An easier way to manage my Kindle?

March 16, 2015 7:30 PM

I have an old Kindle Keyboard 3G, which I love. It's now loaded with books, but they're very disorganized. I have created a bunch of folders, but it's such a painful, labourious process to add books or move books that it's no longer set up in any useful way. I want to know if there's an easier way to do this.

Basically, I'd like software that will let me more easily manipulate the categories and books on my Kindle. I have Calibre but I am not sure if it is possible, or any easier, in there.

Really, I'd just like some kind of drag and drop interface I can install on my Macbook that'll show me a big list of books in one pane and then all my categories in another, and then just let me sort things that way. That's just the most basic idea--if there's something with more features than that, that's fine, too.

posted by synecdoche to Technology (3 answers total)

To be honest, I found the only way to keep my Kindle manageable was to have limited, functional folders and to minimise the number of books and articles in each. I have the following now, and am strict about deleting anything I've read which isn't going into the backup folder.

- to read
- current (strictly limited to what I'm reading now, and books moved out as I finish them)
- backup (for books I've read but might want to read at short notice, comfort reading, aeroplane reading, etc)
- shorts (short stories)
- reference

I don't keep my entire library on the kindle as I find it unmanageable under any circumstance. I just update it once a week or so. If I can't wait a week to read a book I remind myself of my childhood when I didn't have the world's literature at my fingertips.

So this doesn't answer your question, but I'll be interested to hear if there is a better solution of the kind you describe.
posted by tavegyl at 2:48 AM on March 17, 2015

Yeah, I never found a good solution either. I keep the folders limited to one screen, and have general genre-type categories (SF/Fantasy, Crime, YA, Classics, etc.) and then laboriously put them each in. I only keep about 200 books on there, but did it all manually.

If it helps, the older Kindles didn't do folders at all! THAT was painful.
posted by clone boulevard at 8:49 AM on March 17, 2015

Best answer: Pretty sure calibre supports this. See here (jump to the Calibre section - the first part doesn't apply to the keyboard version).
posted by zug at 11:38 AM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]