Add a “Read on Kindle” button to your blog

Long posts get read on Kindles more than you’d think, and most readers get them there the hard way: copy the link, open another tool, paste, send. You can do that step for them. A “Read on Kindle” link next to your byline sends the post they’re reading to their device in a couple of clicks, free, without an account.

Step 1: Get your blog a feed page

Every blog on RSS to Kindle has its own page listing its recent posts, each with a Send to Kindle button. Search the catalog for your blog first. If it isn’t there, sign in and paste your blog’s address; we find the RSS feed and your page is created on the spot. Its address looks like rsstokindle.com/feed/your-blog, and it never changes, even if you rename the blog.

Step 2: Copy your button

Open your feed page and scroll to the bottom. “Run this blog? Add a Read on Kindle button” opens the code with your page’s address already filled in. It looks like this:

<a href="https://www.rsstokindle.com/feed/YOUR-SLUG" target="_blank" rel="noopener"
   onmousedown="var c=document.querySelector('link[rel=canonical]');this.href='https://www.rsstokindle.com/feed/YOUR-SLUG?post='+encodeURIComponent(c&&c.href||location.href)">Read on Kindle</a>

Step 3: Paste it into your post template

Put it wherever you’d put a share link: beside the byline, next to the reading time, or at the end of the post. Paste it into the template rather than into individual posts, so every post gets it, old ones included. It’s an ordinary link with no styling of its own, so it picks up your site’s link style, and you can give it a class and style it however you like. There is no script to load and nothing of ours runs on your page.

The small piece of JavaScript in it has one job: it adds the address of the post being read to the link, so we know which article your reader wants. If your platform removes inline JavaScript, build the link from your template’s own post-URL variable instead:

• Ghost: ?post={{encode (url absolute="true")}}
• WordPress: ?post=<?php echo rawurlencode( get_permalink() ); ?>
• Hugo: ?post={{ .Permalink | urlquery }}
• Jekyll: ?post={{ page.url | absolute_url | url_encode }}

Each goes on the end of https://www.rsstokindle.com/feed/YOUR-SLUG. Without any of this the link still works; it opens your feed page and the reader picks the post from the list.

What your readers see

1. They click Read on Kindle. Your feed page opens in a new tab, with your post still open behind it.
2. The post they came from is at the top, marked “The article you came from”.
3. They click Send to Kindle. The first time, they enter their Kindle’s email address and approve our sender in their Amazon settings (the two-minute setup). After that it’s one click, on your blog or any other with the button.
4. The post arrives as a properly formatted ebook, usually within a couple of minutes.

Nothing is sent until they click, and they never need an account. If they like it, they can subscribe and get your new posts on their Kindle automatically.

Things worth knowing

• Brand-new posts take up to a day. We read your feed once a day, in the early morning UTC. Until then, a reader who clicks from a new post lands on your feed page with a note and your latest posts, and the button starts pinning that post by itself after the next read.
• Older posts work too, as long as they were in your feed at some point since your page was created.
• What we record: which blog a click came from, and whether we had the article. Not who your reader is, and not what else they do on your site.
• The link is permanent. It lives in your template, so we treat its address as something we can’t change.
• Try it on one post first. Click your own button and check your post appears on top.