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Old 10-20-2010, 07:57 PM   #1
niceboy
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Big libraries on Kindle 3?

Still waiting for my Kindle 3 and still idly wondering about this and that.

My question:
Do you keep very many items on your Kindle 3? The Amazon promo stuff says up to 3,500 book can be stored on the 4GB of memory. Do any of you maintain big libraries on the device or do you just keep maybe at most a dozen files loaded? Is maintaining a large library practical given the GUI? Do you use the collections? I find it extraordinary that from what I have read items appear within the collections randomly? That is so strange... the device indexes everything but doesn't arrange listing alphabetically in the collections.

Hope this question isn't annoying given that I'll have an answer for myself soon but still I am interested in what other people think in any case.
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Old 10-20-2010, 08:28 PM   #2
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I basically move books over a few at a time, then when I finish reading them, I put them into collections (if I think I might read them again someday) or delete them.

At first that worked pretty well, but I haven't been reading all the ones that I put on it, probably only half. That's starting to leave a lot of clutter. And I only have 250 books on it.

Anyway, the order isn't random, it's basically based on the last time you read it. So if you read a series in order (like I have), then it's the first one down at the bottom and the last one at the top.
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Old 10-20-2010, 08:54 PM   #3
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Here's a page you might find helpful until you get your K3......you can even download the users guide in pdf and be an expert by the time it arrives!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=200503360
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Old 10-20-2010, 09:09 PM   #4
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I have what I consider a "big" library (~500 titles, its an addiction) on my K3, but not a "massive" library of several thousand. My previous device, a Sony Clie UX50, generally had 50-80 titles on it for most of the 8 years or so that it served as my primary ebook reader.

I generally keep a stack of titles in a "waiting to be read" pile. With the old UX50, I didn't load more than 100 on the device, holding the rest on my PC. When I got my K3 I simply moved the files from the UX50 and added the whole waiting folder from the PC (at my age I'll be lucky to live long enough to read the 500 or so already on my K3, much less the ones I'll undoubtably add as time goes by...). When I've finished reading a book I generally delete it. I don't keep many titles on my device that I've read, typically only ones that are part of a series that I may need to refer back to when reading the subsequent volumes. I keep backups on my PC for re-reading if the desire should occur. I have a rather large number of titles (book length and short works) archived on my PC

With the K3, I use the new "Collections" to provide some sanity when dealing with large libraries. I have collections arranged by genre, by type/length, and have a "short list" collection for queuing up the next few to be read. By not using a folder based collection system, the K3 allows the flexibility of placing the same book into multiple collections. I have some books in "SF & F" (Science Fiction & Fantasy), "Short Story", and "Short List" at the same time.
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Old 10-20-2010, 10:09 PM   #5
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I have 400 or so books on my Kindle right now. Collections makes life very easy. I recommend having a read and to be read for each genre/category you are going to be using for organization.
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Old 10-21-2010, 03:44 AM   #6
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I have around 8000 books in Kindle, but not in a documents directory.
I have created books folder, where are all stored and sorted.

So I only need a USB connection to any PC to "pick up any book from my own library"

edit - my books are in mobi format, without any pictures, so 8000 books takes around 2 GB of space.
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Old 10-21-2010, 10:54 AM   #7
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I have tons of text files such as stories from Vanishing Horizons which I downloaded and organized into folders by estimated time it would take to read them, e.g. 3 minutes, 15 minutes, 50 minutes. I also have a back log of Pulp short stories downloaded as ePub using Stanza Mobile which I have now converted to mobi.

I think Kindle was of course intended for people who buy a book every week or two from Amazon.com but if you are a compulsive reader downloading free texts and buying lots of novellas and short stories from other online stores you end up with a folder of many many fifty minute and ninety minute reads lined up. I can read four or five of these short works in a sitting... I usually delete them when I am through but I do like browsing through the big library as it is on my old iTouch right now for exactly what I am in the mood to read at the moment.

I have been converting my big collection of texts to mobi but I have been wondering if it will be an utter nightmare if I transfer them all from Calibre in groups of say 50 at a time. The device is confusing in that the memory seems able to hold so many files but the GUI seems limited in handling large numbers of books. I have viewed a lot of youtube reviews of Kindle 3 but invariably the demos only show the interface with less then a dozen titles loaded so I have not gotten a sense of how it runs with big libraries loaded.

DesertGrandma, thanks for the link. That is a great resource I had not found on my own.
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Old 10-21-2010, 11:35 AM   #8
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I have a library of 2000 books on the Kindle, and it hasn't slowed it down. I loaded them in batches of 2/300. 4 GB is for the whole Kindle= programthings and so on: it leaves about 3, 09 GB for books/document/music, so Kindle's boost of 3500 books is appopriate.
But take care: indexing makes the Kindle unstable for a few hours. Best is to give the Kindle a rest while indexing and load it (wall charger or on the computer). I made it a habit to load a batch of books at night; leave it on the PC and in the morning indexing had finished and I could do everything I wanted on. Indexing is a weak point.
As for collections; look on the forum, as a lot has been discussed about it.
Good luck; happy reading.
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Old 10-21-2010, 11:37 AM   #9
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I think with big libraries, the biggest problem would be in the initial upload of files (assuming they all went in at once) along with organization. Indexing is intensive for the battery and probably the resources for the Kindle and it will go to work indexing everything if it is all uploaded at once. You'd want to keep the Kindle plugged in (USB or charger) during that phase.

Organization may be a problem just because you would end up with pages and pages of books with a large library although collections would help to some extent. I'd probably be tempted to sort everything alphabetically, but that might make a mess of the home screen since all books get shown even when they are in collections.

The solution then becomes to name your collections with special characters at the start so that they sort at the front... There are a few threads with regard to that. That is one aspect I hope Amazon improves with future firmware. It will be nice to sort things cleaner, to nest collections, and to keep books out of the home menu no matter how you sort things. I also think it would be nice to have the ability to toggle a visible tag (like the "new" one that shows up on uploads) so that you can keep track of what you are reading easily.

I have made suggestions like this to Amazon as part of their request for feedback.

Last edited by emalvick; 10-21-2010 at 11:38 AM. Reason: addendum
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Old 10-21-2010, 12:31 PM   #10
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I've been slowly loading my books, and have about 400 or so on my K3 now, with a couple hundred more to go.

I let Calibre send about 200 books to my Kindle last week and didn't notice any indexing slowdown -- but I did it before bed so I'd be ready for the weekend, so maybe that isn't a fair comparison.

My latest strategy is to pick a few collections, such as Lee Child's Reacher novels, send them to the Kindle, and immediately use Kindle Collection Manager to organize them into a collection. When an author (such as Karin Slaughter) has multiple collections, I've done this:

Karin Slaughter -- Will Trent/Atlanta series
Karin Slaughter -- Grant County series

My plan for now is to continue this sort of collection organization. I think that authors with a prolific output (such as Stephen King) will simply have their own collection with just the author's name as the collection title.

They can have my K3 when they pry it from my dead, cold fingers but I sure wish someone at Amazon would consider giving those of us who do have larger libraries choices on how to organize those libraries. No matter what kludge I use, it's still tough to scroll through and find what new book I'd like to read next.

I've mentioned this before, but I tend to go on buying sprees for my ebooks exactly as I used to do with pbooks. It's not uncommon for me to buy 8 or 10 books at a whack, then a few days later to buy a couple more. When I had a special shelf for unread pbooks, it was easy to peruse the cover art and/or the back cover description to remind me books waited for me. Now new books tend to get lost as I jump back and forth between new novels, old favorites, and of course medical reference books.
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Old 10-21-2010, 12:45 PM   #11
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How about creating a collection called new books and putting the books there?
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Old 10-21-2010, 12:55 PM   #12
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Collections are great, but it would be nice to remove individual books/content from the home screen as long as they belong to a collection. I find the home screen just to cluttered since the books are now on the home screen as well as whatever collection that they have been added to. I believe that the home screen inventory is a poor implementation and should be cleaner
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Old 10-21-2010, 01:03 PM   #13
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I buy batches of books at once too. I don't know why... it is always how I have done it. I used to borrow 14 books for ten days back when my local library still had a good collection of English language books -- it is focusing mainly on Chinese and Indian and Arabic books and videos now and doesn't do inter-library loan. Now about once a month I buy a big load of cheap eBooks and I have a huge collection of public domain and free download stuff still to get through.

I have been using Stanza Mobile on a hand held device and I really like it's library interface. It is easy to scroll through hundreds of files organized by author, title or tags and to jump to a specific letter and see many titles even on the three inch screen. I don't like the idea of that Home Screen but I have acquired the K3 mainly for the Read-to-Me feature.

Last edited by niceboy; 10-21-2010 at 01:07 PM.
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Old 10-21-2010, 01:08 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by duckeedoug View Post
Collections are great, but it would be nice to remove individual books/content from the home screen as long as they belong to a collection. I find the home screen just to cluttered since the books are now on the home screen as well as whatever collection that they have been added to. I believe that the home screen inventory is a poor implementation and should be cleaner
When you sort by 'title' instead of ' most recent first/author or collections' (on the upper part of the Kindle), it gives you a sorted list of the collections (also sorted within the name; _ C. Novel E-H etc) and only after the four or so pages (I have 23 collections) your home screen starts.
But mind you: put a space after the symbol you start your collectionname with or else nothing sorts right.

After adding some books by Calibre or else; sort by ' Collections' and than only the books that are not in a collection = the new ones appear after the list of the collections and you can send them (or not) to any collection using the 5-way.

With all of my 2000 books I have some advice:
Think before you load any book, on how you want them appear on your Kindle, what symbols to use (look on the forum)in which collection/ a specific collection split in parts etc.

Happy reading.

Last edited by desertblues; 10-21-2010 at 01:33 PM.
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Old 10-21-2010, 01:27 PM   #15
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I have my home screen set to sort by Collections. The only books that appear on the screen then are ones I have not placed in a collection.
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