Following up on the change in how patrons have to go about getting Penguin books from our OverDrive collection onto their Kindles….As some of you have no doubt noticed, there is a subtle way to tell (before checking them out) which Kindle-format books still allow wireless deliver and which require download to a computer and transfer to Kindle via USB.
Kindle books that can still be transferred wirelessly (i.e. non-Penguin Group) say “Use on: Kindles and free Kindle apps.” Kindle books that require download and transfer via USB (i.e. Penguin Group) say “Use on: Kindles and free Kindle apps via USB only.” Even though this USB statement mentions Kindle apps, based on our own experience and everything we’ve read, these particular books can only be downloaded and transferred to actual Kindle devices; there is no way we know of to read them using a Kindle app loaded on a non-Kindle device. (If any of you have stumbled on a way to do this, let us know.)
The workaround for people who’ve been checking out Kindle-format books from OverDrive and reading them on Kindle apps loaded on non-Kindle devices is to put the OverDrive Media Console app on their devices and begin checking out EPUB versions of books. Also, here is a great flow chart created by the Emmet O’Neal Library outlining the various methods of checking out a Kindle book: http://hooverlibrary.org/files/books/download.pdf