Upgrading Kindle - Best Practices?

[nynaevelan]

Now that I my new Paperwhite will be arriving soon, YAY! I was wondering what is your best practices when upgrading to a new ereader? I always seem to have such a hard time getting my collections on the newest model, so I was wondering if you all could give some tips to make the process easier. I usually keep about 250-300 books on my kindle at a time, and I have well over 6 pages of collections. I manage my collections in Kindle for PC and transfer my books to my kindle via Calibre. I've tried Amazon's Import Collections from other devices but I usually get a successful import about 1 in 30 tries, and I always end up having to re-create them manually.

I have tried:

import collections
add books
allow indexing to complete
import collections again

then I tried

add books
allow indexing to complete
import collections

Has anyone gotten the imports to work successfully?

Any tips on upgrading with a smoother process??

[tovare]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

Now that I my new Paperwhite will be arriving soon, YAY! I was wondering what is your best practices when upgrading to a new ereader? ....

My strategy is to:

1. Delete the user manual to start of with a blank slate.
2. Add just the books I'm currently reading.
3. Add categories when the list of books exceeds two pages, and then just one or two categories.

The reason is that I've previously done bloopers like:
1. Hoarding content, like fan-fiction, articles and such.
2. Creating a taxonomy-like categories, some with no content or just one book.


Cheers

[SquiddOhio]

There is no way to transfer the collections directly or even via computer.
You could move the books from the directories folder of Old Kindle to a computer, and then copy them into the New Kindle, or use Calibre. That part would be fast and easy. Creating the "Collections" and populating them will be a strictly manual process that will have to be done on the New Kindle. I have helped several friends and family members set up new Kindles, and this seems to be the only way to recreate on the new Kindle the setup you describe.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SquiddOhio

You could move the books from the directories folder of Old Kindle to a computer, and then copy them into the New Kindle

That will only work if all your books are DRM-free. Mine are, but many peoples' won't be.

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

Now that I my new Paperwhite will be arriving soon, YAY! I was wondering what is your best practices when upgrading to a new ereader? I always seem to have such a hard time getting my collections on the newest model, so I was wondering if you all could give some tips to make the process easier. I usually keep about 250-300 books on my kindle at a time, and I have well over 6 pages of collections. I manage my collections in Kindle for PC and transfer my books to my kindle via Calibre. I've tried Amazon's Import Collections from other devices but I usually get a successful import about 1 in 30 tries, and I always end up having to re-create them manually.

I have tried:

import collections
add books
allow indexing to complete
import collections again

then I tried

add books
allow indexing to complete
import collections

Has anyone gotten the imports to work successfully?

Any tips on upgrading with a smoother process??

Your last option is supposed to be the best. But as you noted, it doesn't always work correctly. I do know that the books need to be on the Kindle before you import the Collections, otherwise the Collections will be created without books to populate them. In that case you will have to manually move each book into the proper Collection(s) after the books are imported, which is a PITA.

BTW, if you have multiple devices with Collections, and those devices don't have the exact same Collections, you will get all the Collections from each device imported. When the Kindle for iPad app recently updated to include Collections, I imported them into it. I assumed it would only import them from my current Kindle Touch and Kindle for Mac/PC apps. Unfortunately it ALSO imported them from some devices I no longer have! I had tried different naming schemes over the years to get Collections to sort correctly, so I got a gillion Collections imported onto my iPad. Since I had tried several sorting schemes I got the following Collection name schemes:

• CollectionName
• .CollectionName
• _CollectionName
• #CollectionName (where # is a number)

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Your last option is supposed to be the best. But as you noted, it doesn't always work correctly. I do know that the books need to be on the Kindle before you import the Collections, otherwise the Collections will be created without books to populate them. In that case you will have to manually move each book into the proper Collection(s) after the books are imported, which is a PITA.

BTW, if you have multiple devices with Collections, and those devices don't have the exact same Collections, you will get all the Collections from each device imported. When the Kindle for iPad app recently updated to include Collections, I imported them into it. I assumed it would only import them from my current Kindle Touch and Kindle for Mac/PC apps. Unfortunately it ALSO imported them from some devices I no longer have! I had tried different naming schemes over the years to get Collections to sort correctly, so I got a gillion Collections imported onto my iPad. Since I had tried several sorting schemes I got the following Collection name schemes:

• CollectionName
• .CollectionName
• _CollectionName
• #CollectionName (where # is a number)

I too have run into this problem, Like you I have been using collections since they were introduced, and my naming conventions have changed several times. I've sent in several feature requests to Amazon asking them for a way for the user to clean out the collections on their servers, but no such luck so far.

jswinden: I do not mind if the collections imported empty, since there would be no books on the kindle yet. I find this saves me from having to create them again on the device.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I guess I will have to stick with the manual process. It is a little easier since I use the plugboards on Calibre, but it sure would have been nice to have this automated a little more.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by SquiddOhio

There is no way to transfer the collections directly or even via computer.
You could move the books from the directories folder of Old Kindle to a computer, and then copy them into the New Kindle, or use Calibre. That part would be fast and easy. Creating the "Collections" and populating them will be a strictly manual process that will have to be done on the New Kindle. I have helped several friends and family members set up new Kindles, and this seems to be the only way to recreate on the new Kindle the setup you describe.

Thanks the books are not the issue, it is the collections that halts the process. Like Harry my books are all drm free, since I seem to upgrade my devices as often as I change my socks, I find it easier to work with drm free books so that I do not have to re-download them again and again and again.

[Yolina]

The easiest is the combination of Ixtab's Collection Manager and the Calibre collections plug-in and then just import the collections from Calibre via CM after you've transferred the books.
Now obviously that's assuming a JB can be found and everything made to work with the PW2 firmware (which could take some time; or might not even happen at all for all we know, which is a scary thought!))