Calibre + Kindle Collections
I’ve had a couple of emails and comments asking about this post about Kindle Collections and Calibre. Unfortunately, due to changes in how Amazon has implemented Collections on its newer devices, from the Kindle Touch forward, any third party software used to manage your collections requires jailbreaking your Kindle.
Jailbreaking your device is not without problems and if you do jailbreak your device, you are opening your device up to potential malware and limiting yourself from future updates. Amazon will often send out a late night software update without informing you and when it updates your software on the Kindle, all your jailbreak goodies will be gone.
Fortunately or unfortunately, there is a new jailbreak for your devices that is likely to be released by the end of October.
If you are in a hurry, though, the existing jailbreak instructions are here. To install a collections manager, you’ll need to add the Kindle Unified App Launcher and then either Collections Manager or LibrarianSync.
I read through this stuff and it’s not very simple. I don’t know if it’s worth the time and effort to put into it to manage your books.
Currently you can manage your collections of books purchased from Amazon via the Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac App. If you have an iOS or Android device, your best solution is to create collections on those devices and then sync to your Kindle.
Syncing Cloud Collections
Tap on “All Items” menu and select “Collections” from the Cloud view.
From there you tap on the collections you want to add. The collection will be added, but no books will be placed in that collection until you tap on each book individually. A pain in the ass? Yes, yes it is.
I don’t use collections as much as I should. In fact, nearly every night I pull up the list of books and browse the same ten or twenty of them wondering why I don’t have anything to read.
I wish Amazon would program in a “shuffle” feature that would push random titles to the top. Needless to say I think the book management program on the Kindle is terrible and I wish that there was an easier way to handle the books.
YES to the shuffle feature in Kindle. I found something on Pinterest the other day where you write all the titles of your TBR pile on slips of paper and put them in a jar so you can pull which book to read next. I don’t have the patience for that, and I still have to be in the mood for a book. Plus, I’m visual and need covers to look at. But it made me think the same thing – why isn’t there some randomize/shuffle feature in Kindle. The books I bought forever ago never get looked at.
@Roni Loren – It’s probably against Amazon’s interest to give us a shuffle feature. You’re bored with your current purchases? Here’s 10,000 more you can buy or borrow!
Alternatively to shuffle, if they’d at least let you select a page in your library instead of having to scroll down, it would be nice too.
I have a sort of shuffle on my Fire. It’s beginning its journey to that final Firesite in the sky and in between its self-induced shutdowns, it’ll put a book or two on the device from the cloud as a complete surprise. Books I’ve usually forgotten. It’s sorta neat, actually. :-)
My version of shuffle- I randomly choose letters of the alphabet and pick a book from authors in my TBR whose last name begins with that letter. My TBR is huge enough that I don’t usually have trouble finding something that suits my mood at the time. I’ve come across some wonderful books that I’ve wished I had gotten to sooner this way.
I try this approach with every other book so it seems less like a have to do sort of thing and I don’t repeat the letters chosen during the year but I do start over every January. Books coming off holds from the library kind of throw a wrench into the system but I’m flexible.
This used to be easier on my KK because I could sort by author, search by letter, click and it would go to the starting page of that letter. I haven’t figured out how to make my Voyage restrict to only items on the reader. I share my account and there are books that I’m just not interested in sorting through.
I’d love to hear what other people do to work through their TBR.
Erin:
I may have misunderstood what you want and if so, I apologise for an unnecessary explanation.
On the Kindle Paperwhite, at least, whenever you see a page number at the bottom right of the screen tapping on this brings up a “go to” box and you can enter a page number and, depending on how the items are sorted, may also be able to go to the first letter of the title, author or collection name. This works on the home page, within a collection and when adding or removing books from a collection.
Jane:
My wife any mother-in-law share my Amazon account so I “manage” a set of Kindles which typically each hold 800 to 1,000 books. I have put a lot of effort into setting up collections and making sure the right ones appear on each machine. I have found that this all works pretty well – though splitting an over-large collection is a bit of an effort – and have never felt the need of a collection management system other than that provided by the Kindle itself.
Book management is another matter! For myself, everything we buy that I think I might read goes into genre specific TBR collections on my Kindle. What I would like from Amazon is the ability to assign a reading order to each collection as I don’t want my TBRs ordered by title, author or recent – in fact, “oldest purchase first” would be better than nothing.
For my wife and mother-in-law attempts at computer solutions have failed and we’ve fallen back on old technology: printing out a frequently updated Word document listing Collections/Authors/Titles on which they tick off books they’ve read. Old fashioned, but it works remarkably well and they never have any problems in selecting an unread book. However, this really needs to be built up over time as purchases are made: it’s not something to start because you’ve a couple of thousand books and everything is out of control (and I seem to be buying a lot of ink cartridges for my printer).
@Mike:
Thanks Mike! That’s it exactly. I swear I had tried that before and it didn’t work, but it is now :)
@Mike: It works on the Voyage too! This is my first touch eink device and I’m learning new stuff all the time but this is actually something I’ve been looking for and could never figure it out. Thank you so much.
I realize this won’t help Kindle-exclusive readers, but for anyone using Moon+ Reader Pro, there is a feature that provides a kind of shuffle. Tap the Settings icon In the upper right hand corner of the main screen and select “Open a random book.” I’ve used this often and have found/remembered some great titles; it really beats being overwhelmed by too many choices.
@Mike: Thanks, Mike! This is excellent and will save so much time.
I’d really like to be able to add a third line to the book title in the list. I’d like to have title, editable line, and author so I can add a note such as “book 1” or maybe which couple are in the book. I’ve created a few book lists for some of the longer series and run them through Calibre into my Kindle and that helps me read the books in order or be able to pick out the book with the couple I’m looking for.