How often do you clean up your library? (As opposed to hoarding...)

[Brownskins]

I've always had this question at the back of my mind but never got to discuss it with other e-reading friends:

How often do you clean up your library?  I don't mean shelving, but rather, permanently erasing books that you know you probably won't be:
1) reading again; or
2) ever reading in the first place.

I ask this cause I do get tempted by price drops and sales a lot, but after a couple of months and looking back at the accumulated ebooks, I find myself disposing of the books that I don't really want anymore.  I like my collection streamlined and well appointed - just like tasteful furniture and fixtures at home.  

So for me, it is once a quarter on the average, and I end up deleting at least 10-15% of my books (no recycling here except that it frees up the cloud somewhere...).  (Sometimes I allow for eraser's remorse and keep the deleted books in archive.  But after another week, I just go ahead and delete them, knowing that I probably won't ever choose or read them.)  I don't know.... it's kinda like cleaning up my desk.... it takes a lot of determination but once it's done, it's gratifying.  What are your thoughts on this?

[jonathanmoeller]

Never. If I want to find anything, there's always the Search option.

I salve my conscience with the knowledge that when I die, my executor will find it quite easy to deal with my ebook collection. My physical book collection, not so much. 

[tinytoy]

Never.  I am an e-book hoarder. What I do remove from device are library books once the loan period has ended, and notices from Amazon alerting me that loans have ended or have been returned. I haven't once deleted an e-book that I own.  My e-library is quite disorganized; I haven't even categorized anything. I sort by "recent" so the book I am currently reading is always at or near the top.

[Carolyn62]

I archive mine. Sometimes I change my mind about liking a book, my mood changes.

[Atunah]

I need to go through and delete some. When I first got my Kindle in 2008,I just clicked on a lot of free stuff I will never read. I had to learn about publishers and such and to read more careful descriptions. So what I thought then were romance novels for example, turned out to be christian fiction books, which I would never ever read. So they are just taking up space in my account.

Problem is, its so hard to go through the list and delete. I have 1200 books and when I say finally make it to page 25 and delete a book, I get thrown right back to the first page. Same goes if I sort by date purchased and start at the end. So it makes it a bit of a chore. I think there are about 100 or so books that just need to go forever. But its been 3 years, so I would have to pull up each book, then do a search on it on sites to see what it is about and then either keep or get rid off.

One day when I have a few hours to waste I guess.  

eat: Oh, and I am talking about my archive, not my Kindle.

[Brownskins]

Atunah, to your credit, I have only had about 8 months' worth of books.  Your point is exactly my fear, that I may have more books than I can afford to organize.  The archive and the cloud feature is convenient, but then again, if I made a mistake in buying a book, IMO, I need to undo that mistake.  Weird, I know, but I guess that's the OCD part of me... 

[QuantumIguana]

Never. The books can sit neatly on my hard drive. No need to throw them away.

[Luvmy4brats]

Almost never.

I figure that eventually somebody on my account *may* want to read one of them. They aren't hurting anybody sitting in my archives. I've been building my library for 4 years and have well over 1,200 books.

[Brownskins]

LOL... I guess the numbers come with age (Kindle-age, that is)... 1200 books are a lot to read... maybe the next step would be to have a collection of "Cliff notes" for the books in our libraries... 

[Atunah]

I have lists about my lists.  List to plug all the holes holes in the sieve that is my brain.

[stevene9]

I have recently changed. I used to keep a copy of each book on my computer, because about half of my 700 odd books are from non Amazon sources. But since we now have the cloud, I have sent all my non Amazon books to my Kindle so they are now kept in the cloud. Since all my ebooks are now kept in the cloud, I no longer feel a need to keep them elsewhere. I will take the chance that Amazon will not go bankrupt in my lifetime.

[Meka]

I try not to purchase a book until I'm ready to read it, this way I don't have a bunch of unread books on my Kindle. If I come across or hear about a book that I think might interest me I add it to my wish list on Amazon. The only time I make an exception is when Amazon has the $1 books for the SO Kindles or I catch something on the daily deal, and I keep those purchases on my Kindle Blackberry App until I'm ready to read them. My goal is to max my Kindle out and be able to say I have read every book on it. To finally answer the question, I don't plan to clean up my library until it's maxed out. I have lot's and lot's of reading to do!

[DH_Sayer]

I've just started messing around with the collections. Useful, but it seems to get easily cluttered again. Which I'm finiding I don't really mind.

[ak rain]

That's the good thing about folders.
Sylvia

[Ann in Arlington]

Well, first, I only buy from Amazon.  Early in my Kindle life (about 3½ years now) I got a few things from elsewhere but never found the quality and decided there's enough available on Amazon that I don't need to search further afield.

SO. . .all my books are available via my account on Amazon, and I mark them read in the 'your collection' section so that I'll know whether, well, I've read them.

On the device(s) I used to keep everything I hadn't read.  That got a bit unwieldy and the kindle in question was pretty slow to find things. . .speedy when reading, but search and even just going home to choose a new book took a looonnngggg time. But now I have several Kindles so I tend to keep different things on each one, though I also have 'sync' working and sometimes read the same thing on different devices. 

I used to have over 1300 books. . .but realized a lot I'd gotten in my misbegotten Kindle youth were freebies that, really, I was not going to read.  Stuff I got in the euphoria of "free books, oh wow!"  I've become more discerning as I matured in my Kindle life so have been slowly going through my 'books' listing at MYK and permanently deleting those that I really don't need to have.

I do have collections. . .and most books I've owned have been assigned to at least one, but I honestly don't use them regularly.  I tend to just have a sort of "TBR" list of the next books I'm looking to read straight on the home page.  If none of those appeal in the moment, I go to my Fire and spin the carousel until something strikes me.  Wonderfully therapeutic!

[dbeman]

If I've actually paid for a book I will never permanently delete it. I don't download many free books because there just aren't a whole lot of them that appeal to me; but I would be more apt to delete those if I felt as though I need to "tidy things up" a bit.

However I'm far from a hoarder, so this is usually not an issue for me. I think in a year and a half of e-reading I've accumulated just under 30 books.

[Brownskins]

Ann, that is a great recount of your kindle "coming of age".  I do have 5 devices (only 2 of which are Kindles but the other 3 have Kindle apps), and I intend to learn from you:  (1) Be more discerning and practice restraint at the point of purchase (or download, if a lucky freebie); (2) to maximize use of the cloud for my entire library; (3) to keep my quarterly (having done it 3-quarters now) habit of "cleaning" up my collection of stray freebies or discounted books that caught my fancy at the time of advertisement; and (4) to keep a manageable (maybe 5-10) books that I am currently reading or want to read in each device that I own.

I am learning from y'all... thanks.  I feel like a toddler compared to all of your "years of experience".  I was a late adopter, and yet I embraced ereading quick.  I now have 5 ereaders, 2 of which are Kindles and others with Kindle apps...  

[LauraB]

I archive mine. Sometimes I change my mind about liking a book, my mood changes.

This is what I do too. I don't keep all my books on my Kindle, Just the ones I haven't read yet. Four pages worth, which is embarrassing enough! Anything I've already read I archive, unless it was just awful, I've only actually deleted 3 books because they were just  so bad I didn't want to own them  .

[caseyf6]

I had to do a huge cleanup when I was gifting my K2 to my dd.  I wanted to keep many of the books, so I checked all the titles on the K2 and went to the Manage Your Kindle page and had them transferred to my (hidden) K3.  Ugh.  I didn't want to overload the poor K3, so this happened over a period of months.  (Yes, months...there were 1000 unread books...)

I ended up not transferring about 150 of those books, and some I flat-out deleted because they had been freebies and I am more picky now.  (Terrible quality, or more of a risque "romance" than I'll ever want to read.)

[Meemo]

There's only been one book I've completely deleted from my account - a book my daughter bought and was horrified by the contents - I figured if she couldn't hack it the rest of us on the account surely couldn't so I deleted it.  Otherwise, they all stay in there since there are 4 of us on the account.  All the Amazon books I want to read but haven't yet are on my K3.  I also have quite a few books in Calibre from other sources that I'd like to read - most of those are also on my K3.  The K3 essentially functions now as my TBR library.  I put books on my Fire or BabyK or other devices as I read them - they don't need to be there all the time, just when I'm ready to read them.  As soon as I finish a book, I delete it.  Unfortunately I seem to add books faster than I read them, but that's okay - at least they aren't taking up space or collecting dust in my house. And it isn't the "cleanest" of all systems, but it works for me. 

[The Hooded Claw]

I  just don't permanently erase anything. Little incentive to do so, and I would feel like a twit if I later wanted something I had deleted.

[Ann in Arlington]

I  just don't permanently erase anything. Little incentive to do so, and I would feel like a twit if I later wanted something I had deleted.

For a long time I resisted deleting anything for just this reason. . .. but at some point I was looking at some of the titles in my library and thought, "why the heck do I even have that?"  Since it was 'free' when I 'purchased' it, and I knew the chances of me ever actually reading it were somewhere between slim and none, I just got rid of it.  And then went and found a few more that fell into the same category.  Again, they were indiscretions of my Kindle youth when I could be seduced by the word 'free'.

[Hadou]

When I get 5 or 6 new books, I'll kinda clean house a bit.  But, I'll usually remove a book once I read it if I remember to (after backing it up).

[leigh7911]

SO. . .all my books are available via my account on Amazon, and I mark them read in the 'your collection' section so that I'll know whether, well, I've read them.

I suspect I'm being a bit thick, but I can't find anything called a 'your collection' on amazon. Is it somewhere besides MYK?

[Pawz4me]

I permanently delete about 99.5 percent of the fiction books I read as soon as I finish reading them.  It's an extremely rare fiction book that I'll ever read a second time, and I can't stand clutter of any kind.  I'm slightly little less quick to permanently delete non-fiction books, but I don't keep them forever.