This is probably a silly ask, but I have been searching for about 30 minutes and haven't gotten a good answer yet, so here we are. Can anyone tell me whether I can transfer / sideload DRM-stripped books (from mobilism) to my Kindle directly from my Android device?

I've seen some talk about emailing, but those threads seem pretty old. Obviously Calibre via PC seems like the best choice, but that isn't currently an option. Is there a way for me to accomplish this, or am I SOL?

I do this on my android samsung tablet Tab. I have a usb adapter that means I can connect a kindle directly to the tablet. You can then just copy the ebooks over using a file manager.
If your android device has usb c there are loads of usb c adapters with usb and eg hdmi or ethernet connection's. If your device has micro USB an otg cable should work.
The kindle appears as a drive and you copy books to the documents folder.

For anyone who cares, there are some excellent guides about where to get books that are posted on Reddit. Mobilism is listed, but one place I've had a ton of success unexpectedly is IRC channels with bots that index an insane amount of books. It's a bit of a convoluted process, but it works really well and can be done with the Android IRC app.

The biggest issue I've found trying to do this without a computer is attempting to find something that's already in mobi format, because epub seems to be the strong favorite. Kindles use epub files with DRM, but dragging and dropping one onto the Kindle doesn't work (mobi does.) The solution I found was a conversation app that uploads the ebook to their server (and probably keeps it for their own purposes lol) and then converts to the proper format and downloads it. That's found here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.daemon.ebookconverter

It works well enough, but my preference would definitely still be just finding a mobi if possible.


I'm burying the lead though. You CAN connect your Android phone directly to your Kindle and drag & drop files. There are some weird issues that pop up sometimes, but it generally works fine.

Basically you just get a decent file browser (I use MiXplorer) then attach your phone to the Kindle. Sometimes you'll get a weird notification on the Kindle like the cord is wet, or it's charging, or there won't be any acknowledgement at all. If this happens, just unplug and replug. You want to see the notification that it's connected for file transfer or something like that.

The other way to check if it's connected properly is to check in your file explorer to see if you can view the storage on the Kindle. It'll be setup like it's all external drive or SDcard and you should be able to browse it and see files and folders. If you can't there's an issue.

If there's an issue, check your notification bar to see if there's a connection notification. If there is, make sure file transfer or something similar is chosen because if you let it do 'just charging' it won't mount the Kindle.

If there's nothing in your notification bar, you may need to look up how to force your phone to automatically mount USB connections for storage & file transfer. It generally involves enabling the hidden Developer Settings menu in settings, and then finding and adjusting the proper setting. I needed to do this with one of my phones but not the other, so ymmv.

Aaaanyway, once you figure all this out, download a mobi file you want, and go to transfer it, you're going to copy / paste it into the Documents folder on your Kindle. Once it's transferred, safely disconnect your Kindle by ejecting it using the notification bar on your Android phone, and then unplugging it. If you've moved a lot of books over it may take a minute to load them all, but they should show up. If not, reboot. If still not showing up, you'll have to find a better guide and make sure you're doing things right.