[meme]

The plugin only "sees" the collections stored on the Kindle currently connected. It does not copy them to your PC. So if you connect your new Kindle to the PC you will not see any collections on the new Kindle (because there aren't any until you create them).

As pchrist7 said you can simply copy your collections.json file from your old Kindle to your PC to make your own backup copy, then copy it to your new Kindle. Under Windows once you bring up File Manager and go to your Kindle, and add "system" to whichever drive letter is showing (e.g. "E:\system") to open the hidden "system" folder on the Kindle that contains the collections.json file. Obviously you need to restore all your files from your old Kindle to the new Kindle using exactly the same directories and filenames.

I can certainly see the need to backup/restore the collections file. If your Kindle were lost, you wouldn't have any collections.json file to restore, even if you could load your books again from Amazon or your PC. I haven't seen if Amazon provide any way to backup this file, but haven't looked. [EDIT: I see the Amazon User's guide entry mentioned above. Since I only have 1 Kindle I don't get the option to select collections from another device to load, but it sounds as if this would do a restore for you. Although I don't know if it stores any collection info for non-Amazon books on the Amazon site. If anyone can confirm it, then adding a backup facility wouldn't be needed).

I'll consider at some point whether the plugin should support making a backup copy of the collections file and the ability to restore it to any Kindle. At the moment customizations are saved per library and per Kindle on your PC, and backups are saved per Kindle on the Kindle. I'd need to save collections per Kindle on the PC. Probably save the collections automatically on connect and create/edit per Kindle - keeping either only the most recent one or the last few (to replace the current restore function), and offer a menu of choices for restore. The menu could just list dates of available backups per Kindle, possibly expandable to show collection names. But then it might need the ability to delete old Kindles, and if it allowed giving the Kindle a name to show in the list it would need to support deleting and renaming.

It goes from something simple to something that might be a bit more confusing, and may not be any more helpful than just copying the collections file along with the books. Of course, you need to know you have to copy the collections file, where it is and how to get it first.