Why store your ebook collection on your ereader?

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

To the people who say they can't be futzed with transferring books to their readers all the time: how do your new book purchases get added to your devices? Do you save them up so you can transfer a bunch at once or what?

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly cool with you having your entire library on your reader (it don't make me no nevermind). I'm just having a hard time understanding how not wanting the hassle of hooking it up to pc and transferring is any kind of justification for doing so. I don't see that part as very relevant.


How is that any more of a hassle than what you guys do (provided you're keeping a calibre or pc backup, of course)?

Wanting to have the myriad of choices, I understand. I just don't understand why anyone would automatically assume those who are OK with only handful of choices are somehow more "slaved" (or maybe tethered) to their external library.

I only ever have a handful of books on my device and I hardly ever hook up and transfer either. I buy a book, download it, read it, and then usually delete it. Then every now and then, I get on my pc and download my recent purchases (sans device and any tether) and add them to my calibre library for backup.

Like you I don't care how many books anyone has on their ereader with the exception of my mother who would call at 3 AM and tell me she had no good books on her reader could I send her one(My mother is 87 and I manage her Amazon account)

Most of it is me. I've always borrowed and bought books in bulk when I had the money. 20-30 would be average. Once I bought over 100 books at a going out of business sale and would have bought more if I could have figured out a way to carry more. (I had a backpack and a wheeled cart, and I am sure everyone on the bus thought I was a baglady)

I prefer to make my decisions at once as well. I have four ereaders, with generally the same books on each but two I have series shelves and two I have authors shelves. Need to change the driver configuration depending on which one I am sideloading to or chaos erupts. I have them this way because sometimes I want to browse by author and sometimes I want to browse by series. I know I can have both but it suits my weird brain better to have them separate.

I like my books a certain way so I generally convert first and sideload. I use calibre custom columns to keep track of the books on the readers. Periodically I compare what is on the device to what I had put on the device and mark the deleted ones as read.

I read 20 - 50 books a month so this is a lot of piddling around to do on a book by book basis. It is a lot of piddling around anyway, but it is what want to do.

So if I have several hundred or more books on my readers that I know I want to read, I am seldom limited in choice. I can hook up to calibre every two months or so, update everything (checking what I have read, deleting the read ones from all readers, putting on a bunch more which I have already marked in calibre) in an hour usually. Doing it one by one would take me a lot more time overall and would become a chore I would resent.

Like I said, it is just me.

Helen

[Mhtsos]

I also usually download to my laptop any free/bought books until they reach a minimum number.So far I haven't had to load my reader with new material because I haven't had the chance to read all the books in my ebook reader collection I wanted to read.
I believe the next time that I have to renew my device collection will be around Xmas.
If until then my buggy Glo doesn't go berserk and once more bricks.

[soulfuldog]

This is an interesting thread!

Ok, I think I can appreciate being indecisive, wanting to be able to pick any book that takes your fancy and just the basic desire to be able to carry around your entire library. But immaterial of whether or not collections work with ease, or your ereader can handle folders, or even if you are happy to use cloud storage and access it direct from your ereader, nothing can beat the ease and simplicity of browsing and choosing which book to read in a proper library management tool like Calibre. Can it?

I can see the attraction, and why not use the space available on your ereader, but the plus points of having your entire library isn't worth the trade off that you lose from improved browsing via Calibre. To me anyway.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Like you I don't care how many books anyone has on their ereader with the exception of my mother who would call at 3 AM and tell me she had no good books on her reader could I send her one(My mother is 87 and I manage her Amazon account)

Love it, thankfully my mum would never do that to me...... I hope!

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by l_macd

Love it, thankfully my mum would never do that to me...... I hope!

My own fault. I bought her a kindle despite her protests. She loves it, but possibly thinks I can get books on her reader by wishing or waving the magic wand


Helen

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by l_macd

This is an interesting thread!

It is quite interesting seeing all the different practices. I'm seeing one main theme, though. It seems that many (if not most) people stockpile (purchase, download, whatever) many, many unread ebooks, and then read them at their leisure (regardless of whether they keep them all in calibre, or on their device, or both). I had no idea that was so common, to tell the truth.

I, on the other hand, don't really stockpile unread ebooks at all. I leave them on the retailers "shelves" (or Gutenberg's servers) until such time as I think I'm ready to read them. Then I buy them and start reading. My TBR pile is strictly virtual... my calibre library is already read (mostly). It was mostly the same way for me with physical books (I don't think I own a pbook haven't read).

When it's all said and done, I don't really see a lot of difference between the two methods. Both allow for a myriad of choices come reading time--me utilizing the internet to choose my next book/others using books they've already purchased and curated to some extent. I assure you the actual reading part is quite comparable (and equally leisurely).

[Sydney's Mom]

I am going to set my Kindle Fire 8.9" back to factory settings. Granted, it has about 4000 books on it, but it is freezing up all the time. Even though I have room left, when I first go to read, I usually turn on wireless to download any new books from Amazon. It freezes. I restart, trying to just open my book. It freezes. After the second or third reset, I can usually finish my book. I don't think the kindle is defective, just that I have used it in a manner they didn't anticipate. I have very few apps, no email, and just books and a couple movies and a couple songs.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Like you I don't care how many books anyone has on their ereader with the exception of my mother who would call at 3 AM and tell me she had no good books on her reader could I send her one(My mother is 87 and I manage her Amazon account)

Most of it is me. I've always borrowed and bought books in bulk when I had the money. 20-30 would be average. Once I bought over 100 books at a going out of business sale and would have bought more if I could have figured out a way to carry more. (I had a backpack and a wheeled cart, and I am sure everyone on the bus thought I was a baglady)

I prefer to make my decisions at once as well. I have four ereaders, with generally the same books on each but two I have series shelves and two I have authors shelves. Need to change the driver configuration depending on which one I am sideloading to or chaos erupts. I have them this way because sometimes I want to browse by author and sometimes I want to browse by series. I know I can have both but it suits my weird brain better to have them separate.

I like my books a certain way so I generally convert first and sideload. I use calibre custom columns to keep track of the books on the readers. Periodically I compare what is on the device to what I had put on the device and mark the deleted ones as read.

I read 20 - 50 books a month so this is a lot of piddling around to do on a book by book basis. It is a lot of piddling around anyway, but it is what want to do.

So if I have several hundred or more books on my readers that I know I want to read, I am seldom limited in choice. I can hook up to calibre every two months or so, update everything (checking what I have read, deleting the read ones from all readers, putting on a bunch more which I have already marked in calibre) in an hour usually. Doing it one by one would take me a lot more time overall and would become a chore I would resent.

Like I said, it is just me.

Helen

My mother has Macular Degeneration. I bought her a Nook HD+ after I asked her if she could see well enough using mine. The fonts are not even the largest. I have her on my account and also side load books that she tells me she would like to read. Her unabashed happiness when she opened the box on her birthday was a beautiful thing to see. At least she does not call me at 3:00 AM.
Apache

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I am getting to set my Kindle Fire 8.9" back to factory settings. Granted, it has about 4000 books on it, but it is freezing up all the time. Even though I have room left, when I first go to read, I usually turn on wireless to download any new books from Amazon. It freezes. I restart, trying to just open my book. It freezes. After the second or third reset, I can usually finish my book. I don't think the kindle is defective, just that I have used it in a manner they didn't anticipate. I have very few apps, no email, and just books and a couple movies and a couple songs.

Try clearing the Kindle app data and let it rebuild the database. I have to do that on my Kindle Fire v1 but I don't have that many books just about 500 on it and my Archive is 5000+ so I have to stay out of the Cloud tab or all those thumbnails will take up my app space and freeze it.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

My mother has Macular Degeneration. I bought her a Nook HD+ after I asked her if she could see well enough using mine. The fonts are not even the largest. I have her on my account and also side load books that she tells me she would like to read. Her unabashed happiness when she opened the box on her birthday was a beautiful thing to see. At least she does not call me at 3:00 AM.
Apache

I gave my mother and iPad a couple of years ago. She uses the Kindle app to read, and I get to buy the books for her. Fortunately, she has wifi at home, so the books just magically appear for her.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by l_macd

This is an interesting thread!

Ok, I think I can appreciate being indecisive, wanting to be able to pick any book that takes your fancy and just the basic desire to be able to carry around your entire library. But immaterial of whether or not collections work with ease, or your ereader can handle folders, or even if you are happy to use cloud storage and access it direct from your ereader, nothing can beat the ease and simplicity of browsing and choosing which book to read in a proper library management tool like Calibre. Can it?

I can see the attraction, and why not use the space available on your ereader, but the plus points of having your entire library isn't worth the trade off that you lose from improved browsing via Calibre. To me anyway.




Love it, thankfully my mum would never do that to me...... I hope!

Let me provide another perspective. Unlike most other readers on this thread, I re-read books. It's usually 5-10 years between reads, but I do re-read. Also my life is sufficiently busy that I don't read more than 1-3 books a week.

With that as background, I have alway felt that a computer (or bookshelf) 100 miles away was useless when I want to read XYZ and it's not on the e-reader. So I use an old gen e-reader, that has a replacable battery and software that is computer oriented, and uses a folder structure. I don't have (or want) WiFi, phone links, or other "conveniences". I buy and load in blocks, and I load onto external storage (SD chip). I then backup the SD chip to my computer. I keep a well organized folder structure, and know where everything is. I have multiple copies of the same e-reader, if one fails (and none of them have yet), I just pop out the SD chip and pop it in a new e-reader. Occasionally I'll take the most recent backup and copy it to several other chips (for each backup e-reader I keep).

OCD? Maybe, but I do exactly the same thing for my music files, and use a music player (Sansa Clip+) that runs folder based software (RockBox) and external SD chips (in this case microSD).

More work? Yep! Once...Otherwise, it's just folder-to-folder copies. Load the file once, and it'll always be there (and on the backups). (Right now, I just bought the Blue Oyster Cult's 16 disc library from Columbia, and I'm ripping down to FLAC files.) Get done, labeling every track, and load on the chip. Listen it that piece of work for the rest of my life, no matter where I go, or what I do...

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Apache

My mother has Macular Degeneration. I bought her a Nook HD+ after I asked her if she could see well enough using mine. The fonts are not even the largest. I have her on my account and also side load books that she tells me she would like to read. Her unabashed happiness when she opened the box on her birthday was a beautiful thing to see. At least she does not call me at 3:00 AM.
Apache

My mother has slight(so far) macular degeneration too. One reason I got the kindle was TTS although she does fine without it.

In my mother's defense she lives 4 time zones away and forgets that 7AM her time is not 7AM my time She has probably waited to call me until she thinks it is a decent hour

But I know what you mean by the happiness thing. My mother carries here ereader practically every where and I got her a case she picked out which seemed too big to me, but real leather, and she told me it made her feel like royalty.

Helen

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

With that as background, I have alway felt that a computer (or bookshelf) 100 miles away was useless when I want to read XYZ and it's not on the e-reader.

Sounds pretty logical. Especially for someone who travels (or might travel) a lot. But try this background on for size: I don't travel. And when I say I don't travel, I don't mean I don't travel much ... I mean at all. 100 miles from my computer/bookshelf just does not compute, man. Hell, 15 miles barely computes. I got the wanderlust out of my system a long time ago. Now I (quite happily) live my life in a five-mile radius (I'd bet over 90% is within a 1 mile radius). When I leave my house, my reader almost never comes with me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere I'm going to have time to use it. Homebodies don't need back up for when they're looking for something to read away from their computer/bookshelf. Because that just doesn't ever happen.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Sounds pretty logical. Especially for someone who travels (or might travel) a lot. But try this background on for size: I don't travel. And when I say I don't travel, I don't mean I don't travel much ... I mean at all. 100 miles from my computer/bookshelf just does not compute, man. Hell, 15 miles barely computes. I got the wanderlust out of my system a long time ago. Now I (quite happily) live my life in a five-mile radius (I'd bet over 90% is within a 1 mile radius). When I leave my house, my reader almost never comes with me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere I'm going to have time to use it. Homebodies don't need back up for when they're looking for something to read away from their computer/bookshelf. Because that just doesn't ever happen.

I remember traveling with a library back in the 1980's. I was in a different location every day. Both driving and flying. By the time I had been out 12 to 16 weeks I had books bulging out of every piece of luggage I owned. When my suitcase got to full I would box them up and ship them home. I would have done almost anything to have en ereader back then. So, having all of my books on my Nook HD+ is a piece of cake. What's the fun of having the desire to read a book and not have it with me?
Apache

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It is quite interesting seeing all the different practices. I'm seeing one main theme, though. It seems that many (if not most) people stockpile (purchase, download, whatever) many, many unread ebooks, and then read them at their leisure (regardless of whether they keep them all in calibre, or on their device, or both). I had no idea that was so common, to tell the truth.

Ooh, this is me. When Fictionwise was in its heyday, I bought a lot of books there. When I had received some Amazon gift certificates, I'd get a pile of ebooks. Now I have a wishlist on ereaderiq, and I buy books when they hit a certain price point (generally below $6). I have managed to pile up a few hundred ebooks, and there are probably 500 more on my wishlist. I know I own books that I will never, ever read in my lifetime. It's a shame, really, and is why I do very little re-reading, and I'm making efforts to really curtail my purchases.

[soulfuldog]

It is really interesting seeing all the different way people use their ereaders isn't it, and you can see logic in pretty much all of them. Not sure about DiapDealer's practise of only buying books when ready to read them though - like pidgeon92 I have a wishlist and more often than not buy my ebooks when they are on offer. If I waited until I was going to read them, think of the bargains I might miss out on!

As for Mum's reading, since getting her Kindle my Mum has never read so much in her life, I think she would be completely lost without it now. I've tried to show her how to use Calibre but I end up having to load the books onto it for her, but she is happy enough using her PC to buy them on Amazon and get them delivered via wi-fi.