Can't find books purchased to transfer to Calibre - KFire HD

[kohlersc]

So my machine and calibre detects my Kindle Fire HD. But what it doesn't detect is any books on my Kindle. I have purchased about 10 books from Amazon and they are on my Kindle Fire HD...now I want to transfer them to Calibre...but Calibre doesn't see them.

Any clue why? Where I can find them? How I can easily back-up my purchased books from the Kindle Fire HD to Calibre on my computer?

[eschwartz]

Calibre cannot locate books on the Kindle Fire if they were downloaded from the Kindle Store, although it can locate books that have been sideloaded to recognizable locations. (Like calibre does.)

If you wish to add your Kindle books to calibre, install the Kindle 4 PC app, and tell calibre to add the books from there.

Remember, the books will be locked with DRM, so they will be unreadable. If you know the drill, , if not...

MobileRead has a policy about not giving guides in DRM circumvention, but we are allowed to say this much -- google "apprentice alf" for help.

[Barbara1955]

eschwartz
Beat me to it LOL

[kohlersc]

Thank you. So just to make sure...I never had to do anything funny when I had my Kindle 1st and 3rd edition (originals with keyboard), and the original Fire also allowed me to pull my purchased books off. But the new Kindle Fire HD doesn't? Just making sure this is something different based on the hardware and I'm not going crazy.

[eschwartz]

Yeah, the tablets are based on a whole different design. The books are IIRC in an Android appdata folder somewhere hidden, (although you can probably find it with effort, calibre can't) as opposed to the mounted userstore on an e-ink which is by design easy to find.

The tablets are Android, the e-inks aren't.

And Alf didn't invest in finding out how to fix the DRM on the Fires either, but that's a story for elsewhere (read the blog).

[jj2me]

Calibre magazines and newspapers on your HD that were e-mailed via your ...@kindle.com address also cannot be managed by Calibre.

Sometimes I get a large backlog of unread magazines and newspapers that I want to remove, maybe a hundred, and it's so tedious to remove them via the HD's capacitive touch UI.

I once tried to locate the files using Windows Explorer but did not find them within 10 minutes. Then I tried methodically to match the numbers of Calibre-sourced Docs on my HD with weirdly-named files on my HD. After about 15 minutes of that, including miscounting Docs because of poor scrolling ability (accidentally opening files while scrolling), I just gave up.

Calibre management of Docs worked fine on my Kindle Keyboard, like eschwartz says.

[DiapDealer]

I have no idea if what you want to do with them will work or not, but physically locating the files of your purchased ebooks on your KFHD isn't all that hard. When viewing the KFHD as an external drive (USB cable), they're in Internal Storage "/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files/Books". They're usually .prc files, but each is located in it's own subdirectory in the Books folder. They're not all lumped in one folder.

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I have no idea if what you want to do with them will work or not, but physically locating the files of your purchased ebooks on your KFHD isn't all that hard.

If you're addressing my post, right, books are easy, it's Calibre-produced magazines and newspapers that can't be identified. The three directories with a lot of entries, which might be my Calibre news docs, are under
Android/data/files/:
- explore
- medium
- small

My use would be to occasionally delete a hundred or so of the older newspapers and magazines that have accumulated (mostly unread).

I originally thought that if I could find that set of files on the HD using Windows Explorer, I might then be able to puzzle out some logic that would match the unfriendly filenames to particular Docs/newspapers/magazines. But now I think this is a fruitless pursuit, because either the unfriendly filenames would need to unambiguously identify documents, or I would need to have some influence over the original file naming--both very unlikely.

[eschwartz]

As far as send-to-kindle woes go:

Remember, if you sideload stuff directly with calibre onto the Kindle Fire, it will allow you control too!

calibre just stores them in the documents folder of your personal storage, and controls the filename. Sideloading +1!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by jj2me

If you're addressing my post, right, books are easy, it's Calibre-produced magazines and newspapers that can't be identified.

Sorry for any confusion. I was addressing the O.P. Who specifically mentioned they were looking for the books they purchased.

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

As far as send-to-kindle woes go:

Remember, if you sideload stuff directly with calibre onto the Kindle Fire, it will allow you control too!

calibre just stores them in the documents folder of your personal storage, and controls the filename. Sideloading +1!

So it's down to which lazy wins?

The plug-in lazy? (But automagic delivery is so nice!)
-or-
The delete-from-screen lazy? (Also have to delete from Personal Docs in Amazon's Manage My Kindle section.)

But thanks for the definitive answer on what was going on with the Fire HD compared to my Kindle Keyboard, that it's the Android implementation. Otherwise I might still be thinking I could somehow "fix" my HD.

[EDIT: Hey, you gotta stop being so helpful! The karma button's disallowing me from giving you karma again so soon. Which is a policy that seems anti-karma.]

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by jj2me

So it's down to which lazy wins?

The plug-in lazy? (But automagic delivery is so nice!)
-or-
The delete-from-screen lazy? (Also have to delete from Personal Docs in Amazon's Manage My Kindle section.)

But thanks for the definitive answer on what was going on with the Fire HD compared to my Kindle Keyboard, that it's the Android implementation. Otherwise I might still be thinking I could somehow "fix" my HD.

I firmly believe that a truly lazy person will put in the additional effort to make it easier in the long run, whichever option that may be, that is.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/qu...hri131937.html

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.

Agatha Christie

[EDIT: Hey, you gotta stop being so helpful! The karma button's disallowing me from giving you karma again so soon. Which is a policy that seems anti-karma.]

The rule is ten times per day, never to the same person twice.
(And I checked and you last gave karma to me here: "Why Chromebook Pundits Are Out of Touch" which was a while ago.)
Give karma to someone else and then you can give to me. Come on, I'm sure someone on MobileRead has helped you besides me!

I'M WAITING!!

[kohlersc]

I love sideloading books and use Calibre with my Kindles all the time. I am just glad I know what is going on now with purchased books for the HD. I was going crazy not being able to put them in Calibre. I much prefer Calibre and the ability to keep them all filed, rated, and more. Not being able to use Calibre was dring me crazy.

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by kohlersc

I never had to do anything funny when I had my Kindle 1st and 3rd edition (originals with keyboard), and the original Fire... But the new Kindle Fire HD

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yeah, the tablets are based on a whole different design.

The tablets are Android, the e-inks aren't.

Just tried the original Fire, with results the same as what kohlersc said. The original Fire contents display fine in Calibre, even though it's a version of Android. The Fire HDs give Calibre problems.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Give karma to someone else and then you can give to me. Come on, I'm sure someone on MobileRead has helped you besides me!

Maybe no one else has been kind enough to deign to answer my ignorant questions. Or maybe you're just the smartestest. Regardless, isn't Mobileread karma already inflated enough (assign 52 karma points and recipient instead gets 384,679)?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by jj2me

Just tried the original Fire, with results the same as what kohlersc said. The original Fire contents display fine in Calibre, even though it's a version of Android. The Fire HDs give Calibre problems.

Very interesting, but I'm pretty sure you still cannot break the DRM. Handy if the book is from Baen or Tor or KDP though.

Are the books readable?