Permanently deleting about 1,000 Indie titles...how about you?

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

I used to pick up any free book I came across. I'm much more selective now. I don't plan on deleting any, though - I always have trouble throwing things out!

Exactly.

It used to be that free ebooks was a somewhat rare occurrence. It's now a marketing ploy and the need to pick up something now isn't such an all-consuming thing.

If an Indie book isn't on sale now, it more than likely soon will be on sale.



Don

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I view getting rid of Indie novels I now have no intention whatsoever of reading is akin to throwing away soiled underwear. After all, there comes a point where the clutter just overwhelms one's sense of both propriety and orderliness.

This thread was the impetus for my culling over 50 books from about 200 at Amazon. Thank you. I'd become much more selective about epubs and had pruned them long ago, but I had let the freebies at Amazon accumulate and they had started to drag me down.

I used to think that freebies were fully priced; now I think they're overpriced for me. In a morass of dimly remembered and entirely forgotten titles, it becomes difficult to identify the occasional gem purchased because Amazon had the best price. In general even the high quality freebies are at best fungible; there would always a huge selection if I felt the need (and I won't, frankly).

Life is short and there are only so many books I'll be able to read. Not everything has to be deep or great because I have a need for light reading as well, but it should be good of its kind. Losing the dross makes it much easier to identify.

[lorenzoens]

A typical dilemma from our times: do I really need this stuff?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by issybird

This thread was the impetus for my culling over 50 books from about 200 at Amazon. Thank you. I'd become much more selective about epubs and had pruned them long ago, but I had let the freebies at Amazon accumulate and they had started to drag me down.

I used to think that freebies were fully priced; now I think they're overpriced for me. In a morass of dimly remembered and entirely forgotten titles, it becomes difficult to identify the occasional gem purchased because Amazon had the best price. In general even the high quality freebies are at best fungible; there would always a huge selection if I felt the need (and I won't, frankly).

Life is short and there are only so many books I'll be able to read. Not everything has to be deep or great because I have a need for light reading as well, but it should be good of its kind. Losing the dross makes it much easier to identify.

Along those lines, I've always felt that if a person actually wants a book and pays money for it, that person is invested in the book enough to read it and to have paid attention when they bought it (ie buying a genre they might actually like). With the thousands of freebies, it sets a standard where books are not being worth much, not even time.

The new amazon associate rules just out are going to mean a lot less sites touting freebies and therefor a lot less authors going free (I think. I only had a couple of short stories free, so I am not the right person to really speculate too much on the logic behind the free model.) I have seen several authors already moving away from free and the discussions so far range back and forth, but I do see several saying they are dropping the free idea. We'll see.

[AnemicOak]

I really wish there was a way to delete in bulk (like check boxes by each title or something). I just took a good long look at my MYK page and I've really started to become a bit of an eBook hoarder. Every time I see a freebie that I even might be interested in sometime in the future I end up grabbing it. That wasn't a huge problem before KDP Select, but now it's gotten pretty bad. Of those freebies I've "bought" the vast majority haven't been read and at this point probably never will. The result is a Kindle library that is ridiculously large and unwieldy. I'm just not sure if I'm up to the task of culling it if it's one by one, fifteen per page.

[Polarpenguin]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I really wish there was a way to delete in bulk (like check boxes by each title or something). I just took a good long look at my MYK page and I've really started to become a bit of an eBook hoarder. Every time I see a freebie that I even might be interested in sometime in the future I end up grabbing it. That wasn't a huge problem before KDP Select, but now it's gotten pretty bad. Of those freebies I've "bought" the vast majority haven't been read and at this point probably never will. The result is a Kindle library that is ridiculously large and unwieldy. I'm just not sure if I'm up to the task of culling it if it's one by one, fifteen per page.

Take a look at this post (thanks to BearMountainBooks)
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...9&postcount=43
Should help you do what you want more easily.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Polarpenguin

Take a look at this post (thanks to BearMountainBooks)
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...9&postcount=43
Should help you do what you want more easily.

Thanks.

Yeah, I know about that (even have some books already "removed" from a few years ago that way), but it doesn't actually delete them from your account which is what I'd ultimately like to do. It's probably what I'll do to make things easier to manage for the time being though.

[ATDrake]

This is why I keep a separate account (more than one, actually) primarily for freebie-getting purposes. The things which go on my main account are basically just selected "official" stuff and things I would be genuinely pleased to see show up as official publisher promos had they still been in print. Everything else gets dumped to the slushpile collection bin or the general promo hoard.

As for the question of permanently deleting stuff, I'm personally a hoarder and wouldn't in most cases, but if you're fairly sure you're never going to bother with the titles involved, go ahead and do it (though you may want to keep stripped download copies out of sheer morbid curiosity in case it later turns out something or other is a word-of-mouth gem or so-bad-it's-hilarious-must-"read").

[BearMountainBooks]

If Amazon had decent (and bulk) sorting capabilities on any of their devices and/or online lists, none of this would be much of a problem. I can SORT of excuse them for not having such a feature on the device (would add to cost/take up space/require more memory) but they have two or more "library" type functions/lists and neither one is optimized. It would be easier to understand their neglect if they could fool people into buying an item twice, but as it stands there is no reason to continue forcing all of us to stare at a big pile with no way to sort!!!

I not only want to delete items, I'd really like a "sampled and hated" and "Sampled and maybe" and "most bogus trash" and "Read and loved" and so on. Sometimes it takes me an hour to find a book I'm thinking of--and if I'm just browsing and sampling things I've downloaded, it can kill an entire afternoon in a hurry. It's annoying.