problems downloading Kindle books

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Level 1

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problems downloading Kindle books

I have owned my Kindle paperwhite for a year but I have recently started having problems downloading books. In the past I have always downloaded books to my Mac and then transferred to my Kindle via usb. However, in the past month or so some books download properly, but some do not. When the books download properly they have a .awz file name, e.g. Alice in Wonderland.awz but for the books that don't download, they either just download as FSDownload (no title at all) or sometimes the title of the book but no .awz e.g. just as Alice in Wonderland.

I suspect it might have something to do with my software because when I tried downloading the same books on a PC, they showed up fine with the .awz file. I think this problem coincides with when I installed Mavericks.

I have contacted Amazon customer service and we tried all sorts of things and none of them worked. Finally, the customer service people suggested I try here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 1, 2014 8:27 AM

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Answer 1

May 4, 2014 1:51 AM in response to heather3086

Hi Heather,

Today I discovered I'm having the same issues... I own an older version Kindle and always buy online, download to my Mac and then transfer the file by USB. However today I tried for 3 books and the first one was not a problem. The 2 others would not download with the correct file - its just an empty page with the title FSDownloadContent.

This link sort of helped: http://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle%20customer%20service%20q%20and%20a?_encoding= UTF8&cdForum=Fx1GLDPZMNR1X53&cdThread=Tx1YPISXRX8YOGC

basically Paul Bramer says:

1. I deregistered my Kindle for Mac ("Manage Your Kindle>Manage Your Devices")

2. I REMOVED the app from my computer.

3. I downloaded the latest version of Kindle for Mac (Department: Kindle>Kindle Free Reading Apps>...) and followed the install directions. (btw, I learned that Amazon has no system for alerting us to app upgrades!! Hard to believe with all the account info they have.)

4. I opened the newly downloaded app. It repopulated with all my archived and downloaded books, included the "problem" book.

5. When I tried to open the problem book, I got the same message, ""The book could not be opened. Please remove the book from your device and redownload it"...but wait...

6. I removed the book (from my downloads folder) by deleting it.

7. I went to the Archives where it was still listed (I didn't need to resend it to the Kindle for Mac app but perhaps that would be a needed step for some). I clicked on the title, it downloaded and...ta da...the book OPENED.

Hope this saves somebody the hour it took me :). If the problem does in fact lie with an out-of-date app, Amazon owes us the courtesy of alerting us to app upgrades (and making an easier upgrade path).

HOWEVER, it lets me open the books on my computer using Kindle for Mac but still won't let me transfer it with a working file to my actual kindle! So not a great fix since I want to read the kindle not my computer on the beach!

Hopefully someone else out there has a solution...?

thx

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Answer 2

May 4, 2014 2:30 AM in response to travelkat

OK, just spent some more time... tried Google Chrome to download and it gave me the correct file extension of .azw3. Transfered to my kindle via USB no worries!

Perhaps the issue is with Safari?

Hope this helps 🙂

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Answer 3

heather3086 Author

Level 1

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May 6, 2014 6:45 AM in response to travelkat

Thanks so much for this. I'll give it a go using Chrome. I have managed to download the problem books on a computer with Mozilla so maybe it is a Safari issue. It's hard to tell though because I can sign in and buy books three or four different times and all the books will download fine and then suddenly it'll start happening again. Super annoying!

Anyway thanks again.

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Answer 4

edin4

Level 1

0 points

Feb 28, 2015 6:57 AM in response to heather3086

I am having the same problem on my new Kindle paperwhite. I will also try download through Chrome.

Thanks

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Answer 5

Gauchi

Level 1

9 points

Mar 27, 2016 6:39 AM in response to heather3086

Simply renaming the file to .azw3 also solved the problem

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Answer 6

jaketr

Level 1

8 points

Jul 31, 2017 5:27 PM in response to Gauchi

That's the simplest fix. You just need to make sure that when you download it from the amazon site, you select the right kindle you're transferring it to.

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