Limit the number of books on your Kindle device.

[JSWolf]

I have 552 books on my Libra 2. Soon to be 551.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Conclusion
A 15k limit isn't unreasonable.

At one book a day, the 16k books will take you 43 years. A Kindle might last 20 if you replace the battery 2 to 4 times.

That would depend on your reading speed and time you spend reading. According to my reading stats over the last 9 years, 16,000 books would take me about 12 years.

Add me to the people who have ~5,000 books on their main ereader. At one time I stored ~18,000 ebooks on my Clara HD with the internal storage upgraded to a 128GB µSD card but that ran into slowness issues since the database was larger than the RAM making it impossible to load the entire database into memory.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

That would depend on your reading speed and time you spend reading. According to my reading stats over the last 9 years, 16,000 books would take me about 12 years.

Yes, reading speed and time available to read varies enormously per person. Some days (and most of the night ) I might read 3 books. Book size also varies somewhat with genre, author etc.

I like having my entire electronic library on portable devices. Choice. I have about 8,000 ebooks (mostly longer than novella) on my ereader and about 90% are PD. I add titles faster than I read My tablet has less ebooks but 30 years of PDFs etc.

So certainly if "ebooks" are towards 1k to 10K words rather than 100k to 300k (many SF & F, but unlikely with mysteries, westerns, romances, younger than "young adult") they need anthologised, which especially on anything other than Kobo managed with Calibre allows easier finding if TOC is good and selection for anthology is sensible.

I think some traditional Mills & Boons/ Harlequin are maybe shorter than novella and you could read maybe 4 a day.

[DNSB]

One recent purchase was 4 "novels" and 6 "novellas" in a series that were collected into an omnibus edition. Total word count for the omnibus was 184,392 (minus advertising, copyright notices, etc.). I then counted the individual items. The 4 "novels" came in at 32,451, 33,009, 34,822 and 39,230 words for a total of 139,512 words, the remaining 44,800 words would be the 6 "novellas". A quick word count of those showed 1 at 15,091 words which sneaks into novella territory. The remaining 29,789 words were spread fairly even across the remaining 5 "novellas" with only one coming close to 7,000 words.

So what I would say is that, being generous, I purchased 6 novellas and 5 short stories in an omnibus edition.

I was using the following word count definitions and yes, there is overlap:
Short story: usually over 1,000 words to 10,000 words
Novelette: 7,500 to 19,000 words
Novella: 10,000 to 40,000 words
Novel: over 40,000 words

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

...

So what I would say is that, being generous, I purchased 6 novellas and 5 short stories in an omnibus edition.

I was using the following word count definitions and yes, there is overlap:
Short story: usually over 1,000 words to 10,000 words
Novelette: 7,500 to 19,000 words
Novella: 10,000 to 40,000 words
Novel: over 40,000 words

Those are reasonable definitions. You do need overlap.
Essay: 100 words to 2000 words?
Epic/long: 180,000+ words?

A short story often is a different style / structure to a Novella.
I'd not seen Novelette before, but that makes sense. I guess more like a novella/novel than short story in structure/style?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Those are reasonable definitions. You do need overlap.
Essay: 100 words to 2000 words?
Epic/long: 180,000+ words?

A short story often is a different style / structure to a Novella.
I'd not seen Novelette before, but that makes sense. I guess more like a novella/novel than short story in structure/style?

My definition of Long/epic is 500+ works is long and 1000+ words is epic.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

A short story often is a different style / structure to a Novella.I'd not seen Novelette before, but that makes sense. I guess more like a novella/novel than short story in structure/style?

Novelette is pretty much as you suggested with the structure of a novella/novel.

I'm not sure about the lower limit on short stories. Several of my favourite short stories are well below 1,000 words though flash fiction seems to be the choice for describing those short shorts now.

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." is a six word example. I've seen this attributed to Ernest Hemingway but versions date back well before he would have been writing.

[haertig]

My personal opinion is that the Kindle really sucks at navigating its library. So I keep around 12-ish books on mine. About half of those are potentials for my "next read", and the other half are previously read books in a series that I'm reading - in case I need to go back and refresh my memory on some character or event.

All of my library management and browsing are done on my computer using Calibre. My eReader is just a temporary holding device for books of immediate interest to me. It's just too slow and clunky and feature-poor for me to have any desire to manage a library with it.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by haertig

All of my library management and browsing are done on my computer using Calibre. My eReader is just a temporary holding device for books of immediate interest to me. It's just too slow and clunky and feature-poor for me to have any desire to manage a library with it.

I agree 100%!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by haertig

My personal opinion is that the Kindle really sucks at navigating its library. So I keep around 12-ish books on mine. About half of those are potentials for my "next read", and the other half are previously read books in a series that I'm reading - in case I need to go back and refresh my memory on some character or event.

All of my library management and browsing are done on my computer using Calibre. My eReader is just a temporary holding device for books of immediate interest to me. It's just too slow and clunky and feature-poor for me to have any desire to manage a library with it.

The problem with this approach is that my "next reads" change constantly, so I need my immediate selection to be very large. Fortunately it's easier to manage a library on a Kobo than on a Kindle. Kobo readers take the metadata and collections automatically from Calibre.

And yes, I mostly browse on my computer too. But not always.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The problem with this approach is that my "next reads" change constantly, so I need my immediate selection to be very large.

Mine do too. And "potential next reads" that are resident on my Kindle are constantly being added and deleted. But I consider my access and management of my book collection to be "immediate" since I am in front of my computer for many hours every single day. The time in front of my Kindle is nowhere near that often. It is literally faster for me search in Calibre, connect my Kindle to the computer, and download a book to it than it is for me to navigate through a large library resident on the Kindle using its interface.

Everyone has different needs and different ways of meeting their needs. For me, a large Calibre library on my computer coupled with a very tiny collection of recently curated books on my Kindle is my preferred method. Other methods might work better for other people.

Personally, I think Kindles excel for reading books. And I think they completely suck for organizing them. So I minimize the organization part and therefore I'm happy with my Kindle. If I were more into organization, I might be better off with a Kobo (from what I've read). But for just the reading part, I'm pretty sure I'd be happy with a Kindle, a Nook, a Kobo, or just about any other eReader out there. I'm of the opinion that there are only very slight differences in the reading part. Organizing may be a totally different ball game however.

[AnnieQuinn]

Does anyone else lose books - those that are copied by cable?
I lost many books when I copied by cable. So I switched to "Send to Kindle" so that the books are stored online.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by AnnieQuinn

Does anyone else lose books - those that are copied by cable?
I lost many books when I copied by cable. So I switched to "Send to Kindle" so that the books are stored online.

No, I haven't lost anything. But I don't use a Kindle. Amazon has been deleting USB-sideloaded books for years now - there is a thread about it here.

[Desertway]

I have about 1,500 books on my kindle, all sorted into 45 collections. It's never a problem for me to navigate. About 1000 of those books are send-to-kindle books, and I turn wifi on every couple of days to sync. Nothing has ever gone wrong.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Desertway

I have about 1,500 books on my kindle, all sorted into 45 collections. It's never a problem for me to navigate. About 1000 of those books are send-to-kindle books, and I turn wifi on every couple of days to sync. Nothing has ever gone wrong.

But you must create and maintain those collections manually on your Kindle (or on your Content & Devices page). And there's no sorting by series for sideloaded books.

Yes, it's doable, and for non-calibre users, Kobos aren't any better than Kindles as far as organizing your content goes. If you use calibre, though, no manual work on a Kobo is needed at all.

To each their own. Some people value syncing for both purchased and sideloaded books that Amazon provides; others value integration with calibre and a more customizable UI that Kobo provides. And still others don't care about any of this, but about something else altogether.