Is Amazon deleting side loaded books?

[DNSB]

Hanlon's Razor.

Personally, I tend to the belief that the issue may be people who use Amazon's ASIN identifier and send the book as a ebook not a personal document or who used Download & transfer via USB to download books that for whatever reason are no longer in your Amazon library.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hanlon's Razor.

Personally, I tend to the belief that the issue may be people who use Amazon's ASIN identifier and send the book as a ebook not a personal document.

That's what I did with all my Amazon purchases. They all went into Calibre, got edited and sent from there to my Kindles via USB. If Amazon now deletes all such books, that's seriously diminishing any wish I might have to ever buy a Kindle again. Yes, there are workarounds (delete ASINs, don't ever switch wifi on), but it's still a PITA.

[Victoria]

Not the same issue, but related - I have to keep redownloading my regular books from Amazon (not side-loaded from Calibre). It’s annoying, especially when I’m away from my wifi. Plus it makes me feel like I don’t own my books.

[acprinter]

I reported this happening quite some time ago. Is it Amazon or a glitch in Calibre?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by acprinter

I reported this happening quite some time ago. Is it Amazon or a glitch in Calibre?

Amazon, of course, because it only happens when wifi is on.

[DanDavis872]

I'm fairly confident I understand what is happening with a very similar occurrence for me.

Basically if the book has metadata identifying it with an Amazon book, regardless of how it came to be on your device, and the status of that ebook changes from present to absent/unavailable on your Kindle, then when the device syncs with Amazon it will remove the ebooks.

This is avoidable by ensuring that if the ebooks are or will be removed/absent from your device (Content and Devices of your Amazon account), your Amazon account does not consider them to be on the Kindle in question and that this same device is synced with the server BEFORE side-loading the ebooks from Calibre. Otherwise, the Kindle will scan your new books, sync with the server, notice that since the last sync you removed several of these books, and delete them from the device.

Do note that "deleting" the book from your content history prevents Amazon from syncing progress and other data between devices if you use these features but merely removing them from the device according to your account is effective.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by janrey

https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...loaded-ebooks/

It maybe a bug between Calibre and Kindle.

Nah! If it was, we'd have already heard of it and it would have been fixed.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DanDavis872

Basically if the book has metadata identifying it with an Amazon book, regardless of how it came to be on your device, and the status of that ebook changes from present to absent/unavailable on your Kindle, then when the device syncs with Amazon it will remove the ebooks. removing them from the device according to your account is effective.

Is this by title/author, or something else?

[talespin]

I've noticed something similar, though in a slightly different setup. I use ascm files to download the books themselves into the Adobe Digital Editions app on my MacBook. Since I don't like any of the Adobe readers, I convert the books with calibre and read them using the native Books apps on my MacBook and iPhone.

Sometime later, I'll discover that both the original epub and the calibre epub have been replaced by a single mobi file. After reading this thread, I'm convinced that there's some automatic library housekeeping going on behind the scenes. This happens only to the epubs in my calibre library - the books I've added to my native Books libraries aren't affected.

[DanDavis872]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Is this by title/author, or something else?

I am not certain. I would guess ASIN or something else embedded and perhaps not read by Calibre. Since this is avoidable by returning or removing the book according to your Amazon account, I have not experimented much with any other method.

I believe that I once had success converting a book to EPUB to prevent it being auto-pruned from my Kindle, which suggests to me the metadata in question is embedded and not immediately visible/editable to Calibre.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by talespin

Sometime later, I'll discover that both the original Epub and the calibre Epub have been replaced by a single mobi file.

By default, if you haven't changed things, calibre will convert Epub files to Mobi upon sending them to your Kindle. So the mobi file is the only thing sent to your Kindle from calibre.

[Sirtel]

There's no automatic housekeeping going on behind the scenes in calibre. If your epub files disappear from your library without any action on your part, something is seriously wrong. Cloud syncing or a networked drive are the usual culprits.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by talespin

I've noticed something similar, though in a slightly different setup. I use ascm files to download the books themselves into the Adobe Digital Editions app on my MacBook. Since I don't like any of the Adobe readers, I convert the books with calibre and read them using the native Books apps on my MacBook and iPhone.

Sometime later, I'll discover that both the original epub and the calibre epub have been replaced by a single mobi file. After reading this thread, I'm convinced that there's some automatic library housekeeping going on behind the scenes. This happens only to the epubs in my calibre library - the books I've added to my native Books libraries aren't affected.

If you have a Kindle that can read KF8, you'll want to set calibre to use AZW3 as the first format for your Kindle. Also, calibre does not remove any eBooks from your library. I've been using it since it was LibPRS500 for the Sony Reader and it's never once removed any eBooks from any library,

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you have a Kindle that can read KF8, you'll want to set calibre to use AZW3 as the first format for your Kindle. Also, calibre does not remove any eBooks from your library. I've been using it since it was LibPRS500 for the Sony Reader and it's never once removed any eBooks from any library,

Agree 100% with all that.

I think I've been using Calibre since version 1.15, released in December 2013. XP till 2016 (Ver 1.48 is on VM clone of my 2002 laptop). Briefly Win7. Linux since 2017. I've never lost files in Calibre. Any issues I ever had with conversion were either the wrong imported content or wrong conversion output settings.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

By default, if you haven't changed things, calibre will convert Epub files to Mobi upon sending them to your Kindle. So the mobi file is the only thing sent to your Kindle from calibre.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you have a Kindle that can read KF8, you'll want to set calibre to use AZW3 as the first format for your Kindle. Also, calibre does not remove any eBooks from your library. I've been using it since it was LibPRS500 for the Sony Reader and it's never once removed any eBooks from any library,

The poster you're both referring to said explicitly they're using the Books app on a Mac and iPhone, not a Kindle, and they're downloading .acsm files, hence not Amazon ebooks. Their issue has actually nothing to do with Amazon or this thread.