MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - How to share only some books with Family Sharing?

elizilla · 04-22-2025, 01:51 PM

Yes, I am sure I did a factory reset. Several times, in fact. I also found a spot on the website where I could de register it, and tried that, to no avail.

I remember from my days supporting a (completely unrelated) software package that probably had a similar structure, how there is an underlying database, and then a bunch of processes that update tables. And if you can just trigger a process to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, then when it runs it updates the database and fixes things. I started looking for processes I could trigger, that touched these books.

So first I went to the content area on the Amazon website, and deleted a few books I didn’t mind losing from my account. This did not help, they were still listed on the Kindle.

Then I went to the screen on the Amazon website where you can check a box to share or unshare them in family sharing. The problem books showed as unshared, which is what I want, but I ticked the box to share one, saved, and then unshared it and saved again. Success! About ten seconds later the Kindle updated and the book disappeared.

I am guessing that when you change the family sharing default, whatever process runs, is optimized for speed rather thoroughness, and it misses the part where it’s supposed to take the listings out of the Kindle. Or perhaps when I changed the default, the process to put the books ON the Kindle was still running and had a lock on those database records, so the process to take them OFF was unable to run completely. I bet if I had waited long enough for all those books to load, before changing the default and starting the process to unload them, it would have worked just fine.

Anyways, it took a few hours but after touching each of the hundreds of problem books, my issue is mostly resolved.

I am down to just three problem books, but I have to log off now. I will post more details about those, after lunch.

04-22-2025, 01:51 PM	#7
elizilla Addict Posts: 271 Karma: 610286 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Michigan, USA Device: Kobo Elipsa, Kindle Paperwhite, Kobo Sage, others	Yes, I am sure I did a factory reset. Several times, in fact. I also found a spot on the website where I could de register it, and tried that, to no avail. I remember from my days supporting a (completely unrelated) software package that probably had a similar structure, how there is an underlying database, and then a bunch of processes that update tables. And if you can just trigger a process to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, then when it runs it updates the database and fixes things. I started looking for processes I could trigger, that touched these books. So first I went to the content area on the Amazon website, and deleted a few books I didn’t mind losing from my account. This did not help, they were still listed on the Kindle. Then I went to the screen on the Amazon website where you can check a box to share or unshare them in family sharing. The problem books showed as unshared, which is what I want, but I ticked the box to share one, saved, and then unshared it and saved again. Success! About ten seconds later the Kindle updated and the book disappeared. I am guessing that when you change the family sharing default, whatever process runs, is optimized for speed rather thoroughness, and it misses the part where it’s supposed to take the listings out of the Kindle. Or perhaps when I changed the default, the process to put the books ON the Kindle was still running and had a lock on those database records, so the process to take them OFF was unable to run completely. I bet if I had waited long enough for all those books to load, before changing the default and starting the process to unload them, it would have worked just fine. Anyways, it took a few hours but after touching each of the hundreds of problem books, my issue is mostly resolved. I am down to just three problem books, but I have to log off now. I will post more details about those, after lunch.