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Get Your Kindle’s PID In 10 Seconds

Rather than struggling with a bunch of old command-line scripts to calculate the Personal ID (PID) of your shiny new Amazon Kindle, I’ve released a super-freakin’-easy webapp to do it for you in a matter of seconds. No joke.

Simply visit http://kindletools.prestonlee.com, follow the instructions, and be sure to gift me a short novel to say “thanks”. 🙂

Update: See Jer’s post on the bigger process of converting Kindle books.

58 replies on “Get Your Kindle’s PID In 10 Seconds”

Ok I have two Kindle 1’s. I got the PID from one no problem. From the other no joy. It says the # is not valid even though I verified it several times and paid attention to the case!

Any ideas why?

Thanks

The most likely issue is something like mistaking a “0” (zero) for “O” (captial letter ‘o’), or a similar mistake. If you’re absolutely sure you have it correct, shoot me your serial number via email and I’ll try to figure it out. 🙂

Also note that I do *not* own that particular model, so I don’t have a way to test for older generations. Iy you aren’t planning on using it otherwise, please consider donating it to the project…

it doesn’t seem to work for me. I have all capital letters and I’m sure it’s the number 0 instead of O. Any advice?

Thanks for the good work. However the calculation of the kindle PID did not work for my serial number. The serial for my kindle DX starts with a B005…

Please can you assist?

Will be so grateful 😀

This does happen periodically. If you could privately send me a little more information about the device I’d be happy to take a look at it. (Serial, model, country, approximate purchase date, anything else that might be unusual about the device.)

Hi, I do not have the Kindle but I do have the iPhone version. Would you please tell me where can I get the “40-character number for the Kindle iPhone application”. Thanks a lot!

Curious as to if you ever cracked the B005 Kindle DX issue. I tried to play around with python script but fear I am not that good at it.

It should be trivial to do, but I’ll need to work with you to figure it out. I’ll email you directly.

@Chris

Honestly I’m not sure since I don’t have that application. Please post instruction when you figure it out, though, and I’ll add it to the Kindle Tools site!

@Lone

Please try it again. The site was just upgraded to support a few new serial number types.

I am also having a difficulty getting kindlepid.py to give me a PID and it may be because of the zero’s or capital “o”‘s in my serial number. I am hoping you can help me understand what my serial number is. It is on a Kindle 2 that was bought in the United States in approximatly Sept. or Oct. of 2009. The serial number is B003A0A094160289, here I used all zero’s to give you the serial number, but any or all of them may be wrong. I have looked at the ‘411’ screen of “settings” and at the printing on the back of the Kindle below the logos and the model number. The model number by the way says “D00701”

Pete

I’m having a similar issue with an international Kindle2 from December 2009. My s/n also starts with B003. Fire me an email if you’d like more information.

Definitely. I’ll shoot you an email. Should have a site update out soon. Hold tight..

I can’t get the PID to work, i have a B003 kindle
could you send me an email to help, thanks

I’m also having an issue with a Serial number that isn’t being recognized as valid. It’s a Kindle 1. The screen is unfortunately shot, so I can’t check the settings, but I can see it on the back cover.

My Kindle was purchased in May of 2010. Lee’s online tool keeps giving me different PIDs everytime I use it; non of which work to convert .PRC books to Kindle’s format. I must have one of those Kindles with the PID associated with the book purchased instead of with the Kindle itself. I have heard of purchasing a book, then going into Kindle for PC and looking at the data then grabbing the PID. Do you know if this works? Thanks for your work in this area!! I agree completely with your philosophy!

I cannot comment here on specific encryption techniques, and unfortunately do not have the latest generation of devices with which to experiment. I would be happy to take a look at the newer models, but somebody needs to send me one… :-/

I can say, though, that the online PID calculation tool should NEVER return a different result for a given serial number. It doesn’t make sense to me why you would get a different result unless you enter a different input.

Does this work for the new kindle3? I am getting an asterix in my PID and my understanding is that this shouldn’t happen.

The asterisk is actual part of the PID, as well as the characters immediately following.

Ok, I think I got different PIDs because I entered the letter “O” instead of the number “0”. Given that, I got all the possible PIDs for all the combinations, since I can’t tell if they are letters or numbers in the serial on the device’s output. That gave me 5 different PIDs, none of which seem to work to convert my .prc files. I am new at command line input, so I could be using the incorrect syntax to invoke the scripts…any ideas? Thanks again!

Thanks

Your Email to send you a short novel

What genre do you like?

Jonathan

Sydney Australia

“Freedom is Not Free”

conmotto at gmail

Pretty much any popular recent non-fiction book in technology or business is my style. Thanks much!!! 😀

Tried using this tool. It returned a PID, but that PID does not work for converting Kindle books and it also said my Kindle was an unrecognised model. Unit was purchased a month or so ago – in the UK, if that matters.

Yeah, unfortunately it does matter. The tool only currently supports Kindle 2 and earlier.

Just bought a Kindle 3 in the UK, serial starts with B008 the PID generated by your site doesn’t work with DRM removals.Any updates yet ?
Thanks in advance

Unfortunately I haven’t had the time, sorry, and it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to get back to it this year. 🙁

It looks like the generator is down. I have tried a few others but they dont work and yours comes up as the best bet. Will it generate a PID for the DX?

@Alan,

Ah! Thanks for the note. Checking out the damage shortly…

By Post Author

The KindleTools PID finder tool is now back online! Sorry about the downtime… a few of the larger system subcomponents were outdated and needed major love to get back online.

By Post Author

Dear all,

I want remove DRM on ebook kindle azw file type, when process to PID and serial number so loss, how to get PID and SN on kindle device (azw book).

Thanks.

I just can’t seem to register my Kindle even though I’ve tried several times and re-confirmed the serial number numerous times. The only thing I can think of is that one or more of the several 0s are in fact Os but I can’t figure out which.

Help!

Also note it’s case sensitive. That will make a difference in the generated PID.

By Post Author

bonjour ,

j’ ai le kindle 3 3G est mon numero de serie ne fonctionne pas , donc je peux pas m enrengistrer auriez vous une solution?

Merci

The recently purchased Kindle Fire SS# gives an invalid ss# message.
The SS starts D01. I would send you the number if you are interested?
Thanks, noSilicon

@noSilicon

Oh that’s interesting. You’re the first Fire user I’ve heard from and I actually have no idea how the Fire serial numbers are assigned. Please do send the serial.

By Post Author

Is there an email address to send it to? I don’t want it in the open comments.

i’m trying to input my new kindles serial and it keeps telling me the serial doesn’t exist. I’ve tried every possible combo of 0’s and o’s just in case. can you email me?

Hi,

I tried with my Kindle Touch serial that begins with B011… , and the calculator complained that it’s not valid. Will your script also work for Kindle Touch pls? Any hlep?

thx & rgds,
Tannie

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