Summary
- My Paperwhite isn’t just for books — Send to Kindle accepts PDFs, DOCX, TXT, images, EPUB.
- I send long Substack and web articles to read distraction-free on E Ink, no phone doomscrolling.
- I load drafts, work docs, and long AO3 EPUBs to read comfortably on the Paperwhite at night.
My Kindle Paperwhite has recently become the most versatile tool in my tote bag — and much more than just an e-reader. Is it home to thousands of my favorite books? Yes. Has it also become a library for every kind of text I deem interesting enough to keep forever? Also yes. But hey, digital hoarding on one single-use E Ink tablet is much less of a fire hazard than printing actual paper and scattering it around my apartment.
Wait — back it up. What do you mean you can ‘read things other than e-books on a Kindle?’ Well, dear reader, let me put you onto something that could very well change the way you take the train to work in the morning. Using the official ‘Send to Kindle’ Amazon feature, you can send any file that comes in PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG, JPEG, BMP, or EPUB format to your Kindle.
Send to Kindle opens up a variety of doors to expand the ways you read on your Kindle. But, where should you even begin? Here are the three things I read on my Kindle that aren’t e-books.
Long articles
Especially from Substack
Jumping on any social media app in 2025 can compromise the entire trajectory of your day. It’s so easy to fall victim to the doomscroll and get swept away in a hypnotic spiral of cheap dopamine hits. I’ve done my best to consciously train my algorithms to feed me positive news, but it’s just as futile as trying to get toothpaste back into the tube.
My Substack has escaped most of the bad juju, but even then (when I do find an article worth clicking) I’m still tempted to go back into my timeline and scroll there, too. So, I started sending noteworthy Substack articles straight from the Substack app to my Kindle.
To do so, I open the article in the app, click the Share icon in the lower-right corner, and tap through the various “More” menus until I find the Kindle app (sometimes it takes a few taps and swipes). From there, I’ll edit the title and author name if I want it to display differently on my Kindle.
It formats perfectly for the e-reader’s size, and I can read each article distraction-free — without ever opening my phone or laptop.
Work materials
It’s less stressful when it’s in E Ink
It is up to you whether or not you want to keep your Kindle screen sacred, but some of us love to multitask. Let’s say you’re riding the train to work and have a briefing to read — the last thing you want to do in a packed car is break out your laptop. And no one wants to be that person with their brightness on full blast, pinching the screen to zoom in on their coworker’s tiny notes.
Instead, you can send those work documents to your Kindle. Just save the file on your phone or laptop in a compatible format and send it to your device.
For example, I once wanted to send one of my articles to my Kindle before it got published. I opened the file in Word on my iPhone, went to Share and Export, tapped “Send a copy,” and scrolled through the apps until I found Kindle. After renaming the file so I’d recognize it, I sent it over the cloud to my e-reader. Then, I was able to read my draft before publishing it later.
Fanfiction
No more blurry computer screens at 3AM
This one is life-changing if you’ve ever told yourself ‘one more chapter’ in the wee hours of the morning. If you’re still reading, you probably already know the website I’m going to name-drop.
You can download PDFs from AO3 (An Archive of Our Own), a digital library for fanfictions and other works. Dozens of real, published books have come out of the archive. (I recently saw an old Dramione fic on the shelf at Target with all the names swapped for something new.) It’s a place where some truly fantastic writing dwells — if you’re willing to do a little sifting.
If you want to read your favorite fic from AO3 (or another platform) on your Kindle, it’s easy. On AO3, open the fic on your computer, select Entire Work in the banner menu, then click Download. Choose EPUB, the standard e-book format, and the file will download. From there, drag and drop it into the Send to Kindle page. It’ll show up on your device shortly after.
But 100K word fics are not so easy on the eyes — literally. So, when I find one I know I’m going to spend an agonizing amount of time with, I send it to my Kindle to read. An unintentional bonus is that it really feels like a true, published book the second it lands on my Kindle.
Dramione is canon in my Paperwhite’s world.
