Can I read non-Amazon books on my Kindle?

If you get a compatible eBook with no Digital Rights Management on it, you can view it on a Kindle.

You can not use a Barnes and Noble eBook because they have their own DRM on them that only works with their Nook device. Welcome to the horrible world of Digital Rights Management!

You can convert your own PDFs or PDF eBooks to Kindle format, or view .txt files, etc. Just not ones from other eBook stores with DRM.

Scroll down to “Content sources” on this page for some good info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle

It looks like The World Public Library and MobiPocket are the next best sources after Amazon. I’ve used Project Gutenberg for years for free books, they are adding more Kindle-friendly books all the time.

http://worldlibrary.net/
http://www.gutenberg.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobipocket

Thanks to both of you!

I’ve got a Nook coming to me in February and I was wondering the same thing regarding eBooks not purchased from B&N.

@AstroChuck According to Wikipedia, the Nook will read ePub files, and Google Books has over a million of them.
Project Gutenberg also has ePubs.

@Mamradpivo I just noticed Google books has PDFs, so you should be able to get books there, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_%26_Noble_nook
http://books.google.com/

Another good site for books that are compatible with Kindle is Fictionwise.com. They have good prices and you can filter on books that work for Kindle.