New Paperwhite Owner

[jhempel24]

Proud new owner of a Kindle Paperwhite here. I had been looking for a long time regarding another eInk device, my Nook Color has been on it's last leg for a while now regarding battery life, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go another tablet route. But I wanted a light to read before bed rather than a clip on light.

Now I have always been a "Nook" guy. I bought all my books there, but I do input and convert via calibre, so it's kind of a non-issue except I liked the store front, and the device was much better once it was rooted.

But I cannot deny the simple fact that the technology being used in the paperwhite is just much better than the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight.

I do think this will be a great little device, but now I've got to convert my library to azw3 before transferring now lol

The questions I do have are regarding libraries/collection sorting and personal cloud content (not via amazon cloud):

When setting collections, do all the books still sit on the front page, or can I set it up to have just my un-catagorized books (essentially TBR) seen and others in categories that I can access?

Can I access dropbox and transfer via dropbox?

[HarryT]

The "Collections" view will show you first your collections, and then the books which are not in any collection.

[medard]

You should create an own collection for your TBR books.. It's indeed a bit difficult to find a solution in this jungle at the beginning, but maybe you'll like this collection system once you got used to it.

[jhempel24]

Yeah the sorting is kind of odd at the moment. I'm wondering how it sorts the books after the collections are in place, there doesn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason. I finally got them to sort properly transferring from Calibre, moving the series in the title, so that's something. I enjoy reading on the device, no doubt about it!

I even enjoy the ads actually. Alot of stuff comes up that I might want to get

[HarryT]

Personally I find author sort to be the most useful. I prefix the book's title with the series name and the number within the series using a Calibre "plugboard". That means that the author sort shows me authors in order, and series in order within each author.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but in author and title sort orders, if you tap the "page indicator" at the bottom right of the home page ("2/35" or whatever it may say) it brings up a search box which takes you directly to either a page number, or (much more usefully) to authors or titles beginning with a string you enter. Eg, if I want to go to my Agatha Christie books, I tap the page indicator, and enter "ch", then "Goto", and I'm at the start of the authors starting in "ch". For that reason, I don't use collections. I used to, but Calibre's plugboards give me a way of sorting my books which, for me, works a lot better.

[jhempel24]

I found what works for me so far. I can add the books I'm done reading to a collection, and in collection view just show "books" so it won't show the collection list. I don't really have a ton of books on my device for TBR, so sorting them past 6 books doesn't much mean anything, it was more of a way to sort my series when I'm done reading them.

HarryT: What you have does sound intriguing though, can you share what you have for your plugboard set up? I'd like to try that!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jhempel24

HarryT: What you have does sound intriguing though, can you share what you have for your plugboard set up? I'd like to try that!

Sure. I have:

Format: Mobi
Device: Any Device
Source Template: {series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}
Destination Field: Title

and the same again for formats "PRC" and "AZW3".

(I should probably just have a single plugboard and use "Any Format". Mine have "grown" rather than being planned )

That plugboard gives titles in the format:

Miss Marple 01 - The Murder at the Vicarage

for example.

[jhempel24]

ah okay. that's what I have. I have multiple authors writing in the same series, so sorting by authors doesn't work as well for series (like star wars/Star trek). I misread your post.

[HarryT]

No problem. What works for you is what's important!

[jhempel24]

yup.....next question, 'cause I find this kind of neat, but not sure if it's really accurate:

Does the "time remaining" feature actually work. What happens if you are reading and have to step away for a bit in the middle of a page?

[HarryT]

Yes, it works, and it works beautifully! It's dynamic, so it adjusts itself to your current reading speed.

[jhempel24]

that is so cool! I'm beginning to think I chose wisely in the eInk department. I actually agonized over this decision because I was such a Nook person, and almost went with B&N because I already was B&N.

This is a much better device out of the box for me.

[Dr. Drib]

How important is it to convert from epub-to-mobi vs. epub-to-azw3, I wonder.



Don

[HarryT]

These days I always convert to AZW3. Really no reason at all to use Mobi any more. AZW3 supports much richer formatting, and if the book contains it, you'll lose it if you convert to Mobi (embedded fonts, for example).

[jhempel24]

Ive gotten better results with azw3 so far.