Books have vanished in the new Kindle Scribe

[musteman]

I bought the new Kindle Scribe in middle of January. Since that time, most of my books have gone missing twice. Those books were loaded into the Kindle some through Calibre and some through the "send to Kindle" option. Clearly the books were not purchased in the Amazon store and they did not have any DRM.

For weeks I'm reading in daily basis without issues but twice in the last 4 months, suddenly I could not find most of those books...The first time I thought it was due to an update of the system but the second time they vanished overnight.

Finally, I have the Kindle connected through Wifi most of the times because I need to synchronise my notes every day. I use the Scribe for working purposes also.

Thanks for any potential help/ideas. I'm surprised not reading any other post with similar problems...I'm sure many people use Calibre or Send to Kindle...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by musteman

. . .
I'm surprised not reading any other post with similar problems...I'm sure many people use Calibre or Send to Kindle...

Couldn't have looked very hard. The essential things you need to know are in the first post of this thread, which was updated yesterday.

Dealing with Kindle ebooks in calibre

BR

[Sirtel]

See here:
Amazon removed books from my Kindle

The thread is over 3 years old. The issue is still ongoing.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Couldn't have looked very hard. The essential things you need to know are in the first post of this thread, which was updated yesterday.

Dealing with Kindle ebooks in calibre

BR

That has nothing to do with the OP's issue.

[musteman]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

See here:
Amazon removed books from my Kindle

The thread is over 3 years old. The issue is still ongoing.

Thanks! I remember I followed this post before but I did not have this problem at that time. Unfortunately, I can see there is no clear explanation/solution for this problem...books sometimes disappear randomly without a clear solution...

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by musteman

Thanks! I remember I followed this post before but I did not have this problem at that time. Unfortunately, I can see there is no clear explanation/solution for this problem...books sometimes disappear randomly without a clear solution...

There are three possible solutions:

- keep wifi always on
- keep wifi always off
- use Send to Kindle for sideloading, not USB transfer

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

There are three possible solutions:

- keep wifi always on
- keep wifi always off
- use Send to Kindle for sideloading, not USB transfer

I think there may be one other solution. Add in the correct ASIN for that eBook if it's on Amazon. I'm not sure how well that would work

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think there may be one other solution. Add in the correct ASIN for that eBook if it's on Amazon. I'm not sure how well that would work

Doesn't work.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think there may be one other solution. Add in the correct ASIN for that eBook if it's on Amazon. I'm not sure how well that would work

Jon, that is pretty much a recipe to guarantee books will be removed when the issue is triggered. If Amazon sees the ebook on your Kindle with a valid ASIN which is not listed in your ebook purchases, as far as Amazon is concerned, you do not have a valid license and the book will be removed.

[musteman]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

There are three possible solutions:

- keep wifi always on
- keep wifi always off
- use Send to Kindle for sideloading, not USB transfer

Thanks again. Unfortunately I have WiFi on all the time and books disappeared.. about the send to kindle, books transferred that way also were gone…

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by musteman

Thanks again. Unfortunately I have WiFi on all the time and books disappeared.. about the send to kindle, books transferred that way also were gone…

Then it's some other issue, maybe something is wrong with your Kindle. No one else has reported that their books have vanished when wifi is always on or they've used Send to Kindle.

[tomsem]

If you have Books filter set, you will not see any of your send to kindle books.

For side loaded books, you should make sure they are marked as 'personal document' (CDEType=PDOC) and not 'Book' (CDEType=EBOK). KFX Output plugin does this by default (as of a recent update). This also enables cover thumbnails to be generated for side-loaded books on the 2024 (or prior model) Kindles. Calibre will generate and side load thumbnails, regardless of CDEType, but that's not possible with the 2024 models. (And those thumbnails can get removed, requiring re-connection to calibre to restore them)

If you are side loading AZW3 then my understanding is that it requires some 3rd party metadata editor to change the CDEType to 'PDOC' (if it is not already thus). I just checked and it seems calibre sets it to EBOK by default when converting to AZW3.

Perhaps that is why the removal is happening. (as others point out if ASIN matches amazon book you have not purchased it can get removed - but I think only if it is marked EBOK).

I've never been able to reproduce this problem.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I've never been able to reproduce this problem.

Probably because you don't keep wifi off long enough?

[tomsem]

d

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Probably because you don't keep wifi off long enough?

It was off for at least several weeks (6 or so). I have yet to see a 'recipe' guaranteed to reproduce the issue.

I think this was the tool I was thinking about for changing CDEType: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...98&postcount=1

However it only operates on '.mobi' files, not '.azw3'.

But it looks like you can use calibre's conversion to 'mobi', choose 'new', and set it to PDOC there. I assume that's functionally AZW3, but is it even possible for AZW3 to have PDOC CDEType=PDOC? Hmm.

At any rate, I'm curious enough to do this conversion and see if covers get generated (this would be for Colorsoft). They do not get generated for the AZW3 calibre has generated.

I'm not curious enough to do another experiment to try to reproduce the deletion.

[DNSB]

I use a Python script to handle the task of changing KF8/azw3 501 cdetype from EBOK to PDOC. It came from GitHub at ebook_cdetype_to_pdoc