Dissatisfied Kindle user, looking for a reader I can organise books better on

[HarryT]

Given that you can jump directly to any author in the list, I honestly don't see what benefit that would bring. If I want to look at my Agatha Christie books I can go straight there. What would be the benefit of a folder?

[crossi]

Compression of the home pages. I turned each author into a collection. When I'm browsing for something to read instead of 100 plus pages of books I have 11 pages of authors. When I see an author that appeals at the moment I can open the collection and pick one of his books. The thought of paging through 100 pages every time I want to choose a book does not appeal. Click, click, click, Gah!

[HarryT]

We all have different preferences of course, but currently I see I have 1876 books on my Voyage, and I don't experience the slightest difficulty or inconvenience in finding the one I wish to read.

[crossi]

Do you KNOW the one you want to read before you see it? Mostly I don't.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by crossi

Do you KNOW the one you want to read before you see it? Mostly I don't.

Nor I. I'm most likely to think, "I'm in the mood for a book about Ireland." Or, the Great War. Or, a classic. Or, colonial America. Or, humor. Or.... Then I go to that shelf on my reader and see what's there. Having the books on my reader categorized by subject/type is highly useful to me.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's perhaps worth noting that if, as many people do, your use for collections is to arrange books in series, this can be entirely satisfactorily done without the use of collections by appending the series name and number to the book's title using a Calibre metadata plugboard. This can be done on any device.

I used to do that. I had a huge (literaly) problem with that though:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 01 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 02 - The Restaurant at the end of the universe
etc.

Those titles became way too long. So long that I could barely see the name of the book.

[PeterT]

I use a plugboard that uses a short form of the series name; THGttG - 02 - The Restaurant at the end of the universe

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I use a plugboard that uses a short form of the series name; THGttG - 02 - The Restaurant at the end of the universe

Yes, that's what I did too, but it required another column in my library which I had to keep up to date too. Because automatically generating one based on spaces wasn't going to work.
"Rama - 01 - Rendevous with Rama" would become "R - 01 - Rendevous with Rama" and be in the same series as "R - 01 - Ringworld".

This was actually one reason I didn't want a Kindle.

[Pajamaman]

As I understand it, Amazon limits the ability to organize books on the device. They prefer users to do book organizing at their server-end.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

As I understand it, Amazon limits the ability to organize books on the device.

The basic on-device organization (collection/shelf creation) for Kobo and Kindle are much the same (more or less identical) and I'd venture the only thing most users know about. Where the Kobo shines is the fact that it's open to using a tool like Calibre in conjunction with it which would be especially nice with any need for bulk organization and for being able to automate the organization process.



For myself other than having a single collection on my Kobo where I add books for the year once I've finished them I prefer to just use the on device search and search by author, title or series which suits me about 99% of the time. If I'm doing more in depth searching than that I'll use Calibre on a PC or Calibre Companion on a tablet to look through my library.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by vickan__

Also calling it a "discount" is just a matter of phrasing. The other way to look at it is there is an upcharge if you want a Kindle without ads.

Kindles didn't have ads originally. When they introduced the special offers option, they were offered at a reduced price.

The fact that you didn't know what you were buying and your third-party vendor didn't give you all the information doesn't make this Amazon's fault.

ApK

p.s. Frontlight.

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by vickan__

I bought my Kindle from a Swedish approved reseller (a brand new unopened Kindle), and there was 100000% nothing like that in the options I had available. Amazon doesn't ship to Sweden for some reason.

Also calling it a "discount" is just a matter of phrasing. The other way to look at it is there is an upcharge if you want a Kindle without ads.

You can chat with an Amazon representative, tell him you live in Sweden and ask him to remove the ads (at no cost), as they are not "useful" to you. I don't own a Kindle, but I know that is what some people in my country (Argentina) do.

[pmpelfrey]

I bought a BeBook ereader some years back from an ebay seller, not easy to find the BeBook or similar like Jinke, that support many, many formats. The BeBook seems to maintain some structure, with various choices in the menus of how to display the lists. It is all button navigation, no touchscreen. I was looking specifically for an ereader for my large collection of .lit ebooks, which Microsoft strangely stopped supporting. Their support ended after Windows Mobile 6.5, I believe. My first Windows 7 phone didn't have it, and Microsoft support told me they wouldn't be creating anything like the old Microsoft Reader software for it. I did discover that Calibre reader on my Windows computer will open .lit, and many other formats of course. The BeBook is not touchscreen, but is very lightweight, really long battery life, and can be read in bright sunlight, but no backlight to read in lowlight situations. It works great on a small plastic tilt stand like a Case Logic one, preventing nose injuries from falling asleep reading. I Velcroed my ereader to the stand, since there are no clips to hold the gadget on the stand. The other ereaders that are very capable of reading a huge number of formats, like the Jinke, can hardly ever be found. There is a good Wiki that has several tables showing device features.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...e-book_readers

But maybe better than a dedicated ebook reader would be an Android device, that could be upgraded as needed over time, since the Playstore has a Calibre version, and maybe it would allow searching and organizing like the Windows based one. I guess if you have added genre tags via "master" Calibre tool, those tags would transfer to the gadget if you use Calibre's tools to send ebooks to the gadget, which could then be used by reader software on the Android device. But I am a novice at that, sorry. I just recently saw that Calibre was in the Playstore. I would expect that it might exceed the capacity/capabilities of most any Android ereader software, including Calibre, to quickly display thousands of ebooks, since the working memory on most of the gadgets don't have a huge amount of memory-RAM. My 30k of Kindle books won't display on most Android devices, since the Kindle app seems to download a cover for each one, using up a lot of space, and whatever RAM is needed.

[JSWolf]

Why bother to go find something to read .lit when Calibre can easily handle converting it to ePub or KF8?

As for Android, there is no Calibre.

[johnnyb]

Concerning the ads: Do what Pablo said and write to Amazon explaining that you bought this device from a local retailer advertised as ad free and tell them that you would like it to be that way. Explain to them that you cannot make use of many of the offerings and that therefore they are of no use to you.
Regarding collection management: If you make use of the send to kindle feature you can use your phone or the Kindle management pages at Amazon to sort your books. If you use AZW3 format and copy over via USB, it is more work, agreed.
Regarding Kobo: I have one but I think the Kindle beats it hands down in terms of stability and performance. So if you are easily annoyed by software quirks, your Kindle is already your best choice. (And it has the most reliable PDF support of all ereaders, strange but true).
Plus, Kobo is currently "testing" more prominent "recommend books" ads in their firmware, the kind that you cannot disable or get rid of. So think about that too...