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

[Bookworm_Girl]

I am going through a similar process although I have a few hundred rather than thousand freebies to sort through. Most of them are older. These days I am more thoughtful in what I select. I am a hoarder too so there is a momentary flash of anxiety before I hit that delete button. However I know I will feel much better mentally when my library is cleaner, and I can focus on the books that I really want to read. My TBR is already too long so why make it anymore overwhelming than it needs to be!

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

...
Getting rid of about 1,000 titles is probably too small a number. I'm now considering permanently deleting about 1500 - 1600 freebie titles.

However, the actual process of deleting them is a daunting task, since Amazon does not allow for bulk deletions, to the best of my knowledge.

Try one of these bookmarklets for your browser, they make mass deleting things much easier.

http://massdestroykindleitems.com/
http://pepa.info/check-and-delete/

Andrew

[CWatkinsNash]

Like some others that have posted, I rarely see that part of my Amazon account. I do occasionally check for updated books, but that's it.

I have about 3500 books in calibre. They are organized (for the most part ) so that I can easily find what I want (whether a specific author / title, or genre, etc) at any given time.

I do not permanently delete books. I do have an archive library, but that's to store originals of omnibuses / collections that I split into individual books, that sort of thing. My main library has search filters that I use to hide / show books I've already read, books I marked as did-not-finish, etc.

It doesn't matter if I never get around to reading them. I read in so many genres that it's always a possibility that a particular book will get read at some point, and that's enough reason to keep it. It's kind of like my music collection. Nearly 20,000 tracks from nearly every genre you can imagine. And each on is there because I wanted it there. If I'm in the mood for Classical, it's there. Blues? Got it covered. Demonic-sounding surf guitar extravaganzas? Absolutely.

I totally understand deleting books you know you'll never read. I just don't think I have any that I can say that about with 100% certainty. Just in case you thought I was screaming in horror at the idea of someone deleting a book. I'm not. I just don't do it myself.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Try one of these bookmarklets for your browser, they make mass deleting things much easier.

http://massdestroykindleitems.com/
http://pepa.info/check-and-delete/

Andrew

Thank you.

I wasn't aware of these, but there is an inherent danger in using them, aS I discovered from reading a bit from the second linked item. From the 'check-and-delete' page, there is this warning:


"WARNING:
Before you start using this bookmarklet, you should understand why including a third party javascript to your Amazon page is risky. This is in fact true about all bookmarklets that link to some other server and download javascript from it. My bookmarklet does it as well as MDKI mentioned below. The linked code will have the same permissions that you have yourself. It can "click" links and do stuff in your Amazon account. You really have to trust the script author that he's not going to do anything bad. Verifying the code is a good thing to do but will not save your bacon for ever. The author can change the script at any time and you won't be able to tell. Or a hacker can break into the script hosting website and add malicious code without the script author having a clue. That's why I link myk-check-delete.js from googlecode.com. I hope that Google's server will be more difficult to hack" :-)






DON

[DiapDealer]

I do admit that I'm quite often puzzled by the line of reasoning that places some sort of qualitative merit on a personal library's "ability" to be entirely consumed within the time constraints of its curator's life-span. *shrugs*

[Ralph Sir Edward]

Don,

Don't let it worry you. It's only electrons...

I first went through this problem when I had paper books and only had so much space to store books in. I would cull the paper books and sell them used. I don't get too many freebie books, but I have around 1400 books on my library. There's around 100 more titles I would like to add, if I could buy decent e-book versions.

We were reared to believe that books were the finest flower of civilization (true), and that they were scarce. They aren't scarce any more. So don't worry about deleting those you don't want, either somebody else will save them (for whatever reason), or they weren't worth saving.

RSE (Cabell fan)

[JSWolf]

What I need to do it get rid of the samples I have sitting in my nook and Amazon accounts. They have no value beyond looking at them the first time.

[jersysman]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

I do not permanently delete books. I do have an archive library, but that's to store originals of omnibuses / collections that I split into individual books, that sort of thing. My main library has search filters that I use to hide / show books I've already read, books I marked as did-not-finish, etc...

This is the same thing that I do with EpubSplit. It's good to know someone else is doing what I am doing with the books that I have split.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I do admit that I'm quite often puzzled by the line of reasoning that places some sort of qualitative merit on a personal library's "ability" to be entirely consumed within the time constraints of its curator's life-span. *shrugs*

For me it's not about merit so much as pragmatism. I like being able to browse my library and find my next book to read. Yes I can search and filter and so on but with so many books, especially many that I may not remember when or where or why I downloaded them, it's harder. In any case I've no fear that should I suddenly get a hankering for a particular book or type of book that I don't currently have that it will have disappeared. If I really thought that then I would download it. It most cases either it'll still be there later or I won't really miss it that much.

Part of restricting my library is about making sure I don't have a crippling amount of choice right now.

[susan_cassidy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I need to do it get rid of the samples I have sitting in my nook and Amazon accounts. They have no value beyond looking at them the first time.

Samples are not kept in your Amazon account, only on your device/app. I don't know how Nook does it.

[DiapDealer]

I guess I can understand that, somewhat, @latepaul. It's just that I've never really experienced being "crippled with choice." I just start reading something. If it hooks me, I keep reading it. It it doesn't hook me, I set it aside for another day. If a book gets "set aside" too many times, it will likely be discarded. I just never give myself any opportunity to NOT be reading something.

It seems to me that many people spend a lot of energy/time making sure they're going to love a book before they read a single word of it. Whereas I'm not afraid to start a book I may wind up hating after two chapters and discarding it for something else. Different strokes, I guess.

[Ravensknight]

This is why I don't do "indie" until it has a good following/rating on Goodreads.
Too much drek out there...

[Synamon]

I've got around 600 freebies segregated in their own calibre library. I haven't bothered sorting or deleting them, they take up very little space on my computer so I'm fine keeping them around. Most aren't actually indies, they were published by small presses or self-published after getting rights back from the bigger publishers. I tend to avoid straight up indies.

I have only read a small fraction of them and probably won't read most, but every few months I load 20 on my reader and try out a few. I have actually found two authors I like the past year this way and have gone on to read more of their books.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Samples are not kept in your Amazon account, only on your device/app. I don't know how Nook does it.

Nook samples have to be deleted from your account library. They sync with your various devices just like purchased books.

[graycyn]

Yes, it's something I an considering. When I first got an reader I accumulated any freebie that was enormously of interest, and now find myself with a larger library than I'm ever likely to read through. I haven't done anything about it yet, but sooner or later, I think I will thin the ranks.