Maintaining collections through folder structure?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Collections are completely unnecessary if you do not have more than a few dozen books on device (for me, it is generally less than a couple of dozen).

If you have hundreds or thousands on device, then you had better have a way to set them up with something like calibre.

I have something like 4500 books in calibre, 90% are in my Kindle library, downloadable in seconds. There is no system for organizing them that I am willing to spend any time maintaining, and I have no sense that it would be of any use to me even if it didn't take time. I have no issues finding something good to read quickly without such a system.

I didn't use collections on my Kindles either, but I did have a calibre-generated catalog with my genres and tags on every Kindle, in case I wanted to browse a specific genre or tag. Yes, you can do without collections, but it's nice to have them, and a Kobo reader populates them automatically from Calibre. Of course you'll have to maintain them in Calibre then.

As I have over 30,000 books in Calibre, I couldn't find anything without organizing them there. Last I used a Kindle, I had about 3,000 books on my Oasis, all sideloaded. I never used the Amazon cloud for downloading for various reasons, not even for books purchased from Amazon. All my Kindles were almost always offline.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Collections are completely unnecessary if you do not have more than a few dozen books on device (for me, it is generally less than a couple of dozen).

If you have hundreds or thousands on device, then you had better have a way to set them up with something like calibre.

I have something like 4500 books in calibre, 90% are in my Kindle library, downloadable in seconds. There is no system for organizing them that I am willing to spend any time maintaining, and I have no sense that it would be of any use to me even if it didn't take time. I have no issues finding something good to read quickly without such a system.

Indeed, with few books on a device, collections do not make much sense. It is up to the individual user to assess this feature.

I prefer to organise my books on my PC or smartphone and not on my e-readers, among other things because I have many devices of different brands and organising them individually is an overexertion that is not worth the effort. What I do need is ease of sending the book I want to read to the e-reader, and in this respect Kindle offers me a very convenient system.

On my Kobo devices, on the other hand, I mainly use KOReader and I don't find the Kobo interface very useful. On PocketBook devices, however, I can use its library and home page to open the books with KOReader (also on Android devices, although here the library is very rudimentary and it is advisable to use an application).

And if you want to have both a folder structure and a collection structure, PocketBook devices and Android devices (through an application) are probably the most suitable.

Ultimately, the organisation of books can be very varied and depends on the preferences of each user. I don't think that one e-reader is superior to another for this reason. It will depend on what the user needs. And in the specific case of the initiator of this thread, reproducing a structure of 8/9 folders and assigning 200 books through Kindle's manual collection assignment system is a task that won't take him too much time (5, 10 minutes?) if he really needs it (a different matter is the automatic assignment in a structure with dozens of collections and thousands of books).

[archz2]

I feel I should stick with Kindle. Amazon has a 10 day return policy. I got my device on 18th July. It hasn't even been a week. I got a brand new one for almost half the price.

200 books look intimidating at first. I built my book collection over many years. I can do sort 10 books per day for 20 days. It's most probably manageable. I think no device is perfect. Every device I buy will have its own set of restrictions and "problems".

Based on whatever I've seen, Kindle is the most used e-ink based reader. Don't know whether celebrities, big shot entrepreneurs, are being paid to endorse it or not. I just see it everywhere! There must be some reason why it's the most preferred one. I may sound biased. I don't know. I'm still thinking.

The goal is to spend time in reading more in my hectic life instead of messing my head with jailbreak and new technical troubles.

Kobo and Pocketbook are not available in India as of now. I'll have to arrange for some contact in other country, then find people in my network, with some relative, friend, this and that, etc., wait for them to arrive in India. Very long process. Maybe not even worth it.

For probably two years I pondered upon the idea of Kindle and made the go eventually. I had been using Moon Reader pro on my Android phone and I love it a lot.

I see you folks have thousands of books!! Whoa. How do you even plan to read them all in your lifetime? Or is it just digital version of Tsundoku that you enjoy?

[Quoth]

Because Amazon is a very large company and has over 90% of English language ebook market worldwide.

[John F]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Collections are completely unnecessary if you do not have more than a few dozen books on device (for me, it is generally less than a couple of dozen).

...

Necessary, no. Very useful, yes. At least for me.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by archz2

I see you folks have thousands of books!! Whoa. How do you even plan to read them all in your lifetime? Or is it just digital version of Tsundoku that you enjoy?

The latter, mostly. I don't plan to read them all, but I like to have as wide a selection available as possible.

As to why Kindles are so popular... as Quoth said, it's because of the size and power of their manufacturer, Amazon. And Kindles are the most popular in English-speaking countries, as Amazon dominates the ebook market there; in Europe with their many different native languages, you see various other models at least as often, if not more.

Kindles are excellent ereaders, but not necessarily better than other brands. They're just everywhere in English-speaking countries because Amazon is everywhere there.

[JSWolf]

Kindle
You cannot read ePub without converting
You cannot create collections other then manually
You cannot use the series feature with side loaded eBooks
The firmware is meh!

Return it and move on.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Return it and move on.

The OP has no other brands available where they live. Considering this it's probably the best choice to stay with Kindle, if they like it in most other aspects.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by archz2

200 books look intimidating at first. I built my book collection over many years. I can do sort 10 books per day for 20 days. It's most probably manageable.

If I understand correctly what you want is to reproduce on your Kindle, using the option to create collections, the 8-9 folders that you have on your computer, with their respective books (in total, about 200 books distributed in those folders). If so, this won't take you long. Just create the 8-9 collections, with the same names you use for your folders, and add the books you want to each collection. When you create the collection, it automatically takes you to a screen with all the books you have on your Kindle and all you have to do is tick the box of the ones you want to include in the collection. It really won't take you more than 10 minutes to have all your books organised in those 8-9 collections.

[archz2]

Originally Posted by cellaris

If I understand correctly what you want is to reproduce on your Kindle, using the option to create collections, the 8-9 folders that you have on your computer, with their respective books (in total, about 200 books distributed in those folders). If so, this won't take you long. Just create the 8-9 collections, with the same names you use for your folders, and add the books you want to each collection. When you create the collection, it automatically takes you to a screen with all the books you have on your Kindle and all you have to do is tick the box of the ones you want to include in the collection. It really won't take you more than 10 minutes to have all your books organised in those 8-9 collections.

Oh man!! Thanks a lot. That's all I wanted!! You just saved me so much worry. I am such an ignorant person. I didn't even try adding anything to collection and been spending time overthinking.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by archz2

Oh man!! Thanks a lot. That's all I wanted!! You just saved me so much worry. I am such an ignorant person. I didn't even try adding anything to collection and been spending time overthinking.

But don't sync if you have very different generations of Kindles, as Amazon will then mess-up the collections. I've sorted maybe nearly 500 ebooks into collections on Kindle in a day, but eventually gave up on it when Sync with Amazon messed it up.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by archz2

I see you folks have thousands of books!! Whoa. How do you even plan to read them all in your lifetime? Or is it just digital version of Tsundoku that you enjoy?

At the moment, out of my ~14K books, there are 5 of them that are unread. I've been collecting my ebooks for close to 2 decades now. Looking at my Kobo Reading Life emails, over the last year, I've averaged 86 books per month. I do have a rather high reading speed.

For the most part, I read on my Kobo Sage. My Clara HD is my pathological case just to see how a Kobo would handle that many books after giving on following @HarryT's Tips for loading a large library onto a KO2 years back when I managed to crash my Kindle multiple times.

[archz2]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But don't sync if you have very different generations of Kindles, as Amazon will then mess-up the collections. I've sorted maybe nearly 500 ebooks into collections on Kindle in a day, but eventually gave up on it when Sync with Amazon messed it up.

This is my first Kindle ever. I still miss the comfort and lightning speed of Moon Reader pro on my Android phone that I've been using for maybe 5-6 years. I bought Kindle just because of screen glare avoidance.

I don't think I'll ever need another Kindle. Maybe after 4-5 years. No idea. I'm a noob to Kindle.

[archz2]

Originally Posted by cellaris

When you create the collection, it automatically takes you to a screen with all the books you have on your Kindle and all you have to do is tick the box of the ones you want to include in the collection. It really won't take you more than 10 minutes to have all your books organised in those 8-9 collections.

Okay. So I tried this method. It works. However, when I go to the list of books I want to add to the collection, it also shows me books which are added to other collection, making the scrolling quite lengthy.


Let's say books I have books no. 1- 100. Just taking their serial no. 1 to 100 for consideration.

Books no. 1-10 are added to collection -A

Books no. 11-20 are added to collection no. B

Books no. 21-30 are added to collection no. C

I'm now building collection D, and it shows me the whole list of 100 books including the ones already added to A and B, making the process longer than expected. I have to scroll through the whole 100 books instead of just 70 books.

Here, the Robert Greene books are already added to another collection, yet I have to scroll past them.



Pasting the link separately of the image as well as it's not getting embedded somehow.
https://i.imgur.com/7mrAp96.jpg

Is this the way it is or there's a smarter way?

[Sirtel]

This is the way it is. Books can be added to multiple collections. Collections are more like tags, not like folders on a computer.