Cloud Storage For Kindle Books and Calibre

[jscarbo]

I was recently asked by a user in the Amazon Kindle Forums for help with cloud storage of a large Kindle library, some of which had been purchased from Amazon but many more were from non-Amazon sources.

The user had been attempting to add all of the non-Amazon books to her Amazon cloud using Send to Kindle or by Personal Document emails resulting in a hopelessly disorganized mess with some of the books being delivered to the Kindle and others never arriving either to the Kindle or to Amazon's cloud storage and all were missing the covers, metadata, etc.

I spent quite a bit of time helping solve the problem and explaining how to set up a better system for managing an ebook library with Calibre and Dropbox and thought that others here might find the information helpful.

Following is an edited compilation of my posts. I hope it's useful to some of you.

For a Calibre user, the best way to use your Amazon cloud is basically to forget about it. All of your Amazon-purchased books are backed up there but if you have them stored in Calibre, coupled with a Dropbox or other non-Amazon cloud storage account, you don't really ever need to access them from the Amazon cloud except to periodically check to see if any of them have been updated.

Don't enable the automatic update service or it will result in you having updated copies in the cloud but older versions in your Calibre library and you'll have no way of keeping track of them. Instead, do manual updates. When you check for updates, download them individually to your computer and then add them to Calibre.

Sometimes, depending on how the book is coded, Calibre will prompt you that the book is already in your library and ask if you want to add it anyway. Click "yes". After adding updates, check for duplicates and delete the old versions.

For someone who has a lot of non-Amazon books, trying to add them to your Amazon cloud isn't a good idea. Their system for organizing, displaying and retrieving your books is very primitive. Without going into detail about the problems with using the Amazon cloud for this, suffice it to say that there are much better ways to store and back up your library.

I recommend using cloud storage, but not through Amazon. Instead, I suggest you set up a free Dropbox (or other cloud storage account) and link it to your Calibre library so that it's automatically updated when you add new books to Calibre.

If you're using Calibre, you should download your new books from whatever source, including Amazon, to your computer and transfer them into Calibre by USB. Don't use Send To Kindle or Kindle emails.

To make it easy to find your downloads, I suggest that you create a temporary folder on your desktop called something like "Kindle Downloads" and always use this folder for new downloads you want to add to Calibre. Then, click the down arrow nest to "Add Books" and select the first option "From a single directory", navigate to the Kindle Downloads folder on the desktop, then highlight the titles and select "open". They will automatically be added to your library. You can then delete them from the temporary desktop folder to keep it clean for future downloads.

As to the current books on your Kindle and the ones you want to add, here's what to do:
1. Open the Calibre program.
2. Connect your Kindle to your computer by USB.
3. When Calibre recognizes the connection, scroll through the On Device tab and highlight all books that have a green check mark.
4. Click the down arrow next to Remove Books and select the last option in the dropdown box "Remove matching books from device". A box will pop up asking you to confirm your action. Click OK. Obviously, you only want to remove them from the device, not from your library.
5. Your Kindle should now be clean and ready to add books from your Calibre library.
6. Review your library and update metadata, covers, etc., as desired before sending them to the device.
7. Once done, begin sending them to your Kindle in small batches. I suggest no more than 6 to 10 at a time. Do all of this by USB. Don't use the email option.
8. Consider how many books you actually need to store on the device. I suggest not cluttering up your Kindle with more books than you need. It's so easy to add and delete books from your Kindle with Calibre that it's unnecessary to store a large number on the device. I seldom have more than a couple of dozen on mine.

It's fairly easy to set up Dropbox to store your Calibre library. There are two main benefits to doing this. First, your library is automatically backed up on the Dropbox cloud whenever you modify the content of your library. Secondly, you can access your entire Calibre library over the internet when you're away from your computer. You can even do so directly from your Kindle.

I'll also mention that you can use Dropbox to share files with others and, in fact, that's one of its most common uses. However, I won't give instructions because I don't want to encourage illegal file sharing. If you're going to share files on Dropbox, only share those files you have a legal right to share. Dropbox and other cloud storage services may send you a takedown notice and block your account if you share public links to files in violation of copyright. See this article for more info: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/21/31...t-infringement

Instructions For Using Dropbox Cloud Storage With Calibre:

These instructions are for Windows computers and assume you already have Calibre and Dropbox installed on your computer. If not, you need to install both before proceeding.
1. Open the Dropbox folder on your computer by right clicking on the Dropbox icon in the system tray in the lower right corner of your screen, then click on Dropbox Folder.
2. Right click within the folder and select New Folder.
3. Give the folder a name such as "Ebooks" or any other name you choose. NOTE: Don't make this a sub-folder within your public folder. To help prevent illegal filesharing, Dropbox no longer allows this to be a public folder.
4. Open the Calibre program on your computer.
5. In the Calibre toolbar, click the down arrow nest to Preferences and select Run Welcome Wizard.
6. It will ask you to choose a location for your books. Click "Change" and navigate to the new Ebooks folder you just created.
7. Click on the folder name then click the Select Folder at the bottom. This will take you back to the Welcome Wizard and the complete path to the folder should now appear in location box.
8. Click "Next" and complete the wizard.
9. The storage folder for your Calibre library is now linked to your Dropbox account and will automatically sync and update to the Dropbox cloud whenever you modify your library.
10. The first time it syncs, it will take a long time to do so. Depending on the size of your library, this may take an hour or more.
11. Don't turn your computer off until the process is complete. To see progress, hover your mouse arrow over the Dropbox icon in your system tray and the status will be shown. If it says "up to date", your Calibre library is now stored in your Dropbox.
12. To access your library through Dropbox from another computer, all you need is the URL for the link. To get it, click on the Dropbox icon in your system tray and select Dropbox.com.
13. Right click on your Ebooks folder.
14. Click "Share Link".
15. Click "Get Link" to copy the URL to your clipboard.
16. Open your email account and paste the URL into an email to yourself, with Dropbox Ebooks in the subject line, then send the email to yourself.
17. From any computer, open your email account and search for the email.
18. Click on the link and it will open your Calibre library.
19. If you want to access this folder from your Kindle, use the same link. This is easy from a Kindle Fire but you can also do it from an e-ink Kindle through the experimental web browser. You can find instructions for how to do this with a Google search.

[eschwartz]

You might also want to use calibre2opds to create an html catalog of your books, so once logged in to dropbox you can go to the index page and search through all your books. One link to the catalog, rather than hundreds of links to all your books. Fortunately, dropbox is the only cloud storage offering that I know of which currently allows you to download all files in a folder structure allowing relative links.

[GoSharks]

Don't forget to pause synching from your computer Dropdox Folder to the cloud whenever you are using Calibre so you don't end-up with a corrupted database.

(Great post by the way!)

[Pellicious]

Personally I only use "copy". Start with 20 GB of free cloud space after you verifiy your email. And that's not even the best part. When you refer to other people you gain 5 GB for each referral. I Got 300 GB within the day, just by giving refer to friends. Generous. Easy. And just great.

https://copy.com?r=eC4Xz1