How to read manga on Kindle?

Author: Nicolas | Last update: 2023-04-18

I will show you where you can find manga and how you can download them and read them on your Kindle readers.

First of all, the reading of digital manga is exploding in the world. It is particularly noticeable in Japan where there are more readers of digital manga than paper ones.

But, I think that the "manga-ebook" has also the possibility to develop widely outside Japan.

Indeed, because of the absence of color, digital manga weighs less to store than other comics. Moreover, as they are already published in a small format in paper version, e-readers with a screen with a high resolution are at ease for their display (even in 6 inches).

If we add to this the available 7 and 8 inch e-readers and low cost touch tablets, we can think that manga can make a nice digital place in our reading devices.

The problem now is that we don't necessarily have digital versions of all the manga that are released...

The Kindle Library

At Amazon, there is a comic book section that allows you to see, on a case-by-case basis, if the volume you are looking for is available on the Kindle e-reader (or the reading application on tablet, smartphone or PC/Mac).

For popular series like Naruto, the digital version costs $4.99 compared to $6 for the paper version. So that's a nice savings of almost $2 per episode.

What is not bad is that you can search directly and only in the mangas that are available in digital using the search engine or this direct link:

So you can find a lot of things, even if everything is not yet present. I also noticed that recent releases tend to come out in digital too.

So, reissues like GUNNM, have their digital version.

Prime Reading or Kindle Unlimited

With Amazon, you can subscribe to a service like Prime or Kindle Unlimited.

Kindle Unlimited offer the larger choice but you'll have to pay a small fee each mounth to access the books and the mangas available.

If you have an Amazon Prime mambership, you can access to a catalogue of free ebooks and mangas and the Prime Reading section of the Kindle Library on your Kindle e-reader. (no extra fee if you already a Prime customer)

Transfer PDF, CBR and CBZ files to your Kindle e-reader

If you're interested in digital comics, you've probably come across files in slightly exotic formats like CBR or CBZ. Here's how to convert them to PDF.

The CBR or CBZ format requires the use of special software to read them.

Fortunately, thanks to Calibre you can transform these files into PDF files that are easier to use on your different devices: e-readers, tablets, smartphones, PC and Mac.

The advantage of using Calibre to do the conversion is that it offers optimizations regarding the images, in order to display the comics more clearly on a reader (with a black and white screen). But, you can also use another software to do the conversion.

The first thing to do is to install Calibre if you don't have it on your computer yet. You can go to this site to download it: https://calibre-ebook.com/fr/download

Now you have to import your CBR or CBZ file into Calibre.

You can now transfer PDF, CBR and CBZ to your Kindle device.

If you wan to choose the right e-reader for reading manga you can read this article.