Sending EBooks to Kindle from the Terminal

Just a quick post sharing a simple bash script for sending your EBooks to your Kindle via email (using msmtp and mutt).

I tend to get my EBooks outside of the Kindle store. Amazon already get enough of my money after all and I like more open formats compared to their DRM ladened azw format. Luckily the Kindle supports the mobi format which is widely supported by publishers and conversion tools alike.

As a way to get EBooks to your Kindle Amazon provide you with a unique email address, this is pretty convenient if you don’t have your Kindle handy and want to put a book on it you want to later peruse. Since I already have an email account set up on my terminal I felt like skipping the step of composing an email manually to send books to my Kindle and script it. Below is my simple attempt using msmtp via mutt:

#!/bin/bash
KINDLE=$KINDLE_EMAIL
BOOK=$1
MUTT=neomutt

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "Missing attachment as argument"
  exit 1
fi

if [ -f "$BOOK" ]; then

  if file -b "$BOOK" | grep -q "Mobipocket E-book"; then
    # for now don't support PDF as well,
    # this could be done with a pattern like "PDF document"
    echo "Sending book to Kindle: $BOOK"
    echo "Book $BOOK" | $MUTT -s "Book: $BOOK" -a "$BOOK" -- "$KINDLE"
  else
    echo "$BOOK is not a supported file type"
    exit 1
  fi

else
  echo "$BOOK does not exist"
fi

It’s pretty simple; I do some tests to make sure I am actually sending a file and that it is a supported book, for now I am only supporting mobi books but I could also extend it to let me send PDF files if I wished.