Managing your Kindle question

[Ken B]

I've had my Kindle for a little less than a year. I have several books that I have sent to my Kindle and several more that I have left on the Amazon cloud. Managing the Kindle through Amazon is a nightmare. Is there some program out there that is more friendly to use than Amazon's manage kindle function? A program that allows sorting and deleting books from the cloud? I have heard of Caliber but I don't think that is what that one does. Any ideas?

[Char]

Calibre works very well. You can organize your books, convert books from PDF to Mobi, you can sort and search books, edit the metadata, and it comes with its own reader. And it is free. The only part I'm not sure about is the cloud portion.

[Jon Recluse]

You'll have to learn to live with the cloud.

[Tressa]

Sorry you're having trouble, Ken. I am not technically inclined, but I find managing my Kindle on Amazon is easy.

[David]

I just keep track of the books I have bought (title/author/cost/date of downloaded) and read on a spreadsheet. Once I have read a book I underline it. In another section I just list the books I have read. I also include a list of titles I plan to borrow via KOLL and another list for future library loans.

T have cut way down on the amount of titles I keep on my Kindle to under 30. Usually when I am done reading a book and after I have posted a review I remove the book from my kindle (or other device).

[Canavan]

Ken wrote (in part):

I have heard of Caliber but I don't think that is what that one does. Any ideas?

Calibre may not be for you, Ken. Calibre can be used to create, edit, and read e-books, but where it shines best is as manager of e-book collections. But it does have significant drawbacks, two of which I will note here. First of all, there are sync issues. Calibre works by importing e-books and creating a “library” which lives on your computer or the cloud. Getting those books to your reader can be a bit of chore, especially if (like me) you use an iOS device. There are ways to do it, but they’re kind of clunky and often slow. Second, and more to your point, calibre won’t import books with DRM restrictions. Kovid Goyal, the creator of calibre, doesn’t even want people talking about DRM removal on the calibre boards. Third-party plug-ins that remove commercial DRM exist, but you use them at your own peril since by-passing DRM schemes violates Amazon’s user agreement. So the short answer to your question is that, for better or worse, you’re probably locked into Amazon’s ecosystem.

[Ken B]

So, in summary, I am stuck with THE CLOUD. Sounds like a horror story.

[Tressa]

Maybe Bentley Little will write it!

[Tressa]

Calibre confuses the hell out of me. I would have to ask help from my husband every time I tried to use it and move a book to my phone or Kindle.

At Amazon I can just send the book to my phone, or if I get a book through e-mail, I can just load it right to my phone using Overdrive or something similar. So easy even I can do it.

[Ken B]

I have the "Send to Kindle" app that works well for moving books I receive by email or otherwise. Or, you can just plug the Kindle into the USB and treat it like a drive. That's easy.

My issue is dealing with the volume of books that I've picked up that are sitting in The Cloud. Managing that through Amazon is cumbersome if you want to browse. If you know what you are looking for it is not so bad. It just takes a while to load.

[Tressa]

The Cloud is over my head. Sorry.

[Char]

I couldn't figure out Calibre the first time I downloaded it. I spoke with Maciek,and he gave me a little tutorial, (plus it comes with its own tutorial), and the second time I seemed to figure it out easily.

I am so glad that I did because I recently had a Kindle problem and to fix it Ammy had me do a factory reset and I lost everything on there. For my Amazon books it was no big deal, other than downloading them again. But for all the books I get from my work points program, I would have lost them all, if it weren't for Calibre.

[Tressa]

Maciek is da bomb.