K3 Legacy Organization

[Gfinch]

Okay, I have a Sony PRS-505 and I am about to purchase a K3. My question is, how good is the Kindle organization of a non DRM legacy library? I have had the Sony for years now. Okay more than 2 anyway, and I love the collections and the way Sony allows me to organize my library using Calibre. I had bought a Nook and took it back due to the totally inadequate legacy library organization. I am attracted to the K3 by the clarity of the display and the page turn speed. I have to admit after seeing the demo model in the store and holding it the weight is now a consideration, but the demo mode only shows the display quality in my opinion.

So how good is the library organization? Is it only good for the books purchased off Amazon like the Nook is for B&N? Or will I be happily able to find the books I want, when I want? I have a 1500+ book collection and typically keep 500-800 books on my Sony. I am definitely a I'm in the mood to read this author or that genre person, that is why I keep so many books on my reader. I also drive a truck and bringing out my computer to load books is a pain.

So help me out here, I am ready to drink the Kindle Kool-Aid if Kindle can do this well.

Thanks as always.

[Piper_]

I don't keep a lot of books on my Kindle, legacy books or those from Amazon, just because navigating through too many of them is tedious, even using collections.

As for legacy books, the only difference that makes them troublesome appears when you need to transfer your books to a new Kindle, or reload them onto your current Kindle.

In that case, only books downloaded from Amazon will automatically place themselves into the Collections you had put them in.

They do go into them manually just fine, though.

[church mouse]

If, like I did, you messed with the genre metadata in Calibre so that you could organise your books on your Sony as you wished into nice little collections, then I am afraid the Kindle may disappoint you (solely in that regard).

Kindle does not allow that kind of functionality with Calibre (it does not use the metadata). You can create collections on the Kindle, but you do it on the Kindle itself, once you have loaded your books on to it - the first time you do this may be a pain for you, especially with 500-600 books.

However, take a look at this forum posting for a piece of software which might be what you will want - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...le+collections.

I can't vouch for it myself as I am a Mac user.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I can relate. I like my content to be organized. In my opinion, the Sony does collection management better. I like my K3 very much, and the screen clarity is fantastic. However, I still use my Sony as my main ereader to store my large library. I do think you would like the K3 organization better than the Nook.

First, the Kindle does have collections like Sony. They are similar in that you can assign one book to multiple collections. You can also mix store-purchased and side-loaded content together in the same collection. You have to assign special characters in front of collection names to force them to list alphabetically first when doing title and author sorts. People have developed quite sophisticated methods of how to assign special characters to do category and subcategory sorting. church mouse has already mentioned that Amazon expects users to create collections on the device, and you'll need to use software like the Kindle Collection Manager to do this externally. With the Sony, you just don't have to go through that much effort to customize.

Do you plan to use periodicals? You cannot put newspapers, magazines and blogs into collections on the Kindle. They clutter up my screen. I miss the Periodicals "container" that the newer Sony models have.

Have you checked out the new Sony PRS-350 (5" screen) or 650 (6" screen)? They have the new Pearl screens, and the clarity is on par with the K3. You might be able to find one on display at a nearby Borders or Best Buy. At Best Buy you could do a direct comparison of Nook, Kindle and Sony.

[Gfinch]

Thank you all for your replies. I do not use periodicals or news feeds. I just want my books on my e-reader. The display model of the kindle when locked into demo mode only allows you to see the display unfortunately.

Also how long does this indexing take? When I do load something new on it is usually because I want to read it right this minute and please don't make me wait.

I think it is unfortunate, (I will be kind) that Kindle does not use the Metadata. Yes I have spent numerous hours with Calibre organizing and fetching the info and covers. Even searching for covers on books that had none.

Thank you all for the help.

[curstpriest]

There's a program someone made on the forums here called kindle collection manager. It will at least allow you to create and manage collections from windows. You can also do it by directory structure, so that may be of help to you.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ection+manager

It's a hell of a lot easier than doing it manually on the kindle =X.

When you transfer something over it is available immediately. Indexing takes place in the background and has no real affect on what you can do with the device (other than draining battery power while it does it). You just can't search the unindexed books while indexing on those books has not completed which takes a minute or 2 per book.

[terencek]

To answer the indexing query: if you add a hundred or more books by USB transfer, typical indexing might take overnight. You can check how your indexing is going by typing a period (.) at the Home screen and then Enter. If indexing is finished it will say 0. If it quotes a figure still to be indexed, you click on the information line showing that figure and the Kindle will then display the titles that still need to be indexed.

It does occasionally happen (to me at any rate) that indexing hangs for some reason or other; it will constantly keep trying, even over a couple of days, which zaps your battery. In that case the standard advice is to delete the problematic book or books and load them again next time.

I can echo something said elsewhere in this forum: for a truly amazing piece of kit, the K3's weak point is indexing. And not everyone needs it -- it would be good to be able to have the ability to turn it off in a next firmware release.

Originally Posted by Gfinch

So how good is the library organization? Is it only good for the books purchased off Amazon like the Nook is for B&N? Or will I be happily able to find the books I want, when I want? I have a 1500+ book collection and typically keep 500-800 books on my Sony. I am definitely a I'm in the mood to read this author or that genre person, that is why I keep so many books on my reader. I also drive a truck and bringing out my computer to load books is a pain.

The collections on my K3 work much like they do on my Sony 350. I don't think the 505 allowed you to create collections directly on the reader like the 350 and 650 and K3 do, so that will be a new feature for you. Since the Kindles don't have a book loading application like Sony's Reader Library, you will have to use a third-party app to create and populate collections via a computer, or you can add them manually using the K3.

Search the forum as there is a collections manager someone wrote for the K3, but I've never tried it so I cannot say whether it works well. Some people use calibre. I don't have any desire to have hundreds of books on my K3, so I just create the collections directly on my K3.