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I was expecting to find .epub or .prc files on my hard-disk, but didn't. Does anyone know: Where are the ebooks that the official Kindle App downloads located?

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5 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

The Kindle app stores AZW files, but only downloads them for Amazon-purchased content that you have opened in the Kindle app on that computer.

The AZW files are saved in ~/Documents/My Kindle Content.
Their names are random-looking (like B0043M4ZH0_EBOK), so it takes a little work to figure out which file corresponds to which book. Here's how you do that:

Open the book of interest on Amazon.com (make sure you're looking at the Kindle edition). It's URL will be something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Hitchhikers-Guide-Galaxy-ebook/dp/B0043M4ZH0/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1309013055&sr=8-2, but all you're interested in is the code after /dp/. In this case, it's B0043M4ZH0.

So, you know that the AZW file with the name B0043M4ZH0_EBOK is The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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Thanks for the explanation. I was able to locate the file using your URL method on my Android device, but there's just no such file on the Mac. Apparently it must be some different version, using some sort of packaged database file or something.. ? Hm. – scrrr Jun 25 '11 at 15:06
Wait, I must correct myself. Found it. It was in ~/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content Thank you! – scrrr Jun 25 '11 at 15:17
1  
@scrrr That's very strange. It's in ~/Documents OMM. Maybe that changes based on the version of the Kindle app... – Nathan Greenstein♦ Jun 25 '11 at 22:22
up vote 5 down vote

These files are now (October 2012) stored in:

~/Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content/

If they move again you can find them by running the command:

find  . -name *.azw
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up vote 1 down vote

You can find (and change) the location of your books in the general preferences. Simply choose Preferences from the Kindle menu. In the General tab, you can find an entry Content Folder and a button to change it.

This works at least on a fresh installation of Kindle from the App Store, running Mountain Lion.

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up vote 2 down vote

Well, by going to the "Content Folder" in Kindle "Preferences," and clicking on same, I found the .azw files, but greyed out. They are in ~/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content/.

You can also use the "find" command in Terminal: find ~ -name '*.azw' to locate them.

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up vote 1 down vote

After reading the above, I created a new folder under /Documents and then changed the target file location in Kindle/Preferences. Kindle app then copied the files to their. Then they became visible. Before that I also couldn't find them.

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