Content Backup your Kindle books locally

[crane3]

I could have said "disappearing books from my Amazon account content" as that is also true. Fortunately, I am using Calibre & have converted the AZW books to epub; BUT stupidly a some months past, I did a mass delete of the AZW files which I should have kept as 'proof'(?) or purchase/license.

Anyway, I found that many books got deleted from my Amazon account for many books & some I thought was "recent" but checking Calibre, I saw they were from 2013, 2014 & 2015. The discovery came about because I received my 'new' Oasis & wanted to reread a book from Modesitt's Imager series on the Oasis. Guess what, not on the Oasis; checked my Kindle lib on the pc where Amazon send the books as it was my default device (place); not there!?? also not on my Fire HDX...so checked my account on Amazon; not there either!!!

No way to recover except by Amazon using their email archive as I long stopped saving the receipt emails as cluttering up my system. Won't know what else I'm missing until I want to reread a book from another author.

So what now? I am not willing to purchase the books again & will now NEVER delete the AZW files from my Calibre library. And even tho I keep 3 backups/exports (1/month), the Amazon formatted books are long gone but, at least, I still have the books on Calibre & Calibre Companion. Will be checking to see if CC can have multiple libraries also to have a separate library just for the AZW files even if the preferred format is epub.

The cloud sucks & not truly safe.

[stumped]

are you sure you did not change your amazon account, sometime after buying the old "lost" books
if not, they should show under my content on the web site
to get rid of a book from cloud you have to explicitly delete from there , one book at a time, and confirm you really want to delete. there is no way it should happen by accident. I know that with apps you can archive them , so that they are still there but do not show up as cloud content on fire tablets until uou unarchive. not sure if you can archive books like that, but could be worth checking


i suggest talk to amazon.

purchase records shoudl still be on the web site - forever, in my purchases , even if u deleted email receipts.
you have to try really hard to lose all purchase evidence with amazon, unlike say ebay who only keep stuff for a couple of years at best.
and if amazon like you as a customer, they will probably give goodwill replacements or credits for a submitted list of lost kindle titles. amazon can probably tell you if you ever had a different amazon account, also.

[Sirtel]

While I have never relied on Amazon or any other retailer to keep my books safe, I haven't noticed anything missing, and the number of books on my Amazon account tells me the same. Something weird going on with your account, I think.

[Daveoc64]

I think you're making a lot of assumptions and jumping to incorrect conclusions.

1) Books should never be removed from your Amazon account. They will stay there forever, unless you go on the Amazon website and delete them. Even books which are no longer on sale should still be available in your account.

2) All of your Amazon.com orders (including Kindle content) remain in your account permanently. I can view orders I placed in 2003, when I first used Amazon. While it is possible to "hide" an order, it can never be fully removed from your Amazon account.

3) If you tell Amazon customer service that you can't find a book in your Kindle library, you can simply tell them the order number from your Amazon.com order history. From that, they should be able to add it to your Kindle library again, if there is some reason that it was deleted.

I think there are two likely explanations here:

a) You didn't buy the books from Amazon

b) You deleted them from your library on Amazon.com

For me, the cloud works great. Books I purchased 10 years ago are still there, and when I get a new Kindle, I just click a few buttons and my entire collection of books is downloaded automatically.

[crane3]

My apologies to all. Sometimes we elderly lose trace of time & space.

After checking my Amazon digital purchases, the books in question did not show up. Light bulb lights in that I may have bought the books from B&N; reset my password & check my nook library; the books showed up. Evidently I had bought the books before B&N stopped letting the customers download them.

Will now have to work to convert the epub to mobi or azw(?) in Calibre & copy them over unless Calibre can send them over....

[janrey]

Originally Posted by crane3

I could have said "disappearing books from my Amazon account content" as that is also true. Fortunately, I am using Calibre & have converted the AZW books to epub; BUT stupidly a some months past, I did a mass delete of the AZW files which I should have kept as 'proof'(?) or purchase/license.

Anyway, I found that many books got deleted from my Amazon account for many books & some I thought was "recent" but checking Calibre, I saw they were from 2013, 2014 & 2015. The discovery came about because I received my 'new' Oasis & wanted to reread a book from Modesitt's Imager series on the Oasis. Guess what, not on the Oasis; checked my Kindle lib on the pc where Amazon send the books as it was my default device (place); not there!?? also not on my Fire HDX...so checked my account on Amazon; not there either!!!

No way to recover except by Amazon using their email archive as I long stopped saving the receipt emails as cluttering up my system. Won't know what else I'm missing until I want to reread a book from another author.

So what now? I am not willing to purchase the books again & will now NEVER delete the AZW files from my Calibre library. And even tho I keep 3 backups/exports (1/month), the Amazon formatted books are long gone but, at least, I still have the books on Calibre & Calibre Companion. Will be checking to see if CC can have multiple libraries also to have a separate library just for the AZW files even if the preferred format is epub.

The cloud sucks & not truly safe.

Well it is pretty easy to see if you really did buy them with your current Amazon account. Go to orders, then click digital orders then in the drop down choose the year. All digital books you ordered that year should appear. If it doesn't show there then you had another account during that time. If it does show, and it is indeed not in your cloud, then email Amazon to fix it.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by crane3

My apologies to all. Sometimes we elderly lose trace of time & space.

After checking my Amazon digital purchases, the books in question did not show up. Light bulb lights in that I may have bought the books from B&N; reset my password & check my nook library; the books showed up. Evidently I had bought the books before B&N stopped letting the customers download them.

Will now have to work to convert the epub to mobi or azw(?) in Calibre & copy them over unless Calibre can send them over....

You can still redownload them from B&N. Go over to the thread for current info. Most ordinary ebooks download fine - it seems manga and textbooks are what is giving people problems. The books are stored in a place different than they were before with only code identifiers. However, they loaded into Calibre just fine. Apprentice Alf still works with it.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by Daveoc64

For me, the cloud works great. Books I purchased 10 years ago are still there, and when I get a new Kindle, I just click a few buttons and my entire collection of books is downloaded automatically.

How do you get whole library to download with just a few buttons? I was just testing a refurbished Kindle ereader that I received the other day and downloaded the books one at a time. An easier way? I wanna hear about it!

To keep this related to the OP's solution, while this is too much work for those with small libraries, I keep separate Calibre libraries for Amazon, Kobo, B&N and Baen (plus a library for all other publishers/sellers). After importing into these libraries, I then send a copy to my general library. This really helped me to keep track so that I was sure everything was imported into Calibre in case of deletion or seller who went offline.

FWIW, I primarily sideload. I have hundreds of books at Kobo, B&N and Baen and over 1000 at Amazon. Endless scrolling is easier to do on my computer than my ereader.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by crane3

Will now have to work to convert the epub to mobi or azw(?) in Calibre & copy them over unless Calibre can send them over....

I prefer epub as the "master" format and azw3 for the kindle format. With mobi you won't be able open it in Calibre's editor, and azw3 is the newer format. In my limited experience I don't think I've ever had wonky formatting with a purchased book but with ones I've downloaded from Gutenberg it does happen.

[Daveoc64]

Originally Posted by Tarana

How do you get whole library to download with just a few buttons? I was just testing a refurbished Kindle ereader that I received the other day and downloaded the books one at a time. An easier way? I wanna hear about it!

If you go to amazon.com/myk on a computer, you should be able to click "Select all" under the "Books" section, then click on "Deliver". You can do the same with "Docs".

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Daveoc64

If you go to amazon.com/myk on a computer, you should be able to click "Select all" under the "Books" section, then click on "Deliver". You can do the same with "Docs".

For the record, this is new this year. First you could select 10, then any number (or at least a page anyway).

[stumped]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

I prefer epub as the "master" format and azw3 for the kindle format. With mobi you won't be able open it in Calibre's editor, and azw3 is the newer format. In my limited experience I don't think I've ever had wonky formatting with a purchased book but with ones I've downloaded from Gutenberg it does happen.

I agree, but I also like to track what the original purchase format was, so I file non epub originals outside of calibre . In a bought from Amazon folder somewhere.
That way I don't accidentally overwrite them if I edit in epub then convert back.
But I also use calibre tags to record what store as book came from

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by stumped

I agree, but I also like to track what the original purchase format was, so I file non epub originals outside of calibre . In a bought from Amazon folder somewhere.
That way I don't accidentally overwrite them if I edit in epub then convert back.
But I also use calibre tags to record what store as book came from

You could also make another calibre library and store them there. I have 3; calibre-unread, calibre-finished, and calibre-purchased. When I finish a book I use the copy to library (delete after copy) to copy it to calibre-finished, before or after deleting it from the kindle.