Reasons not to put books in "Books"!

[jduck]

Some of you may realize some of this stuff, but I didn't really think about it until I got bitten.

I wanted all my books - Amazon and non-Amazon - to show up in the "Books" tab, so I had been copying them into my Books folder on the Fire.

The first inconvenient thing about this is that if you have already used the Kindle reading app since you last rebooted your Fire, you'll need to reboot your Fire (or just kill the Kindle app, which is a lot quicker!) to get new books to show up in your bookshelf.

The next inconvenient thing about this is that the books are not stored in the cloud. Which leads to the most inconvenient thing...

I de-registered my device (trying to solve an unrelated problem of my own creation) and did not expect what happened: almost ALL the contents of the Books folder were deleted, not just Amazon books. The only thing NOT deleted were a couple folders I had copied over in early attempts to sideload non-Amazon books (I just copied the whole folders from Calibre and then realized the Fire doesn't look in them, but never deleted them).

I still had the files on my computer, so the only big deal about this is having to re-locate my reading position, but still, a surprise.

So I guess going forward I will email (non-DRM) books to my me@kindle.com address. Sure, they will be in Docs instead of Books (which I don't like just because they're books, darn it!) but they'll be stored for me in the cloud.

If you use a 3rd party reader... don't save your books in the Books folder!

[ApK]

It's not the folder location that determine which tab/shelf they show up on, it's a metadata tag in the file. You can put all your files int he Documents folder, and have some show up on the Books tab and some on the Docs tab.

I do not know what determines what gets deleted when you deregister, though, the folder or the tags.

[jduck]

Originally Posted by ApK

It's not the folder location that determine which tab/shelf they show up on, it's a metadata tag in the file. You can put all your files int he Documents folder, and have some show up on the Books tab and some on the Docs tab.

I do not know what determines what gets deleted when you deregister, though, the folder or the tags.

That is a good point - I was setting the metadata tag so that they'd show up in Books, and it just seemed that Books was a logical location for the files as well. I don't think I had anything in the Documents folder that showed up in Books prior to deregistering. I wouldn't think the Documents folder gets touched when you deregister regardless of the tags though.

And as a matter of fact... I just tested it. Book in Documents, with tag so it shows up in the Books screen. While de-registered it still shows up in the Books screen. It wouldn't let me open it without registering though. After registering the file is still present in docs and it shows up in the Books screen - so that's good!

[Blossom]

I don't even use the book tab. I use docs then have the books I'm reading on the Carousel. It would be perfect if they fix the cover issue and it would sync Kindle to Kindle Fire. There are work arounds but it be nice if I didn't have to do that.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by jduck

Some of you may realize some of this stuff, but I didn't really think about it until I got bitten.

I wanted all my books - Amazon and non-Amazon - to show up in the "Books" tab, so I had been copying them into my Books folder on the Fire.

The first inconvenient thing about this is that if you have already used the Kindle reading app since you last rebooted your Fire, you'll need to reboot your Fire (or just kill the Kindle app, which is a lot quicker!) to get new books to show up in your bookshelf

Rebooting is not required if the books are side-loaded via Calibre. They appear instantaneously.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Rebooting is not required if the books are side-loaded via Calibre. They appear instantaneously.

I got the impression that they appear instantly if side-loaded by USB in any fashion, and that it's only when they are downloaded directly on the device that the restart is required.

[jduck]

Interesting, I always had to reboot my Fire when I'd copy books over via USB. But I haven't done that in a couple months now.

It may differ if you're copying amazon-purchased books that you downloaded to your pc for usb transfer.

It also may have been an issue that was resolved in a later software update since the last time I did it. When I did my test above, I did not have to do anything for the book to show up, but I hadn't yet used the reading app so I figured that was why.