Is it possible to have too many ebooks.

[alanHd]

When i first got my kindle i trawled the internet for free ebooks, now i have so many free books i feel like i have too many.

I love to read but no way am i going to get through them all in my lifetime and also i have so much choice it gets harder to choose what to read next.

Should i cull my library, or save them just incase.

[Katsunami]

I'd dump all of them into a folder somewhere on your hard drive, and remove them from Calibre. If you're looking for something new to read, then look in that pile first, and if you find something you like, import it into Calibre. I do it this way: every book I've got in Calibre has been read, or will certainly be read. All the rest is stored somewhere else, which is basically a huge bunch of classics of which I don't know if I will ever read (all of) them.

[rhadin]

It's not possible to have too many books, whether e or p. My current ebook TBR pile has about 3,000 ebooks and I add to it regularly. As what I want to read changes, I've got the change covered.

[booklover6]

No. You can create separate libraries in Calibre to help you sort what you want to read soon from the hordes of other books. Just don't try to put them all on your ereader.

[DrNefario]

If your collection is as hard to navigate as it is to find the book on the Internet and download it again, then you may have too many books.

[issybird]

Cull. Even eclutter is time-consuming and draining.

The classics will always be out there, so wait and download on demand. As for the rest of the freebies, the vast majority are fully priced at best and just so much junk. Ask yourself, "Would I pay £2 for this?" If not, get rid of it.

You'll learn by culling; you'll have a much better sense of which ebooks you might actually read and it will help keep you from going overboard again. Especially since Amazon makes it so difficult to cut down on the accumulation! You won't want to go through that again.

[pwalker8]

In general, I group my books in categories or collections. That helps me keep track of what I've read, what I want to read and what to read next. Depending on my moods, I might be actively reading 5 books at a time, so I have one list that are books that I am currently reading. I have other lists such as novels to be read, history books to be read, WW II books to be read, non-fiction to be read.

[alanHd]

I really need to get my TBR list under control, the trouble is i come on here and there are so many great recomendations.

Even tho i read about 3 books a week (I have a long journey to work) my TBR list just keeps growing.

[faithbw]

The majority of books on my e-reader are freebies I haven't looked at since I downloaded them. So yes, I think you can have too many e-books. I've begun to sort them using Calibre. I have to go through them one day and delete the ones where I lost interest in reading them.

[david_e]

No. Impossible.

[QuantumIguana]

I have about 20,000 books that I downloaded from Project Gutenberg. There's no clutter, they sit neatly on some unused space on my hard drive. It may be possible to have too many books on your e-reader. On my Kindle I had around 700 books, I didn't delete anything. I had to reset it to factory settings, and since then I keep a lot less books on my Kindle. I'm comfortable removing them because I know I can get them back whenever I want.

[exscentric]

NEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! To download is to own, posses, and KEEP forevaaaaa! Well till the drive crashes.

I download anything that comes along, I might want it someday :-) That is why my garage looks kinda like a hardware store. Boxes and boxes of screws, nails, parts etc.

[alanHd]

Originally Posted by exscentric

NEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! To download is to own, posses, and KEEP forevaaaaa! Well till the drive crashes.

I download anything that comes along, I might want it someday :-) That is why my garage looks kinda like a hardware store. Boxes and boxes of screws, nails, parts etc.

You know what they say about backing up everything to 3 seperate locations, i found out to my cost when my laptop hard drive went FUBAR and i hadnt backed it up.

i think I'm going to split my free books from my main Library and just keep my paid books in view at all times.

On a side note what do people use to manage there TBR list. do you use custom columns in Calibre or something like a spreadsheet

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by alanHd

On a side note what do people use to manage there TBR list. do you use custom columns in Calibre or something like a spreadsheet

I use the Reading List plugin to Calibre - which adds a tag to the books concerned. I also use Goodreads.

[piperclassique]

Keep them. Storage is cheap and you never know, one day the internet may close for business.