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

[Ann in Arlington]

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?

Go to your account and sign in.  Under 'digital content' you'll see a link to 'your collection'.  It pretty much has any book (whether e- or p-), video, mp3 or periodical you ever purchased as well as software or video games.  If you narrow it to 'kindle books' you can sort it various ways and search for specific books and then give them star ratings.  You can also enter notes if you want about the book or tag them for you own use.

There's also a separate site:  kindle.amazon.com where you sign in and see a list of just kindle books.  You can mark them as being read, been read, or to be read.  And give a star rating. . .the 'collection' will reflect that rating as well.  This is the area where you can share highlights if you want and see public ones.

And of course there's the 'books' section of MYK, but you can't do much there other than send it to a device.

I am looking forward to Amazon combining these three similar lists into one functional and useful database.

[leigh7911]

Go to your account and sign in.  Under 'digital content' you'll see a link to 'your collection'.  It pretty much has any book (whether e- or p-), video, mp3 or periodical you ever purchased as well as software or video games.  If you narrow it to 'kindle books' you can sort it various ways and search for specific books and then give them star ratings.  You can also enter notes if you want about the book or tag them for you own use.

OH! Thank you!! I'd never noticed that before. (Obviously.  ) Love the 'covers' view.

I have been to the kindle.amazon site, and am quite amused that it catches the star ratings given on the kindle itself (as does the 'your collection,' I see now), but have a hard time making it believe me sometimes. There's a couple of books that I've marked as read repeatedly that it STILL categorizes as to be read. Ah well.

Right now I've got a couple of 'read' collections (one for books in 2011 and one for short stories), but sooner or later I'm gonna need to move those off if I don't lay off the free books. Ahem. Glad there's ways to still see what they are rather than going through the huge MYK list and guessing which is which.

[caseyf6]

That is a really neat site (like goodreads but I don't have to input everything).  However, it only shows 25 of my Kindle books?!  Any advice?

[Ann in Arlington]

That is a really neat site (like goodreads but I don't have to input everything).  However, it only shows 25 of my Kindle books?!  Any advice?

Go to the next page?

I'm not sure which site, specifically, you're referring to.  But on all the Amazon ones I mentioned, it does show only a limited number of books at once but there are multiple pages you can select.

[mom2karen]

I didn't know about kindle.amazon.com.  What do you have to do for it to register a book as read?  It only has 7 of my books marked read. 

I just did a big clean up of my 1,000+ kindle books.  I had over 700 on my K2 (mostly unread) and it was getting super slow.  I also am adding my mom onto my account and wanted to be able to find books for her.  Here is how I did it....

I was most concerned about my archived books and the ones not sorted on my K2 (about 200).  I dreaded using the K2 for this and heard that the new versions of Kindle for PC had collections so decided to try using it.  I already had collections on my K2 with about 3/4 of them sorted.  I updated Kindle for PC and imported the collections which was applied to all the books in my PC (downloaded and archived books) that had been sorted on my K2.  I right clicked on each title and looked at the add to collection section (would be nice if books in collections didn't appear on the main page so I didn't have to look at every book).  If it didn't have a collection and I had no idea where it belonged I searched for the book on Amazon and then put it into the right collection.  If it was a freebie that I no longer wanted I stuck it in my "delete" collection. 

I then went to my K2 and deleted each collection and imported them from my PC.  That got my uncollected books on my K2 down from 22 pages to 4.  I went through those 4 pages (mostly apps that the PC doesn't get and books from non-Amazon sources) and sorted them into collections.  The next time I sync collections I'll leave my "games" and "non-amazon" collections on my K2 and delete the PC copy when it comes over.  I think that will keep those 4 pages of books contained. 

My next step was to go to ManageMyKindle and search for each book in my K2's delete collection.  I opened up multiple windows of it so I didn't have to wait for my1,000+ book list to load after deleting each title.  I would search in one window for a title, hit delete and OK, then move to the next window for the next title.... By the time I got to the last window the first was done and ready for a new search.  I then deleted each book in my delete collection on my K2.  I then went to my PC app and synced to get rid of the books I already deleted.  There were about 30 books still in the folder so I deleted those on MMK too. 

It took me about 6 hours and I was able to sort about 80 books that my mom will enjoy.  Unfortunately with the TONS of new free books I already have 100 more to sort, but I don't think it will take too much time since I know what I'm doing now.

[bwbollom]

I'd say somewhere between never and almost never. The K3 holds a few thousand books...I probably have about a thousand on there. I'm positive I'll never get around to reading them all, but whenever I pick it up, I like the idea that all of my options are right there! I have deleted free books that I started and just hated...no need for clutter that I know I'll never read. But for the most part they stay right there on my K3.

As for the archive...I don't know why I'd delete them. What if my wife decides she wants to read something that was once there? I might have hated it, but we don't have the exact same taste. I'm fine with letting stuff sit in the archive until some future someone decides they might want to check it out.

[caseyf6]

Go to the next page?

I'm not sure which site, specifically, you're referring to.  But on all the Amazon ones I mentioned, it does show only a limited number of books at once but there are multiple pages you can select.

Ann, I meant the kindle.amazon page-- it only shows me as having 25 Kindle books!!  No extra pages, nothing.  25-- total.  If I choose "all books" it gives me every book I've ever purchased from them, Kindle plus regular.  So I had to go through and delete all of the dtb from the list so my Kindle books were sortable the way I wanted them to be.  Very annoying.

[Ann in Arlington]

Ann, I meant the kindle.amazon page-- it only shows me as having 25 Kindle books!!  No extra pages, nothing.  25-- total.  If I choose "all books" it gives me every book I've ever purchased from them, Kindle plus regular.  So I had to go through and delete all of the dtb from the list so my Kindle books were sortable the way I wanted them to be.  Very annoying.

Hmmm.  On mine, there's a menu along the top.  It says "Your books" and you can click for what set you want -- reading, have read, stopped reading, etc.  Just below that is a light blue bar with a page selector.  I have 52 pages.

[Mips]

I don't delete them but I do archive them off my devices.

My K3 started to get really, really slow when it got over 1K books.  I spent some time archiving them one by one until I got the total of about 100 on the device itself.  I still saw more to buy, taking advantage of price drops on books, but I didn't want to download them just to immediately archive them.  I downloaded the Kindle for PC ap to my pc so that the books had a place to be bought to.  I rarely access my Kindle for PC so they stay up in the cloud until I am ready to access the collection to load the specific book to my Kindle.

Unless it is a book that I actively use for reference or maybe the preceding book in a series I am currently reading, I archive them as soon as I am done with them.   I keep my new actual Touch collection equally small.  It is a lot easier to go straight to or from archive on the Touch.

i will not let the active collections on any of these devices get over 300 again, with 100 being my optimum.  100 covers most of my moods, current obsessions and books in progress.

[Brownskins]

Happy holidays everyone! I love Christmas and the afterglow... Gives me a chance to clean up and organize my home and my devices. And hopefully finish a book. Will now put into practice the good advice given this far... 5S everyone!!!