How Many Books Can a Kindle Hold? [8GB vs 32GB]

YOU ARE READING: How Many Books Can a Kindle Hold? [8GB vs 32GB] – TheBookBuff.com AT PhebinhvanhocEN

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when planning to buy a new kindle, it may be wise to know which is the right model to buy. One parameter to determine the selection of the kindle model is the number of books it can hold! but how many books fit on a kindle?

You are reading: How many books can a 32gb kindle hold

On average, a kindle can store between 250 and 300 kindle books for every gb of available disk space. this may vary depending on the format of the e-books used. The “epub” file format generally takes up less space and stores more books. Also, the pdf format takes up more space for the same book.

The figure above has had some very extensive research behind it! And in this article, I will share all the details with you so that you can make your purchase decision accordingly!

When I was planning to buy a book for my spouse, I suffered from the exact same problem of not being able to determine how many books I could save offline.

Because I couldn’t find a specific answer, I decided to spend several hours painstakingly capturing the details of ebooks and audiobooks to come up with an answer that I know works.

then, in this article, I’ll share all the details with you so you don’t have to spend hours and hours doing exactly what I did. So let’s get started, okay?

pro tip: if you don’t have time to read the article and just want to know which kindle to buy, I advise you to buy the kindle paperwhite 8gb if you mainly read books . if you also want to listen to audiobooks, buy the kindle paperwhite signature edition which comes with 32gb of space.

what is the average size of a kindle book?

Before we can really determine how many books a kindle can hold, it may be important to understand exactly how much space an average kindle book takes up.

Generally speaking, the average size of a kindle book can range from 2.7mb to 4.5mb. kindle books usually contain between 300 and 500 pages. On average, a single page of a kindle book is about 9 kb in size. however, this may vary depending on the number of images and illustrations in the book.

You may be wondering: how can I say this so precisely? As mentioned above, I ran a detailed experiment to understand exactly what to expect.

Are you ready to get excited?

this is what i did –

I captured the details of more than 54 books from amazon (kindle edition). This includes information such as the name of the book, the number of pages, the file size, and the link to the Amazon page (for cross-reference purposes).

I only considered “best sellers” or books labeled “editor’s choice”. the reason behind this was to pick established books and replicate the behavior of a typical user (most people tend to buy books that are doing well).

here is the full compilation of statistics to determine the average size of kindle books –

Note that the previous sheet can be scrolled. I encourage you to scroll down to the bottom to see the results!

This is the conclusion based on the previous experiment:

an average kindle book contains approximately 432 pages
the average file size of a kindle book is approximately 3922 kb (about 4 mb)
On average, a single page of a kindle book is about 9 kb. this can vary significantly depending on the number of images or illustrations used in the book. however, it gives you a clue to arrive at an approximate file size of a book simply based on the number of pages it contains.

Please make a note of these stats as they will be used to calculate the exact number of books a kindle can hold.

what is the average size of an audiobook?

Although most use a kindle to read a book, some users also like to listen to the audiobook version of the book using audible. but audiobooks are much longer and take up much more space than a book!

Generally speaking, the average size of an audiobook is between 280mb and 350mb per book. most audiobooks take up around 28mb per hour of audio. Normally, the duration of an audiobook is about 10 to 12 hours on average.

While audiobooks provide great flexibility to the user, Amazon does not provide the exact file size of each audiobook. therefore, it becomes quite difficult to determine the exact number of audiobooks that a kindle can hold.

BTW: If you don’t use audiobooks, you really should check them out! audible currently offers a 1-month free trial. Using audiobooks allows you to read more books even when you’re walking, doing housework, or exercising!

However, I found a workaround as I managed to get the details of the audiobooks in the public domain from librivox.

I took data from about 30 popular books in audio format and captured the details, including the book name, author, length of the audiobook (in hours and minutes), file size, and link. to the file (for cross-reference purposes).

Here’s the full compilation of stats to determine the average length and size of an audiobook!

As you can see, I have chosen audiobooks that are classic and well-known. plus, I randomly picked a mix of audiobooks; both small and large.

This is the conclusion based on the previous evaluation:

On average, an audiobook is typically 10-13 hours of audio.
Audio file size is approximately 28.3 mb per hour of audio played.

Now, I admit that 30 books does not constitute a large data set. some might consider it too small. Ideally, if I had more time, I too would have gone with a larger database to analyze.

also read – is it worth buying a kindle? honest user review!

however, using these data points, I randomly sampled 10+ audiobooks from my audible account. It turns out that 28mb per hour of audio is just about perfect for most of the books I reviewed. the length of the book varied, but I still averaged about 11 hours!

so, in general, these data points are true! I encourage you to also do a spot check on your files and let me know in the comments if they work!

how many books can a kindle hold?

So back to the main question of this discussion. How many books can a kindle hold?

Well, the answer to this question depends on multiple factors and varies specifically depending on the kindle model you buy.

kindle typically comes with models that provide two storage options

8gb – like the kindle paperwhite and basic kindle
32gb – such as the kindle paperwhite signature edition and the kindle oasis

let’s see the total number of books that each storage variant can contain –

how many books can an 8gb kindle hold?

On average, an 8GB Kindle variant can hold around 1,500 to 1,800 books. this may vary depending on the number of images or illustrations in a book and the number of such books purchased.

It’s important to note that you only get about 6GB of usable space on a typical 8GB Kindle model.

It’s also important to remember that an average kindle book has a file size of about 4mb. so, 1gb of storage space on your kindle can hold around 250 kindle books (1gb = 1024mb. so, 1024/4 equals approximately 250 rounded up).

Also, depending on the type of books you typically read (or listen to) on your kindle, the actual number of books you can store may vary.

I’ve outlined 3 different scenarios for the number of books a kindle can hold when using an 8gb variant!

As you can see in the example above, 3 scenarios arise:

scenario 1: if you only read ebooks on your kindle
scenario 2: you read mainly kindle books, but also listen to some audiobooks
scenario 3: you prefer to use kindle for books, audiobooks, as well as comics/magazines.

for scenario 1, an 8gb kindle (with 6gb of usable space) can hold about 1500 books or so.

Similarly, if you also prefer to listen to some audiobooks while reading your books, an 8GB Kindle model can allow you to store about 700 books and access about 10 audiobooks offline.

Finally, if you prefer to also take advantage of your kindle unlimited account and like to read comics and magazines on your kindle, the number of kindle books will be even more limited. you can access about 200 ebooks, 15 audiobooks, and 15 comics/magazines (which is still a pretty decent amount if you ask me!)

how many books can a 32gb kindle hold?

on average, a 32gb kindle variant can hold about 7000 books. this may vary depending on the number of images or illustrations in a book, the number of books downloaded, and the format of the books used.

just like the 8gb variant, you don’t get 100% of the usage space of the 32gb model. on the 32gb kindle variant, you can only access about 27gb of storage space.

As before, I’ve considered the 3 different scenarios for the number of books a kindle can hold when using a 32gb variant!

A quick summary of the three scenarios is as follows:

scenario 1: if you only read ebooks on your kindlescenario 2: you read mainly kindle books, but also listen to some audiobooksscenario 3 – prefers to use kindle for books, audiobooks, as well as comics/magazines.

if you want to use your kindle mainly just to read kindle books, then you should be able to store around 6900 to 7000 books in a 32gb variant.

Similarly, if you are in the second scenario, you should be able to store around 2750 kindle books and 50 audiobooks.

And finally, if you also want to read comics and magazines, you should be able to download around 1500 kindle books, 50 audiobooks and 200 comics/magazines to your kindle!

These numbers are just an assumption to create an accurate representation of typical Kindle user behavior. you can easily adjust the figures by doing the following:

for every audiobook you download, you’ll need to cut out about 81 kindle books
for every comic book or magazine you download, you’ll need to remove about 6 kindle books.

Using the calculations above, you should be able to reconstruct your own scenarios. (you can thank me later!)

which kindle to buy: 8gb or 32gb?

the goal of all the experiments and even this article was really to be able to determine if it is better to buy an 8gb model of kindle or the 32gb variant. After all the data analysis, this is what I concluded:

it is better to buy the 8gb kindle variant if you prefer to read only kindle books. offers enough space to store and read hundreds of books. however, go for the 32gb kindle model if you also listen to audiobooks or read comics/magazines on your kindle.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to your specific use case. not everyone uses their kindle in the same way.

In fact, if you really like to read comics/magazines, I recommend you to buy the kindle fire hd 8 tablet. It’s cheaper than the Kindle Paperwhite and has a color screen. Plus, you get 32GB of space with the base model expandable up to 1TB.

my advice would be to buy the kindle paperwhite only if you read books. choose the 8gb variant if you primarily read books. if you like to listen to audiobooks, you should go for the 32gb variant.

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How Many Books Can a Kindle Hold? [8GB vs 32GB] – TheBookBuff.com