How to you manage your Kindle for PC?

[Ripplinger]

I don't have a Kindle, but I buy quite a bit from Amazon and convert to epub for my Sony. I just cringe though everytime I have to open up my Kindle for PC to download the books because it's such a mess. How do I go about fixing this mess?

1. Some books refuse to show covers even though they're within the book.

2. The majority of the books are listed up to 5x, showing 5 different entries for the same book side-by-side; even within the books that are listed 5x, some will show covers and some will not for the same book. Some have a right click option to "Delete this book" or "Remove from Device" and that usually removes just one copy. Others only have the option to "Remove from Collection" and that seems to delete all copies of the book. Right click options aren't always the same between books, even books of the same name.

3. Files within my "My Kindle Content" directory are an equal mess, a lot of books are named with numbers such as "B00AD5F87C_EBOK.azw" so you don't know what they are until you open them (that one is Diaboliq).

4. When I purchased a $.99 book awhile back, my bank wasn't able to handle anything under $1.00, their system would just spit it out automatically and wouldn't accept the charge. That has now been fixed and I have downloaded the book, but now I have a permanent entry where it looks like a book but is entitled "Credit Card problem note, Download Failed. When you click on that it does nothing, just constantly spins trying to load. There is no option when you right click to "Delete this book".

Is there anyway to get rid of the duplicate entries, rename the numbered files into book titles, force covers to show, and get rid of old note that does nothing about the $.99 failed? I really hate this craptastic piece of software I'm forced to use to be able to purchase books from Amazon, but it seems a necessary evil. Hopefully there's a way to get it more organized though so I can see books I've purchased from Amazon without all this mess, and just one copy of each book.

[DuckieTigger]

3.) This is normal, all books from Amazon are named B00xxxxxx. Anything else you managed to sideload into kindle for pc.

1, 2, 4.) To fix this unregister k4pc in your manage your kindle - manage devices page. Then uninstall k4pc, delete kindlecontent, reinstall k4pc, register to amazon account, download your books from cloud. Now don't use k4pc any more other than downloading books out of cloud or reading them on computer. Import all books to calibre from kindlecontent, convert to epub, sideload to other devices that like epub. Since you sound like you done it before, insert steps to allow converting of drm books to epub. If you don't sideload to K4PC it should stay nice and clean.

[HarryT]

There's no need to look at the library listing if all you're using it for is to buy books and transfer them to Calibre for conversion.

All I do is:

1. Buy the book from the Amazon web site and tell it to send it to "Kindle for PC".
2. Run K4PC and let it download the book.
3. Open Windows Explorer, navigate to "My Documents\My Kindle Content" and sort the display by descending date order.
4. Drag and drop the new book(s) from the Windows Explorer window onto Calibre.

Job done.

[booklover6]

You can now set Calibre to automatically download anything that is put into a certain file. I set that file to My Kindle Content. Now I never have to open that file.

As to how to manage the Kindle for PC app, I don't. It is nasty. All I do is open it to download, then close it back up.

[Ripplinger]

HarryT's steps is exactly my process, I sort by date to find the newest book added. But opening K4PC at all really pushes my need to organize things neatly out the window.

I'll have to try setting Calibre to auto-download anything new from that folder as booklover6 said, I didn't know Calibre was capable of doing that.

I might try de-registering as DuckieTigger said, but it sounds like within a few months it'll be a royal mess again on its own.

I'll just have to suck it up and learn to ignore the messy clutter in K4PC.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I'll just have to suck it up and learn to ignore the messy clutter in K4PC.

That's exactly what I do - ignore it. I never read books in K4PC - it's there purely as a source of books for Calibre.

[DiapDealer]

My Kindle for PC app rarely has more than one book in its library. Most of the time it has none.

[jersysman]

Be careful with the auto-add directory feature in Calibre. It can be set to delete books in that directory after moving to Calibre library. That is unless you want to do that. I believe there's a setting in Calibre Preferences to either turn this feature on or turn it off. I do not remember what is the default.

[Dr. Drib]

One may wish to start the process in a clean environment - 'clean' being a new calibre file specifically for Amazon titles and for nothing else.

1) Create a new calibre file
2) download every kindle book you own (a tedious process, depending upon how many Kindle books you own.
3) Put them all in to calibre
4) Go to bed (depends upon the size of your library).


The question now remains what to do with those Kindle books that now reside in the Kindle Folder in the Documents area. After all, those same titles now exist in calibre - where you can play with them to your heart's content.



Don

[Blossom]

I download the book then put it in Calibre then delete the book from K4PC. I do this in batches. There's really no need to keep a copy on K4PC unless you are reading it from there. Everything is in your Archive and can be downloaded when you need it.

I open the Kindle content folder and delete everything in it once I am done backing up the books in Calibre.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by jersysman

Be careful with the auto-add directory feature in Calibre. It can be set to delete books in that directory after moving to Calibre library. That is unless you want to do that. I believe there's a setting in Calibre Preferences to either turn this feature on or turn it off. I do not remember what is the default.

I do want them deleted.

[Ripplinger]

Yesterday I made sure all of the books in the "My Kindle Content" directory were indeed added into Calibre (they were), and then I deleted all of them. Restarted Kindle for PC and I had back only one copy of each book in the library, and covers were showing. Partial success.

But that annoying fake book about the $.99 charge my bank didn't like is forever there, so I decided to annoy Amazon with it this morning . After over an hour and going through 2 reps, they decided to escalate it as a bug to the developers and they'd get back to me. But the last rep gave me $10 in my Amazon account for books! So it wasn't a total waste.

Steps taken to remove that fake book: I de-registered Kindle for PC as one of my devices, uninstalled it totally, reinstalled it, re-registered it (each step at least 3x) and still that fake book that won't download or open remains there. The rep had me delete the book the note was about from my Kindle account (which as I suspected did nothing about the fake note still there), and she had to then manually give the book back to me.

From now on I plan on deleting everything from that directory once I have it in Calibre. It seems that if I ever open a mobi book from anywhere else with K4PC, that the program automatically not only adds it to the library but also copies the book into the "My Kindle Content" directory, and there doesn't seem to be any setting to stop it from doing that. So that's probably where all the duplicates came from, if I had to check a problem on the conversion to epub, I'd open the mobi to check if it was present there (and it usually was). Open the book again later, and K4PC adds the same book yet again. Really horrible software.

But at least I get a free book out of it or more depending on cost.

[gggggg]

Hope you can help
As the collection manager plugin only works with a jailbreak on the PW5.3.3 I decided to use k4pc to set up my collections and later import them on my PW via W-LAN from the kindle cloud lib....

All fine, but how can I get books not bought from Amazon into that prozess ? The book I tried has "mobi-asin:B0083...." in ist meta tag

- If I download them from calibre via usb and add them to a collection on the PW, they dont show up in the cloud (so no way to k4pc)

- If I email them from calibre, they sit in the personal documents folder but can only be deliverd to the PW and not to K4PC (grayed out). On the PW I can add them to a collection, but even if import this PW collection from within k4pc the book does not show up

- if I directly copy such a book to the k4pc Folder, it shows up but cant be transferred to the kindle cloud lib or the PW ...

[nynaevelan]

I use k4pc to manage my collections, it stores all my Amazon purchases as well as Overdrive Library books. The collection creation and management on the PW is still clunky, so I use my K4PC to manage and then import into my other devices/k4pc apps. I also like to keep local copies of all my books, I have had a few of my free ones disappear from the Cloud, so I no longer trust that Amazon will keep them all, so my local copies are available for when I decide to get around to reading those free books. I just wish they would add the ability to sort or rearrange the collections in K4PC. My Calibre is used to maintain my library and export to Fire and PW.

[christineb]

nynaevelan - be careful counting on the local copies in K4PC. I had to reload my computer after a hard drive crash. I had everything backed up, but when I reinstalled K4PC it didnt recognize any of the local copies of my books in the kindle content folder. I'm guessing the computer looked like a different device to Amazon. Foutunately I had them all in Calibre so I didn't lose anything.