CC: Books Already On Kindle

[Yvonne A]

This seems like a great app, but I'm a little confused, can't find an answer anywhere else, and am hoping you good folks will help.

I understand that I have to install Calibre on my laptop first, then install CC on my Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

But, none of my ebooks are on my laptop, so there's nothing to transfer to my Kindle. And, since all the ebooks come via Amazon, why would I need Calibre/CC to add/remove ebooks to the Kindle?

The demo looks great and I'd love to have the functionally on my Kindle Fire HDX, I just don't understand the add/remove thing.

[eschwartz]

The purpose of Calibre Companion is to grant you the kind of abilities for sorting and searching for books that you have in calibre.

You can handle all kinds of clever things, like Read status, series info, tags, and other arbitrarily powerful custom metadata types, in addition to the usual builtin title+author.

Perhaps you should be asking, what can calibre do, that you'd like to access the results of on your tablet.

Neither calibre nor Calibre Companion are necessarily for everyone, but they do do some cool things.

The people who use Calibre Companion, by definition use calibre as well... calibre is geared towards people who want to manage their books themselves and not just rely on Amazon's (or Kobo's or B&N's or Sony's or Google's) cloud servers, and the metadata types they support. Maybe not so necessary for people who have only a few/dozen books, but for those whose ebook collections span hundreds or even thousands of books (I do not know which group you are part of) it is a real lifesaver to be able to manage your library according to your own specifications. (In addition to consolidating multiple ebook libraries from multiple vendors, so you can use them on one device.)

And Calibre Companion lets you browse on your mobile device using the fruits of that labor.

[Yvonne A]

Thank you for your answer, eSchwartz. I'm in the many hundreds of books category, and, perhaps unwisely, keep adding more. The metadata and other features appeal to me greatly.

I'd like to install additional organizational tools on the Kindle and Calibre/CC seems to be the way to go.

None of my ebooks are on my laptop. Even ebooks borrowed from the public library are transferred directly to my Kindle, via Amazon.

Reading Quick Start that comes with Calibre, it appears that the Kindle must be connected to the laptop via USB cable to transfer ebooks to the laptop? Each time I add an ebook, the Kindle must be connected to the laptop?

Or, can transfers of ebooks between Calibre/CC take place over my home WiFi network?

Again, thanks for your fast answer.

[cybmole]

think of CC as providing the collection feature that Kindle Fire does not have. on KF you see your 100s of books all jumbled into the books folder and you cannot impose any structure on that.
I was horrified, when I got my KF HDX to find that there is no support for collections, even though the e-ink Kindles have it. lots of negative comment on amazon discussion re this but it seems that Amazon have no plans to ever add collections to KF- they'd rather you bought a 2nd Kindle device for your book collections!

CC uses wireless connection so there's no need to ever connect KF directly to calibre via USB. you do need to get your amazon books into calibre though , before you can use CC , & you will get help with that in the main calibre thread.

I read of an alternative called shelfari that gives you virtual shelves for all of your books at amazon, but I think it's only for .com users and I am .co.uk.
But if all your books are bought/borrowed via amazon that may be better for your needs, as you don't then need either calibre or CC

http://www.shelfari.com/
( its says "by amazon.com" so maybe they own it ?