Troubleshooting Sorting Options

[RiddleMeThis]

I have the new K3 and have my collections all with a * in front of them. My K3 is ignoring the * and ordering them by the first letter after the star now.

I'll have to see if the "space" in front of them fixes that.

ETA: Well the * doesn't work to "fix" the ordering but it appears many of the other symbols do.

[Pushka]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You're right, it is a kludge, but at least it's a workaround until Amazon get around to providing proper alphabetic sorting of collections. I have all my books in collections (I have one collection for each author or series), hence when I'm in title mode I just look at the collections and ignore everything else.

Karma to Pushka for coming up with this idea.

Thanks Harry but I cant take credit. I will take karma though!

It was designed by a poster on kindleboards called Linjaekel just after collections came out, but she isnt a member here. And I did call it a solution of sorts, on Harry's other thread because while it works, it isnt the best it could be, but you gotta blame Amazon for that!


I get my k3 today so I will have to see what works now, and what doesnt. But my K2 is looking mighty pretty!

PS Pushka is a she, just in case one day I post this: and you get a tad uncomfortable.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Pushka

PS Pushka is a she, just in case one day I post this: and you get a tad uncomfortable.

My apologies .

[Bismar]

Out of curiosity, how are you guys sorting series with many books in order?

The Honor Harrington series is a prime example.

I've thus far resolved to editing the title tag, but surely there must be a better way.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Bismar

Out of curiosity, how are you guys sorting series with many books in order?

The Honor Harrington series is a prime example.

I've thus far resolved to editing the title tag, but surely there must be a better way.

I have that specific series, so I can tell you exactly how I do it. I have an "Honor Harrington" collection. Within that I use Calibre to edit the title to reflect series order:

HH01 - On Basilisk Station
HH02 - The Honor of the Queen
etc.

and I have the collection set to display in title order.

[Bismar]

Heh, i was afraid thats how it was going to be.

Whats the point in using collections though? I mean if all the books are tagged as such, there would be no other series in between it when you sort them by author, or title.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Bismar

Heh, i was afraid thats how it was going to be.

Whats the point in using collections though? I mean if all the books are tagged as such, there would be no other series in between it when you sort them by author, or title.

Because I have hundreds of books on my Kindle, and it's a lot easier to look through a comparatively short list of collections (author name and series name) than through dozens of pages of titles.

[Pushka]

If you use calibre you change the metadata for publication date so that the first book in a series has the most recent publication date. That way they appear in the right order first to last.

[orwell2k]

I must admit to never having taken much interest in the Kindle forums as the device never appealed to me. I do like the look of the K3, so I've been browsing around. To my surprise and dismay, I've come across some threads like this that give me pause about ordering the K3.

There's something to be said for a simple folder view option available on many other devices, so you can just browse your eBooks via the directory structure you create yourself on your device and/or memory card (allowing one to create author folders, series sub-folders, and use filenames to force sorting, etc.).

But I guess that's not so simple with something like Kindle because of the variety of ways to actually get the books onto your device (3G, WiFi or cable from PC), so somehow the device has to manage the books with some kind of database when they arrive. It almost seems a bit iPod-ish, where you need some app (iTunes or other) to actually manage the music on your device, rather than being allowed to create folders).

As I said, I like the look of the K3 and am tempted, but this whole issue of sorting books and series properly, as well as the very limited formats supported make me still very hesitant. I think I will follow this sorting issue a little more, and the other reset/freeze issues that have cropped up, before committing. Perhaps a firmware update will solve some problems?

[jangell2]

Originally Posted by Pushka

If you use calibre you change the metadata for publication date so that the first book in a series has the most recent publication date. That way they appear in the right order first to last.

This is not working for me. I used Calibre to update the Publication Date to order the books. I gave book 2 a date 1 month prior and book 3 was 2 months prior and so forth. I used Calibre to transfer the books and rebooted the Kindle. The order seems to be random.

BTW, I am sorting by Title in the Kindle.

[EldRick]

What a miserable implementation the Home page list of contents is. What I find intensely annoying is that you can't even invert the sort sequence, so as to see Titles with Z at the top, and A at the bottom. Worse, they waste three lines per title, and you can't even change the typeface to get more on the page.

Just simply lousy design by someone who apparently never had to use a Kindle with more than couple dozen titles on it...

[HarryT]

It's not that bad, given that pressing any letter key will jump to that point in the list.

[tlrowley]

Originally Posted by jangell2

This is not working for me. I used Calibre to update the Publication Date to order the books. I gave book 2 a date 1 month prior and book 3 was 2 months prior and so forth. I used Calibre to transfer the books and rebooted the Kindle. The order seems to be random.

BTW, I am sorting by Title in the Kindle.

It works for me - I sort my home page by Title (for collection name special chars) but the collection that contains the series is sorted by author. The Kindle preserves the two different sorting setting (home page and within collection)

[grzzly]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's not that bad, given that pressing any letter key will jump to that point in the list.

You are awesome! Why did I never get that idea before?

By the way, how often do you guys go into the menus? I mean, yeah it is not optimal, but come on. I made a list of books I wanna read in near future (that near future is probably a year) and access it for the next book I'm reading. So every 4 days to a week or something when I'm finished with anything.

It's a book reader, not a toy

[brewjono]

I used Calibre to "Create a Catalog" of the books that I have on my Kindle.

This creates a MOBI formatted book which includes ALL the metadata including cover, author, title, series, series number, social metadata, the whole lot.

I then upload this new book to my kindle.

When I want to know the next book in the series I open this book, sort by the author, series whatever, skip to it, read the blurb go back out and find it on the kindle and read away.

I have over 700 books on my kindle within about 40 collections.

I also use Kindle Collection Manager to create and manage the collections.

There is a thread on this site for it here:-

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94261

Here is the more detailed version of how I create my catalog:-

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...t=98075&page=2


Brewjono.