Kindle firmware 5.13.3

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So if an eBook is updated but not pushed as an update to owners of the eBook, downloading again will just get the non-updated version. Is this correct?

Yes, unless you OK the update via Manage Content and Devices, at which point you lose access to the prior version from amazon.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Yes, unless you OK the update via Manage Content and Devices, at which point you lose access to the prior version from amazon.

Unlike Smashwords where all customers have access to all versions since the first one that they bought and the Publisher needs do nothing special.

I've no idea how the Playstore works for books. Sales ratio of Amazon to Google Playstore for ebooks seems to be more than 200:1?

However you need to check your Amazon Web page content to know if there is an update, unless there is some promiscuous setting? I've never ever been notified of updates, but found them for a few books when looking at Manage my Content and Devices on the Website.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So if an eBook is updated but not pushed as an update to owners of the eBook, downloading again will just get the non-updated version. Is this correct?

Yes, and I've NEVER had an update pushed to me. Only discovered they were available by checking the Content page on my account on the Website. Not even an email.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, and I've NEVER had an update pushed to me. Only discovered they were available by checking the Content page on my account on the Website. Not even an email.

I have Automatic Book Updates set to Off in Content & Devices/Preferences and I still get updates (sync 3 books to Kindle for PC and there are 6 updated directories. I suspect that may be due to getting other people's bookmarks/annotations/etc. pushed to me since each updated directory contains a .mbpV2 file. A bit annoying since I seldom annotate anything other than an error and I really don't want/need other people's choices.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I have Automatic Book Updates set to Off in Content & Devices/Preferences and I still get updates (sync 3 books to Kindle for PC and there are 6 updated directories. I suspect that may be due to getting other people's bookmarks/annotations/etc. pushed to me since each updated directory contains a .mbpV2 file. A bit annoying since I seldom annotate anything other than an error and I really don't want/need other people's choices.

Hmm...I guess you can't turn off "popular highlights" in Kindle for PC? I know that you can turn it off in e-ink Kindles, but I've never read a book in Kindle for PC, and I haven't actually had it installed for years.

Shari

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Switching from ALL to DOWNLOADED even after a Sync and after manually adding local books to a Collection.

Selection Collections in Filter on All. They show, but without local title count.
Change to Downloaded
Showing: Collections X

You have no items that match the selected filters. Clear
the filters or switch to All view to download Items.

If I create a NEW Collection it works on the DOWNLOADED tab.

So all the existing collections before upgrade are now useless for local books. You can add local books to them, but they only show up under ALL and on Home screen behave as if ONLY the books on Amazon are in them.

Switch to "ALL", then filter by collections. While the list of collections is showing on your Kindle, long press on each one and choose "Add to Downloaded" Once you've done this for all of the collections you want showing on your Kindle, turn off the collections filter, and switch back to Downloaded. Now all of your collections will show on your Kindle, along with all of your sideloaded books.

Shari

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by shalym

Hmm...I guess you can't turn off "popular highlights" in Kindle for PC? I know that you can turn it off in e-ink Kindles, but I've never read a book in Kindle for PC, and I haven't actually had it installed for years.

Shari

There is a checkbox under Tools/Options/Annotations which has a checkbox beside "Display the passages that are most frequently highlighted by other Kindle users.". I did not have it checked so I tried checking it and it made no difference. Amazon support said it should be unchecked to not display the passages but that might not stop the download from happening just in case I might want to display those passages later. The suggestion was that I could disable automatically backup your device annotations and last page read at Amazon to disable the download of other's popular annotations. Nothing like talking to someone who is working from a script to get aggravating.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by shalym

Switch to "ALL", then filter by collections. While the list of collections is showing on your Kindle, long press on each one and choose "Add to Downloaded" Once you've done this for all of the collections you want showing on your Kindle, turn off the collections filter, and switch back to Downloaded. Now all of your collections will show on your Kindle, along with all of your sideloaded books.

Shari

No, that's bonkers. Because they are there ALREADY if you go to add a local book. A collection is just container. I only want the Collection names, not what is in them on Amazon. Some of those are out of date versions.

ALSO I ALREADY downloaded all my Amazon content. Why on earth would I download it again?

This is mindless stupid design!

Indeed the STUPENDOUSLY STUPID ACTION of clicking even on a Empty Collection (apparently) in ALL so it's listed in DOWNLOADED works, EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY added local books to it under DOWNLOADED list and the the Title count in Add to Collection increments.

After doing this stupid click, the Collection Titles Total in Downloaded shows the REAL title Count rather than Amazon's Cloud Imaginary count.

Also there are a large number of collections.
1) Why are they there to Add a local book to but not displayed unless newly created
2) Why ON EARTH should I have to go to ALL and click on EACH collection to "Add to Downloaded"?

Amazon has lost the plot on GUI design and Collections and cloud and Sync.

[Quoth]

There is a really simple workaround.
1) Only use the Kindle as the selected model to buy Amazon eBooks
2) Select Download and Transfer via PC and it will offer your default Kindle as the one the file is for (i.e. a recent one, not a DXG or something old is a good idea)
3) Make sure you have Calibre and DeDRM (4.23 currrently till the Apprentices wrangle the third python)
4) Import the downloaded file to Calibre.
5) Assign it to a Collection
6) Convert to epub2
7) Plug in a Kobo ereader and send to Main Memory or SD Card depending on model
8) Backup the original downloads and Calibre Library.

No problem with Collections ever again. I'm now not going to bother with Collections on the Kindle and only use it for 10 to 20 files for test. Annotation is now faster on Kobo, originally it was faster on Kindle PW3. But always, the Kobo Utilities have been better than ANY method for extracting Annotations from Kindle.

Sync was important for a PDA and a PC for addresses etc. It's overhyped on ereaders or ereading apps as most people only read on one device. Simply copying the file from Calibre is easy and a search for phrase is faster than syncing one device to the cloud and another from the cloud.

Also Download via PC avoids the hyped KFX. It's "advanced typesetting" is artificial, purely done after the fact as most ebooks use the EXACT same source for KF8 and KFX. KFX is really about control and DRM.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No, that's bonkers. Because they are there ALREADY if you go to add a local book. A collection is just container. I only want the Collection names, not what is in them on Amazon. Some of those are out of date versions.

ALSO I ALREADY downloaded all my Amazon content. Why on earth would I download it again?

This doesn't download it again: it only downloads the "collection" (a conceptual tag, a box the books go in) and shuffles the books you already have downloaded that are in that collection on the Amazon server into the collection on the device too. Books you haven't downloaded will only go "into the collection" on your device when you download them (and will do so immediately, into every collection you've downloaded).

This part of the cloud collections feature works quite well. The problem with it is that if you update your collections while you are offline, that update often *doesn't* get sent up to the cloud collections (when the entire point of them is that they're meant to be a union of all the changes you've made to collections on all your devices), so when you get a new Kindle you find that half the collections have the wrong content! ARGH! It really discourages me from buying Kindles, knowing that populating it is going to be a flaming nightmare because half my collections will be sure to be mispopulated and I'll have to audit the lot of them and repopulate them by hand.

(The real problem here is that reconciling multiple disparate updates from clients that may have been disconnected is actually a really difficult problem and the focus of active academic research: the thing to look for is "CRDT". Amazon... Amazon didn't even *try* to get it right.)

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NullNix

This doesn't download it again: it only downloads the "collection" (a conceptual tag, a box the books go in) and shuffles the books you already have downloaded that are in that collection on the Amazon server into the collection on the device too.
...

This part of the cloud collections feature works quite well.

I get that, and it's BROKEN and works badly! I do NOT want to manage or backup the collections on the so called cloud.
I want to manage them locally. It's BROKEN, because the SW obviously DOES have all the collections, you can see them if you locally add a book, then go to add the book via the book to a Collection. They are ALL there and you can add titles to them. Yet you have to "Download" them from Amazon for them to appear.
Even that DID NOT WORK till books was unticked and ticked etc in Filter in ALL.

It DOESN'T WORK!

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I get that, and it's BROKEN and works badly! I do NOT want to manage or backup the collections on the so called cloud.
I want to manage them locally. It's BROKEN, because the SW obviously DOES have all the collections, you can see them if you locally add a book, then go to add the book via the book to a Collection. They are ALL there and you can add titles to them. Yet you have to "Download" them from Amazon for them to appear.
Even that DID NOT WORK till books was unticked and ticked etc in Filter in ALL.

It DOESN'T WORK!

Err... yes, you can't read a book until you've downloaded it. Collections don't change that at all.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I get that, and it's BROKEN and works badly! I do NOT want to manage or backup the collections on the so called cloud.
I want to manage them locally. It's BROKEN, because the SW obviously DOES have all the collections, you can see them if you locally add a book, then go to add the book via the book to a Collection. They are ALL there and you can add titles to them. Yet you have to "Download" them from Amazon for them to appear.
Even that DID NOT WORK till books was unticked and ticked etc in Filter in ALL.

It DOESN'T WORK!

Managing the collections from the cloud allows people who have multiple devices to be able to have the same collections across all of their devices. It also allows me to add books to collections from my computer using the Manage Your Content and Devices page on Amazon's website.

I understand that *for you*, using the cloud isn't something that you want to do. For me, it makes my reading life better. Unlike you, I do read the same books on multiple devices daily. I like the fact that I can read on my Oasis, and then pick up my Voyage, sync to the furthest page read, and just keep reading. When I finish a book, I can add it to the "read" collection for the current year on any of my devices, and it will automatically be added to that collection on all of my devices, instantly.

I don't rely on the cloud to store my books--they are all stored on my computer and backed up to a number of other places. But it does make for a very pleasant experience, and I will take full advantage of it.

Shari

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by shalym

When I finish a book, I can add it to the "read" collection for the current year on any of my devices, and it will automatically be added to that collection on all of my devices, instantly.

I used to do this, but stopped when I got a new Kindle and discovered that (for me anyway) changes made to collections while offline were not reflected in the cloud collection at all, so when I got a new Kindle all my read/unread collections were totally wrong.

Luckily, recently the Kindle has started tracking a lot of that itself, so I rely on the in-Kindle read/unread states now. (Can't rely on the Kindle to track what I'm currently reading though, since Goodreads can only track books it knows about and I read a lot of fanfic -- but an Active collection is small enough that if it gets fubared by the cloud collections messups it wouldn't take too long to fix. Not like the Read collection getting messed up, anyway.)

[shalym]

Originally Posted by NullNix

I used to do this, but stopped when I got a new Kindle and discovered that (for me anyway) changes made to collections while offline were not reflected in the cloud collection at all, so when I got a new Kindle all my read/unread collections were totally wrong.

Luckily, recently the Kindle has started tracking a lot of that itself, so I rely on the in-Kindle read/unread states now. (Can't rely on the Kindle to track what I'm currently reading though, since Goodreads can only track books it knows about and I read a lot of fanfic -- but an Active collection is small enough that if it gets fubared by the cloud collections messups it wouldn't take too long to fix. Not like the Read collection getting messed up, anyway.)

Are you saying that if you add a book to a collection when offline, it doesn't show up later when you go back online? Because I haven't experienced that. How long has it been since you tried? For me, while the new "Read" labels are great, they don't completely fill my needs, since I also keep track of the year in which a book is read.

Shari