internet is unacceptable. You already downloaded the books, yet you now cannot access and read those books, until such time as you can get an internet connection to log in to Amazon. To understand how hard this problem impacts the user, imagine going on a trip where you don’t have public wifi access for days, and the app decides to do it’s “call home” on day 1.

Michelle

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

01/1/2017 09:52:39

I have the kindle app downloaded to my surface 2 but every time I try to sign into my amazon account as message comes up saying “there is a problem with your email/password combination” try again. I logged into my amazon acct. Via yahoo to confirm the correct information and had no problem logging in so I know the information is correct. Please help

Kevin Burkhardt

Re:Michelle

03/5/2017 15:07:19

I am having the same issue… I did have Kindle on my Surface Pro Windows rt8.1 tablet until I had to do a reset - I was able to download the app but couldn’t sign in - when I did some searching I found an article somewhere that said that Amazon wasn’t going to support this type of app. So when I tried to do the typical download to windows as it suggested, the Tablet is telling me that I have to get the app from the Store - but the app isn’t in the store now.
If you get an answer, let me know too - this is frustrating!!

lauriemac

Re:How to Read Kindle Books on Windows 8

03/13/2017 05:32:09

Amazon doesn’t support anything on Surface RT/2. The new app only works on PC’s, so all the books I have on my kindle can only be read on the Kindle. There is no help available. It is just stupid. They just didn’t want to support the two systems. This all happened on October 27, 2016. I had to reset my surface 2 in 2017 and once that happened, the Kindle for Windows 8 on the surface was unavailable to be re-installed.

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Seamless Reading Experience: Downloading & Viewing Kindle eBooks on Windows 8 Systems