Content Advanced Users + a Kindle and at least 5 Collections

[nynaevelan]

With all the recent dialogue regarding PW2s and the various problems with the current update, there has been many comments regarding how users use the collections feature. This has gotten me to thinking, how do you all use the collections feature, how many books do you keep on your device, do you use Calibre, just Amazon or something else? Inquiring minds want to know...

Personally my setup includes:

1. I keep @250 books on my device
2. I use Calibre to cleanup the metadata to fit my specific naming/genre conventions.
3. I use Calibre's plugboard feature to change the title to include the genre, series, author and title of the book to make it easier to organize in the Collections on the device.
4. I use genre, favorite series, to be read lists, purchased from categories to create collections. I currently have a total of 104 collections in my setup. Unfortunately all these show up now on the device even though most of them do not have books on the device in the collections.


@Simaru: A little side note for you in case you are tempted to state this is not how Amazon designed the feature to be used, and not I am not the typical Amazon user. It does not matter what Amazon's intention was when they designed it, as with everything else man-made, if one can think it, one can improve it. It is this feedback that Amazon encourages because it helps them to either improve it, change it or ignore it. But as users, we are free to discuss whatever pops into our heads. This is Amazon's blurb from the Paperwhite site:

"Carry Your Entire Library

Kindle Paperwhite holds up to 1,100 books, so you'll never have to leave your favorite titles behind. With Kindle Paperwhite, you can keep your entire library at hand wherever you go.

Organize Your Books

NEW—As your collection grows, use Cloud Collections to arrange titles in custom categories and see your collections on your other Kindle devices and reading apps."

Notice how it says "Custom categories", I assume I do not need to define custom for you.

With that said, I would love to know the setup that you "advanced" users use for your device, what method of madness works for you??

And please no disrespect to anyone but if you are not using the Collections feature or you use less than 5 collections or books, please let those of us who do discuss our experiences with the knowledge we have gained from such use.

[brewjono]

I have about 300 odd books on my Kindle.

I use one collection per author name plus 1 x Autobiographies, 1 x Non Fiction and 1 x Book Club. In total I have 50 or 60 collections.

I use the Calibre Plugboard as you do to rename the book with the series name and number.

On my K3 I used the Calibre Collections manager but on the PW2 I manually created them as I don't intend to Jail Break.

[7hir7een]

Well, when I had my PW1, I used Ixtab's Collection Manager and a calibre plugboard for Series #XX - Title.

Now that Paperwhite is being gifted to my sister. I set her collections up in the same manner, but as she is not knowledgeable about Kindle hacks, she will have to maintain additional book collections manually.

On my PW2, I've just used the plugboards. Collection management is a hot mess after 5.4.2. It keeps nagging me about my side loaded books. Collections I made before show up on the "device" tab when all the books in that collection are only in the cloud. It was extremely frustrating, so I deleted all of them, I gave up on organizing via collections.

Hopefully something gets fixed or hacked to make it usable for me.

[HarryT]

I have around 800 books on my PW2, but I don't use collections. I use a Calibre plugboard to prefix book titles with series name and number, and list my books in author sort order. That way, I can go directly to any author from the home screen, and use the search to find a series.

[sirmaru]

What you folks are doing is actually COLLECTING books. You buy large numbers of books and then customize their metadata with Calibre. Then you store them on your eReaders and / or PC's. From those books you pick one to read and then leave it in your Library. You tend to build large collections of books and keep them all.

That is similar to the old days when folks had a Library Room in their house and purchased large numbers of books to fill those shelves. They had many methods of filing them one being the one used by Public Libraries known as the Dewey Decimal System - analogous to Calibre customization of metadata today.

They then chose one book to read and when finished placed it back on the appropriate shelf of the Library Room.

On the other hand, back in those days I would receive one book per month from the Book of the Month Club, read it and then discard it awaiting the book to be received the next month. I never accumulated a library of books.

Today, I only purchase one or two eBooks from Amazon and, when finished, I place them in a Collection of never to be accessed eBooks again. I keep a record of all eBooks to be purchased in an Excel Spreadsheet with their price and number of pages. I then sort that Spreadsheet by Pages / Dollar of Price and chose the highest number to read. I always choose one History eBook and one Biography eBook to read at one time.

Thus, eBooks I have read using Microsoft PC eReader from 1990 to about 2005 are lost forever to me. The same happened with Adobe eBooks I bought in those years.

In about 2005 I only purchased Sony eBooks with their eReaders and now they are lost to me as well.

Today I only buy eBooks from Amazon for reading - never collecting. After I read an eBook I will store it now in a Collection by Category - 7 Collections. I will never look at those eBooks again. However, I also store all my highlights and notes at a site setup by Amazon for reference if I need them. So far I have never needed them.

Thus, the big division in eBook usage is between Primary Collectors and Primary Readers. I class myself in the latter category.

On the other hand I have collected songs on wire recorders from as far back as 1930. I have a huge song collection now mostly converted to MP3 files. I do pick songs for playback by streaming them to my Grace Internet radios from my PC. I also store many of those songs on my Kindle Fire HDX 2013 and frequently play them from there.

I used to use MediaMonkey to manage the metadata of those songs in a similar way as many now use Calibre for eBooks. However, Amazon has made it so easy to buy songs now and so cheap (less than $ 1.29 per song), that I rely on them these days totally and have given up most of my uses of MediaMonkey. Amazon now fulfills those needs for me.

[jacksonunit]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Thus, the big division in eBook usage is between Primary Collectors and Primary Readers. I class myself in the latter category.

I'm almost exactly the same way. A lot of people seem to have some sort of penchant for collecting, cataloging, and organizing, but I simply lack the time or inclination for it. The only books I re-read are Dracula and Slaughterhouse Five, but only once a decade or so... At that rate, I'll just re-buy or download. No biggie.

I only keep 5-10 books on the Kindle at a time and usually remove them after I read because it just seems more manageable.

I do like having a lot of books in my Amazon cloud because my family shares a library and I can read my wife's "chick books" on the sly.

(Seriously though, she has the new Wally Lamb book (something something about water), so I just may have to take that out for a spin. I read her copy of She's Come Undone which was a freakishly good read. Seriously, for four days I didn't bathe and lived on Pringels. I even I called in sick so I could finish it.

[dordale]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I have around 800 books on my PW2, but I don't use collections. I use a Calibre plugboard to prefix book titles with series name and number, and list my books in author sort order. That way, I can go directly to any author from the home screen, and use the search to find a series.

I do exactly what Harry described. I only have about 300 books on my device and use Calibre plugboards to add series information to the title. I'd like to use collections for my series, but as we all know collections are cumbersome at best on the new PW2 (especially with sideloaded books). On my Sonys I use collections for each of the series I have on my readers--so easy to do with Sony/Calibre!

[Stingo]

I think that you misconstrue as collecting on the Kindle a completely different motivation. I have several hundred books on my Kindle. Generally they are either books that I want to read or books that I want to keep available as a reference. For example references, are, bible, koran, dhamapada, certain science texts, certain historical texts, certain complete collections(Shakespeare) or poetry books (Complete Ginsberg, Complete Creeley). Once I read a book or decide that I am no longer interested, it comes off the Kindle. If I run across a book that I am interested in reading I add it in even if I don't intend to read it immediately.

I have about 14 collections "Currently Reading (never more than 3), Spanish books, History, Biography, SF, non-fiction, fiction, fiction Asia, poetry...etc... A book may appear in more than one collection. I recently set up and put out of my mind the plug board for naming collections. I devote very little time to tinkering with books on Calibre except at the point that I add a book to the library.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by Stingo

I think that you misconstrue as collecting on the Kindle a completely different motivation. I have several hundred books on my Kindle. Generally they are either books that I want to read or books that I want to keep available as a reference. For example references, are, bible, koran, dhamapada, certain science texts, certain historical texts, certain complete collections(Shakespeare) or poetry books (Complete Ginsberg, Complete Creeley). Once I read a book or decide that I am no longer interested, it comes off the Kindle. If I run across a book that I am interested in reading I add it in even if I don't intend to read it immediately.

I have about 14 collections "Currently Reading (never more than 3), Spanish books, History, Biography, SF, non-fiction, fiction, fiction Asia, poetry...etc... A book may appear in more than one collection. I recently set up and put out of my mind the plug board for naming collections. I devote very little time to tinkering with books on Calibre except at the point that I add a book to the library.

References make excellent collector items. I have hundreds of Bibles in three languages going back to 1930 and collect eBibles on my Kindles even if I rarely use them. I collect Bible Apps as well. Plus, I collect all kinds of Bible Dictionaries, Commentaries and Daily Prayer Books. One of my Collection names are Bible Study Items.

There is a site called Logos where thousands of Bible Reference eBooks are available at up to $ 1,500 for this kind of eCollection. I've stopped using them since I moved on to Amazon.

[Josieb1]

I only have a Paperwhite 1 right now (and for the forceable future) I have 11 collections and a total of 217 books I PLAN TO READ (thats for Sirmaru).

My Collections are To Read, Read, Reviews, Currently Reading, Fan Fiction, Other Books, Hornblower and Serials.

These are specific names to me so no way could Amazon 'guess' which collection a book needs to go into. Hubby and I share an account which has around 1200 books in it. 450 are mine, and the rest his. He has more collections than me.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I have around 800 books on my PW2, but I don't use collections. I use a Calibre plugboard to prefix book titles with series name and number, and list my books in author sort order. That way, I can go directly to any author from the home screen, and use the search to find a series.

Can you direct me to a good topic showing how one does this? I have been reluctant to try the plug boards and get a bit lost when I am in the Calibre section.

I use Calibre to store my books. I have mucked about with the meta data so that they are labelled the way I want and sorted they way I want.

I have not used plug boards and I have never mucked with Kindle directories or hacked a Kindle.

ie, I am still a novice in actual Kindle and Calibre usage.

I have 400 or so e-books (some are anthologies so the total number of books is in the 600's) and I have collections broken into Fiction, Non-Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Action Adventure, and that type of thing. I try and limit the collections so that there is only one page of them.

[HarryT]

I'll write you some instructions tomorrow. I'm away from my PC at the moment.

[ProfCrash]

Thanks, color me intimidated by the process

[Barbara1955]

I read & re-read my books weather they are ebooks or PB/HB In the old days before eReaders I Donate the nonKeepers. I Hate to Delete those I not going to re-read... I love to pass them on any Idea? LOL So since I re-read 90% of mine does this mean I am a Collector just to have Something on the Kindle?

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'll write you some instructions tomorrow. I'm away from my PC at the moment.

If you get the time to write some, I'd appreciate this too. It's something I'd like to try but exactly like ProfCrash, although I've got things set up nicely in Calibre, I've tried to look at how plugboards work but just feel a bit lost....