Which book downloaded to which device?

[Julius Caesar]

If you have your books downloaded to more than one device, including Kindle for PC, is there anyway to quickly find out which books get downloaded to which device from your Amazon account website without actually checking each device one by one?
For example: can I quickly find out from the website that I have Harry Potter book has been downloaded to Kindle Fire and Kindle Voyage and Steve Jobs Book has been downloaded to Kindle Paper White?

[Cinisajoy]

If you are using Amazon, then if you don't pick a device, they go to your default device.
I don't know of a quick way to check.

[Dr. Drib]

As mentioned, go to Amazon and choose a device (of your choice) to download. That will become your default device. (You can always change it.)

It will then become the device where your downloads automatically occur.

However, since things are in the Cloud, simply turn off your Airplane mode and check 'All' and look at all of your ebooks. Then, if you wish, just click on it and it will download automatically (to one of your other Kindle devices).

[barryem]

I have quite a few devices that I read on, several Kindles and phones. Because I never knew which one I'm likely to pick up to read with I was always running into problems with device limits. The current book won't download to this device because it's reached it's device limit.

I solved this, with Amazon's permission, sort of, by removing DRM and sending the book back to Amazon to be downloaded as a document and those have no such limits.

Because I don't want to hurt my relationship with Amazon I called their Kindle support about this and asked if it was okay. The guy I talked with said he had no idea but he'd ask around. He called me back later and said that everyone he talked with including his supervisor could see no problem with this and that several did it themselves.

What that really amounts to is a lot of personal opinions even though they're opinions that are at least somewhat informed. It's not official permission from Amazon. But I feel fine about it since then and I've probably been doing it for 2 or 3 years now and never an issue.

My guess is that Amazon has a lot of rules they really care about and a lot of rules they have in place in case they're needed and this is one of them.

I sometimes wonder if the reason the KF8 files don't download to Kindle for PC is because Calibre can't deal with them yet. They did stop us from jailbreaking Kindles easily and they could stop us backing up unprotected copies of our books even more easily, but they don't. Of course this is just a question. I don't pretend to know the answer.

I buy nearly all of my books from Amazon. And then I send them back to them before I'm ready to read them. It's a good system and it works and it's simple and it avoids a lot of problems.

Barry

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by barryem

I have quite a few devices that I read on, several Kindles and phones. Because I never knew which one I'm likely to pick up to read with I was always running into problems with device limits. The current book won't download to this device because it's reached it's device limit.

I solved this, with Amazon's permission, sort of, by removing DRM and sending the book back to Amazon to be downloaded as a document and those have no such limits.

Because I don't want to hurt my relationship with Amazon I called their Kindle support about this and asked if it was okay. The guy I talked with said he had no idea but he'd ask around. He called me back later and said that everyone he talked with including his supervisor could see no problem with this and that several did it themselves.

What that really amounts to is a lot of personal opinions even though they're opinions that are at least somewhat informed. It's not official permission from Amazon. But I feel fine about it since then and I've probably been doing it for 2 or 3 years now and never an issue.

My guess is that Amazon has a lot of rules they really care about and a lot of rules they have in place in case they're needed and this is one of them.

I sometimes wonder if the reason the KF8 files don't download to Kindle for PC is because Calibre can't deal with them yet. They did stop us from jailbreaking Kindles easily and they could stop us backing up unprotected copies of our books even more easily, but they don't. Of course this is just a question. I don't pretend to know the answer.

I buy nearly all of my books from Amazon. And then I send them back to them before I'm ready to read them. It's a good system and it works and it's simple and it avoids a lot of problems.

Barry

Another work around is make sure the book you are reading has this:
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
There are many that do say that.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by barryem

My guess is that Amazon has a lot of rules they really care about and a lot of rules they have in place in case they're needed and this is one of them.

This generally means that some or all big no-longer-Six publishers insisted on the rule and Amazon itself doesn't give a damn. This appears to be true for the entire DRM thing (as Charlie Stross and others have commented in the past), of which the device limit is one aspect.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by NullNix

This generally means that some or all big no-longer-Six publishers insisted on the rule and Amazon itself doesn't give a damn. This appears to be true for the entire DRM thing (as Charlie Stross and others have commented in the past), of which the device limit is one aspect.

The publisher decides rather or not to DRM.
So not sure there is a rule.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

The publisher decides rather or not to DRM.
So not sure there is a rule.

Suffice to say they insisted on DRM existing at all, and refused to countenance an alternative for a very long time.

[barryem]

Several years ago I was asked to participate in a special forum organized by Audible to bounce some of their ideas off us to get our reactions. It included a number of officers at Audible and a number of developers and also the heads of Audible in 2 or 3 countries. I participated for a couple of years and it was a very active forum. I think about 30 customers were asked to be in this.

One recurring topic was DRM and the guys at Audible always reacted with the same dislike of DRM that we customers did. They often said, and always gave the impression, that they hated it but it was required in order to get publishers to give them titles. I don't think I ever heard anyone at Audible ever defend DRM on any basis other than that.

I have no idea if they were just spouting the company line or saying what they thought but I always felt like it was the latter. They often did stick with the company line and it didn't take long to be able to recognize that.

My guess, and I don't recall if any of them actually said this, is that DRM was expensive, in terms of development, support and direct costs, and that they'd love to be rid of it.

I should mention that this all took place long before Amazon bought Audible so I have no real reason to think Amazon's opinion is similar. I'd be a bit surprised if it isn't, though.

Barry

[stumped]

PS be aware of this related qurik:
I bought a humble bundle charity books package & decided to use their send-to-kindle options. So, I dug out my send-to addresses and because I was not sure whether i'd be reading on my Fire or my voyage, I sent them to each of the kindle addresses...
Result: Duplicates galore! 2 copies of everything appeared in my cloud
Moral: only ever send to one kindle address, your other devices will have cloud access anyway.
I still can't believe the cloud software is so dumb & did not go " er... got those already... "

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by stumped

PS be aware of this related qurik:
I bought a humble bundle charity books package & decided to use their send-to-kindle options. So, I dug out my send-to addresses and because I was not sure whether i'd be reading on my Fire or my voyage, I sent them to each of the kindle addresses...
Result: Duplicates galore! 2 copies of everything appeared in my cloud
Moral: only ever send to one kindle address, your other devices will have cloud access anyway.
I still can't believe the cloud software is so dumb & did not go " er... got those already... "

If it's not an Amazon book (which it's not, if you do a "send to kindle", whether it originally was or not) then perhaps Amazon doesn't even look at the contents. Another reason why they (used to?) label those as "docs" rather than books.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

If it's not an Amazon book (which it's not, if you do a "send to kindle", whether it originally was or not) then perhaps Amazon doesn't even look at the contents. Another reason why they (used to?) label those as "docs" rather than books.

They were humble bundle charity purchases, not amazon books, as explained, so yes they appeared as .mobi format docs.

It seems the cloud is quite happy to host two or more files with identical titles, authors... the only different attribute being the exact creation time . [ other file systems like windows would choke on that & would append [1} to the duplicate name.]
maybe that went on behind the scenes, but all I saw, in manage my devices and content , were two identical entries per book.
I had to clean up via PC web page to weed out my duplicates as there is no proper " delete" for sent-to-kindle docs in cloud on the Kindle hardware- not a big deal really, just a surprising outcome.
I don't get the logic of issuing different send-to addresses for each device if everything sent is going to be merged into a single cloud collection which then appears on every device.
Maybe it is still an evolving proposition, I know they keep tweaking it e,g, those sent docs no longer also go to my cloud drive like they used to & there was a mailshot explaining that ( well not really "explaining " it, just saying the rules had changed ) .
I also have a feeling that when I buy an actual Amazon book via PC + web site, then my Fire tablet always gets it on auto-download no matter what device I choose at checkout, but my voyage gets a download only if I so specify. I will recheck that next time I buy a book.. [ hmm - is there even a " what device is this for" question at PC checkout - note to self - pay closer attention next time - I think not because for a Kindle book it is always processed as a 1 click, even if you have that disabled for other shopping - so the only message is " you just bought it " ? - not "how would you like to pay" or "where do you want it delivered to" ]

[badgoodDeb]

The send-to address thing was in existence LONG before the cloud was.

And yeah, it's useful for sending to different devices. But with the cloud, you don't need that. Still, older kindles don't DO the cloud, so I don't imagine they can get rid of the send-to service.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by stumped

I also have a feeling that when I buy an actual Amazon book via PC + web site, then my Fire tablet always gets it on auto-download no matter what device I choose at checkout, but my voyage gets a download only if I so specify. I will recheck that next time I buy a book..

I don't think it's supposed to "go to your Fire no matter what you choose". Are you sure the Voyage is specified as the device you *wanted* it to go to? If so, then the Fire ought to get a download only if you so specify. (Unless Fires go by totally different rules; I don't have one.)

[crane3]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I don't think it's supposed to "go to your Fire no matter what you choose". Are you sure the Voyage is specified as the device you *wanted* it to go to? If so, then the Fire ought to get a download only if you so specify. (Unless Fires go by totally different rules; I don't have one.)

I also buy via the pc & website. My default device is the pc & the book get auto downloaded to my fire hdx. I did tell Amazon to also send a book to the fire at one time & got a notification on the fire that it already had it.

So now I have some "dups" on the Fire HDX as I had also installed Calibre Companion on the Fire. May start to read on the Fire using the Amazon reader instead of Moon+ for a while......