AZW, AZW3 and AZW4 are proprietary e-book formats from Amazon. If you have ebook files in one of these formats, you may run into incompatible problems with your devices or ebook readers. Generally speaking, these book files can only be read on Kindle or Kindle related apps even if they are not protected with DRM.
In this quick guide, we will use a free ebook converter on Mac to convert AZW, AZW3 or AZW4 ebook files to Mobi or ePub format so you can read them on almost all popular devices, like PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android mobile phones, etc.
About the free ebook converter
Calibre is the ebook converter we will use in this demo. It is a powerful and easy to use e-book reader, converter and manager. It comes with different editions for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It’s also completely free and open source and great for both casual users and computer experts.
Convert AZW, AZW3, AZW4 to Mobi, ePub on Mac
We will use Calibre for Mac in this example. You can download and use it on a Windows or Linux as well. Launch the ebook program on your computer, you will see its main interface like this.
Hit the Add books button at the top left corner, then allow it the access to your files on Mac. A file browser window opens where you can browse to the ebook files in AZW, AZW3, AZW4 formats and add them to the converter app. Alternatively you can drag and drop ebooks to the free ebooks converter. In fact, you can also double click on a AZW, AZW3 or AZW4 file to open it in Calibre if you don’t have any other compatible ebook reader, editor installed on your computer.
Once the AZW, AZW3, AZW4 file was added to the ebook software, click Convert books button from the top tool bar to open the converter in a new dialog like this.
EPUB will be selected as the output format by default, you can change it if needed. Most likely you don’t have to do so as ePub is compatible with almost all book readers and devices. If you like to convert AZW, AZW3 or AZW4 to a different format such as mobi, PDF, click the Output format box to switch it from ePub to any other desired book format.
There are many aspects of the book you can edit, the metadata, look and style, page and structures, etc. For example, you can choose a different cover image, edit title, author, publisher, tags, series, and so on. When you are ready to convert, hit the OK button at the bottom right corner.
Wait a few seconds for the book to be converted to the new format. Once the job finished, you will be brought back to the home screen of the ebook software. The current ebook will be highlighted and you can see its cover image, authors, formats and path at the right column. Hit the Click to open button to open the directory where the ebooks are saved to in Finder, you can find the new book file saved in the selected format. You can then open it with your favorite book reader or send it from your PC or Mac to other devices.
Transfer Calibre books to iPhone iPad
If you use Calibre on Mac, you can make use of AirDrop to transfer the books to your iPhone or iPad. If you use Calibre on a Windows PC, you may use its built-in Wifi transfer tool to send the books to iPhone, iPad, even Android and other devices. You can find more details from this tutorial to send Calibre books to iPhone iPad.