Content How to organise your library? I use Calibre because Kindle's collections are useless

[Timboli]

I treat my Kindle PaperWhite and Kindle Keyboard the same, which is pretty much the same as my Samsung Tablet and Kindle For PC.

I use Collections to shorten and simplify browsing.

For example, three or more ebooks by the same author, qualify for an author name folder (first name second name). Other ebooks go into a collection that best describes what they are, which might be Collections (novels containing short stories), or Various. I also have one called Non-Fiction. Essentially I am dividing things up, to be more manageable.

One mustn't forget, that entries in these collections, aren't really the ebooks themselves, but the equivalent of a shortcut file on a PC etc. So you can have the one ebook in more than one location. I do that for authors that might co-write with another or who write in the world of another, or if an author I collect has written a short story in a various authors Collection.

I also have distinct differences between my ebooks and devices.

The Samsung Tablet for instance, while containing a good collection of favorites, mostly has ebooks that have some graphic element (i.e colored artwork especially, but not only).

The Kindle Keyboard, my oldest device, I put all sorts of ebooks from various sources on.

The PaperWhite I mostly stick to Kindle Ebooks with. It is also the one I use most.

Kindle For PC I download everything too from Amazon and sometimes others.

When I say everything from Amazon, I have two distinct categories with Amazon. First, there are authors I follow or ebooks I like the sound of enough to pay money for. Then my second category, which is Kindle ebooks I get referred to by BookBub, that Amazon give away for free. The paid for ebooks go to my E-Ink Kindles and if applicable the Samsung Tablet. Whereas as the non collected author freebies, only go to Kindle On PC (until I wish to read them), and are organized into loose Genre collections (i.e. Murder, Mystery or Thriller; SciFi or Fantasy; Westerns or Adventure; etc).

When it comes to keeping tabs on what I have read, I do two things. (1) Leave an ebook I have read at its last page, (2) Enter the dates etc in an Excel file called Readrec.xls, which I have been using since about 1994, which I loosely backdated at that time for all the books I have read since birth, and where everything is listed chronologically. I also enter everything book wise into Booklist.xls, which also keeps a record of when eventually read.

That covers things pretty much, except I go a good deal further, having created a bunch of programs of my own. One program gives me details when I right-click on an ebook in the My Kindle Content folder, it also has its own database and allows me to export, doing all the necessaries, to Calibre.

As much as I love Calibre, and I do, I find it problematical when it comes to browsing and sorting. I have started developing my own program, that works with Calibre, but improves upon the browsing side of things.

But as with all programs, you use them in accordance to their limitations.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by cd2013

How do other people do it? If I were to rely on the Kindle alone to browse my library and remember what I have bought, I’d go nuts – and this is without a huge library; some people have thousands of books – how do they manage them?

Disclaimer: I do not own a Kindle and do not plan to. I did have a Paperwhite I and I sold it when other front-lit readers with better library organization and configuration options appeared.

Anyway ... this is how I organize books on my reader and how I would do it if I was stuck using a Kindle.

- Organize books in Calibre, manage metadata, authors, titles, series, blurbs, covers, TAGS.

- Select a group of books to be transferred to a reader. I use Tags. I tag books that I plan to put on my reader and then from time to time I select them and export.

- When you have the books selected, right-click, menu Convert books, menu item Create catalog.

- Calibre creates a nice mobi (or epub or whatever) book containing info about all your books organized by authors, series, tags, with nice hyperlinks. The catalog contains blurbs, covers, whatever you wish (as long as Calibre has appropriate data).

- Copy the catalog to the Kindle, and copy the books over in an ungainly heap. The catalog should have a name that puts it as the first book in the list on your reader. If you are lucky, your reader supports hierarchical directories and you can set up Calibre to export the books in hierarchical directories, but this is not necessary.

- Open the catalog, choose the book you you wish to read, search for author, title or whatever on your Kindle, to get to the chosen book quickly, open the book, read it.

- Repeat for the next book.

- Even if your reader sucks in the library organization, you spend *much* more time reading the books from cover to cover than selecting the next book to be read. So it is no big deal.

[janrey]

I basically have two collections, read and unread. I also use Goodreads which shows the books I read and what I rated them. I don't find a need to organize any further. I keep some of my unread on my kindle with the majority in the cloud. I don't find the need to store everything on the kindle.

[lumpynose]

I also use my kindle in read-only mode and am not using amazon's web page. I've been downloading public domain books and have gone a bit gonzo and have nearly 2,500 now.

The way I'm managing things is by using Calibre's catalog gizmo. It generates an ebook that's a list of your books by your criteria. It's under the Convert Books (brown) button.

I generate 3 different catalogs: by author, by title, and by series. So far I'm having to generate those 3 catalogs manually and also have to manually change the name it gives them. If anyone knows how to automate that I'd love to hear about it; I'd like to have it generate all of the catalogs I've set up with 1 click.

[lumpynose]

Addendum; I was doing something incorrectly, not clicking enough buttons I suppose, but now the Calibre catalog gizmo correctly remembers the title and settings when I switch between them in its ebook options tab.

[krazy4katz]

I use Collections on the kindle. It is not the greatest setup, especially as I acquire more books, but my collections are: Fiction, Nonfiction, Memoirs, Fiction-unread, Nonfiction-unread, Memoirs-unread, Reference, Samples-Fiction, Samples-Nonfiction, Samples-memoirs, Spirituality.

I list all my books on LIbraryThing.com (not GoodReads), so I know whether a book is on my kindle, was from the library etc.

It's not perfect, but it is better than nothing. Of course I often forget to put my books, especially the samples, inside the collections, so even with collections I have 22 pages on my kindle. Sigh...

[crane3]

I have googled for kindle collections & wonder what kindle users use 'most'. I also see an app called 'Kindlian' for the pc for managing books; anyone have used it?

Also found that the kindle for pc won't sync with kindles/apps. Was surprised that the kindle for ios tracks & syncs with the kindle for android app without my knowledge/intervention.

I guess I can use Calibre to create a separate library for Amazon books but that won't sync with my fire hdx or oasis or kindle apps..

[Shadowmike4d4]

Hello all! New Person, so I see mention of apps that organize your Kindle library....

I'm super particular about my library and have been trying to organize my library EXACTLY as my previous device(note that the devices in question are my old phone and new phone)

When I say I'm particular, I mean I basically want the same books in the same order on both devices, as that's sort of how I deal with how I'm going to read my next book.

I tried Amazon's fix, though maybe they weren't understanding. I downloaded my entire collection(A mere 185 books) to my new device and then used the sync function.

While my progress on my books carried over, this did NOT update until I clicked the individual book. In other words, a book I was 29% into only said "new" until I selected it, at which point it updates and of course became the most recent read.


But the sync function does not organize based on the most recent from your OLD device, only how each book downloaded on the current one.

Can the app Calibre, or some other app, organize my library according to my previous device? Is there a way to do that? Much appreciate all responses!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Shadowmike4d4

Can the app Calibre, or some other app, organize my library according to my previous device? Is there a way to do that? Much appreciate all responses!

Calibre is a desktop program, there is no Calibre app for phones. There are various Calibre companion apps, but you'd still have to use the main program on a PC.

[Shadowmike4d4]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Calibre is a desktop program, there is no Calibre app for phones. There are various Calibre companion apps, but you'd still have to use the main program on a PC.

This saddens me, so my only option is to go through my entire library manually to organize it?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Shadowmike4d4

This saddens me, so my only option is to go through my entire library manually to organize it?

It depends on where the books are and in what app you want to read them. If they're Amazon books with DRM and you read them in the Amazon Kindle app, then I know of no way to re-order them, except for opening them one by one.

If you want to use something else for reading and managing your books, your only option will be to remove the DRM. Visit the Apprentice Alf's blog to learn how to do that.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

It depends on where the books are and in what app you want to read them. If they're Amazon books with DRM and you read them in the Amazon Kindle app, then I know of no way to re-order them, except for opening them one by one.

If you want to use something else for reading and managing your books, your only option will be to remove the DRM. Visit the Apprentice Alf's blog to learn how to do that.

Unless the Kindle is jailbreakable, removing DRM won't fix the issue either.

Even then, sorting and reading stats is per device so while you can use Calibre to create collections on a jailbroken Kindle, that doesn't fix the issue of % read not updating unless the book is reopened.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Unless the Kindle is jailbreakable, removing DRM won't fix the issue either.

Even then, sorting and reading stats is per device so while you can use Calibre to create collections on a jailbroken Kindle, that doesn't fix the issue of % read not updating unless the book is reopened.

The OP reads on his phone. I meant if he wants to use another app besides the Kindle app. But yes, then he would lose syncing over devices.

[Phssthpok]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I have close to 10,000 books on my Oasis, and no collections. I personally have no need for them. The only way I need to organise my books is by author (which the Kindle does fine) and by series (which I use a Calibre metadata plugboard for).

I'm in much the same position, but with a little over 4000 books. I have a "Finished" collection and a "Corrected" collection; I mark typos as I'm reading, move to "Finished" when I finish, edit it on Calibre and upload the corrected version and add it to "Corrected". I use the rating to indicate which state each book is in and use a Calibre plugboard to add a checkmark in front of the title of the corrected books. I also use the plugboard to add series names to the book titles.

I tried creating an AZW3 Calibre catalog to make it easier to browse my collection when I'm not next to my PC, but gave up because it was too hard to keep the catalog in sync with the collection.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Phssthpok

I tried creating an AZW3 Calibre catalog to make it easier to browse my collection when I'm not next to my PC, but gave up because it was too hard to keep the catalog in sync with the collection.

It's hard if you download your books directly from Amazon. Me, I sideload everything from Calibre anyway. So every time I load new books I generate a new catalog as well.