KindledFans

Dreamwidth -- FYI

melinafandom — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 03:08:40 GMT

FYI, this community is in the process of importing over to Dreamwidth.

Fire HDX 7

kadymae — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 10:06:03 GMT

I'm considering buying one of these, but I have a few questions.

How is the battery life?
How is the Mac compatibility?
How is the browser for things like youtube, facebook, and LJ?
Is there a good lite wordprocessing/notes app?
What's the best keyboard?

Thanks!

New Kindles

melinafandom — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 22:41:14 GMT

Really one new Kindle and some refreshes.

A new flagship e-ink, called the Kindle Voyage. It has optional sensors on each side of the device that can be used for turning pages, an optional auto-light sensor, 4 gb of space (which translates to about 3 gb for users), and it's a little bit smaller and lighter.

The Paperwhite is getting an upgrade to 4 gb of space (up from two), and the entry-level $79 Kindle now includes touch.

Kindle Collection organization

reppu — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 17:43:01 GMT

Hello friends! I hope this post is appropriate for the front page.

I've had a Kindle since 2011 and it's revolutionized the way I read fanfic (and how much of it I consume). Back then, I had a Kindle 3 Keyboard and organized all of my fic via Calibre and the Collections function. However, after a big push in the initial upload and organization, I would then download a fic (one-off) from AO3 and send it straight to my Kindle. I'd still add the fic to its organizational collection on the Kindle, but it wouldn't go through Calibre anymore.

Years pass this way and, as all tech will do, my Kindle 3 started its death spiral and I found myself the owner of a Kindle Touch with Special Offers. I don't miss the keyboard as much as I miss the directional buttons (I live in a very cold climate where touching things without gloves is impractical). But the biggest problem now is my collections. I find myself frustrated because some of my fic is with Calibre and some of it is with Amazon through my personal documents. With Amazon, I have to download everything one by one, and then it doesn't come stored in it's collection. Further, now that the Amazon Kindle app has added collections, I don't see the newly created collections that I made on my Kindle Touch on my Kindle app.

So, to my question: Is there an easy way to organize my collections so that I can restore my Kindle should it fail again? I often download a fic on my smartphone while I'm out, and then email it to myself. If Calibre is the ultimate answer, is there a mobile way to involve Calibre in the organizational process?

Great Downloader!

celestlyn — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 03:48:41 GMT

Hi all! New member here. Just introducing myself. I have a Kindle Fire HD that is a year and a half old. I pretty much love everything about it, except maybe the fact that I can't organize my files on the Kindle or in the cloud. This really is something Amazon should address at some point.

I read tons of fanfic and load it all onto my Kindle. Since ff.net decided to not accomodate people who want to read fic on their devices and changed their coding to prevent downloading and the copy/paste option, I had pretty much stopped going to ff.net. I know you can still do the 'copy the whole page' thing, but that wasn't working for me, since I prefer long fics with multiple chapters. Someone turned me on to an online downloader that works beautifully at ff.net. Most of you may know it, but for those who don't it's called Story Master and it will not only download fics from numerous sites in whatever format you want (epub, mobi, pdf...etc), but it will also send it straight to your Kindle without you having to load it onto your computer first and email to Kindle. You would need to add the Story Master email addy to approved addys on your Amazon Kindle account, but after I did that I've been able to put dozens of fics from ff.net on the Kindle. http://storymaster.the-code-monkey.com/

Just thought I'd mention it for anyone who is not aware of it. I still use Calibre when I have to and AO3 is awesome because they convert to several formats. I don't think I've read a fic over 1000 words on my computer since getting my Kindle. Best thing ever invented.
Celeste

Help - transferring AO3 mobis to Kindle Paperwhite.

bijoux — Wed, 07 May 2014 01:56:13 GMT

Okay, this is probably a long shot, but maybe someone is having similar problems and knows how to fix it?

Recently, any .mobi files I've downloaded from AO3 are not transferring properly to my Kindle Paperwhite. I've tried redownloading the file from the internet (to make sure it's not somehow corrupted). I've tried both emailing the 'personal document' to my send-to-kindle address and directly hooking my Kindle to my comp and dragging/dropping the file into the documents folder of the Kindle folder. I've tried turning my Kindle on/off.

The mobi file will appear on my Kindle reading list but when I go to click it, it gives me this message:

"Unable to Open Item - The selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this item from Amazon, delete the item and download it again from the Cloud on Home."

The mobi files in question are all under 1 MB so size isn't an issue here.

Please help if you can - I'm desperate! Thanks.

A Kind Voice on Books: Interview with Ozgur K. Sahin

rubel — Thu, 01 May 2014 19:04:50 GMT

For those who didn't know, I recorded an interview for A Kind Voice (for their books program). I talk about my book and what went into writing it, convention experiences, narcissism, and other social and literary topics. You can even hear me read a short excerpt from my book (don't worry, there aren't any big spoilers!).

Recommendations, please!

cinnastyx — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 17:55:06 GMT

My K3 is dying! The battery won't hold a charge and even after being plugged in all night it still shows the empty battery screen. I try rebooting/restarting it and 99% of the time, the empty battery screen returns. On the rare occasion it reboots successfully and I'm able to access my content, the battery indicator shows a minimal charge.

Should I even bother ordering a replacement battery & trying to change it out or just pitch it and get a new kindle? If I go the route of getting a new kindle which one would you recommend? K4 or Paperwhite and why?

I can't find any info on if either the K4 of Paperwhite offer the ability to put items into "collections" (I read a lot of fanfic on my kindle so it's kinda a must) and I have to be able to password protect it to keep prying eyes out.

Thanks!

Kindle Image Preferences

rubel — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:05:42 GMT

Hey all, I recently published an eBook with color images in it (see my page if interested), and I have a couple of questions for eBook readers:

1. I oriented maps sideways so they would fit the screen better and figured you can always physically turn the screen. Whether you zoom in or not, I figure this makes it easier to view, but I wondered if you all agree (one friend is annoyed by it, and anyone reading on a computer has to rotate the image or view).

2. I know the paperwhite and the glowlight have great battery life and are easier on the eyes, but I feel that sacrificing color is too great a sacrifice. What do you think, and also how long do you figure before we have paperwhite versions WITH color?

MY INTRO

rlmorgan51 — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 13:56:44 GMT

Hi All

Robin Leigh Morgan here, I'm a new member to Live Journal as I've just found out about it. This naturally makes me a NewBie member to this group; so please excuse my ignorance here about how things are done as I'm still getting my feet wet. This is one of the groups I've join which coincides with my writing.

I'm a retired NYCity employee who's been married for 20 years [November 2013] with no children. My written commentaries for a community newspaper for several years prior to June 2006. My first romance writing endeavor for a novel is a YA Paranormal/Time Travel/First Kiss entitled "I Kissed a Ghost" which got self-published on December 20, 2012, the KINDLE addition got released on May 12, 2013. I'm currently writing a still untitled adult Contemporary with a paranormal element running through parts of the storyline.

As I'm a newcomer to this community as well as to LiveJournal I'm looking to make some friends here.

Please check out my journal.

Book Prices are Crazy; new Kindle Fires

melinafandom — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:52:14 GMT

I don't mean crazy expensive (well, yes, in some cases) but just plain crazy, as in jumping all around everywhere. The first book in Jacqueline Carey's new series went from $11.04 to $4.55, and I've seen other sudden jumps recently on books by Brandon Sanderson, Veronica Roth and Stephen Baxter, among others. Sometimes they go back up, sometimes not. I think it's part of the antitrust case and the temporary end to agency pricing, but I don't really know for sure.

Anyway, if you buy a significant number of ebooks, I heartily recommend using a price tracker so that you can take advantage of price drops on the titles you want. I use eReaderIQ, which tracks title and author price drops, as well as "waiting to be Kindlized" titles, but there are others. They can save you significant money. IMO the key is jumping on price drops as soon as you learn about them, because many are temporary.

In other news, there are new Kindle Fires coming soon -- you can read an overview here.

Read to Me

orbadviser — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 20:19:28 GMT

My first Kindle was the kind with the keyboard, and one of the features that I especially liked about it was that it could read to me.

That was a couple Kindles ago. I had a Fire for a while and now I have the most basic version, the one with ads.

I love my Kindle. I rely on my Kindle.

But I do miss having a Kindle that would read to me. So my question is this: What is the least expensive Kindle I can get that will have that feature enabled?

Thanks for your advice :-)

New Paperwhite, "MatchBook"

melinafandom — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:18:49 GMT

A new Paperwhite is being released at the end of September. Amazon is touting better display technology, a new built in light, faster processor, a new way to flip pages and scan chapters, better dictionary lookup, and Goodreads (but not Shelfari?) integration.

The size specs appear to be exactly the same as the current version, which means cases won't have to be replaced. This immediately makes me more likely to upgrade. The pricing is $119/$139 for wifi and $189/$209 for 3G, with/without special offers.

Amazon also mentions something called "MatchBook," which is coming soon: "For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-edition purchases will soon allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free." This is an interesting idea to help current ebook users upgrade their print collection, and encourage those who prefer print to dip their toe in ebook waters for the price of a latte or less. It will be very interesting to see which books are available. I don't know about you guys, but some of the books I want most as ebooks aren't available for any price.

Organization on Newer Kindles

belleweather — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:09:25 GMT

I just bought a new Kindle since my beloved Keyboard bit the dust. And I kind of hate it.

I read both fanfic and eBooks on my Kindle, and since I don't store the fanfic in personal docs, I keep a lot of stuff on my device. On my Keyboard, I could put books in Collections and they acted like file folders on a computer -- once a book was in a collection, it wasn't hanging out in the home screen anymore, and all my collections were on the top of the list, so it was easy to find things.

The new Kindle doesn't do that anymore. Right now, EVERYTHING on the device is listed on the home screen, whether it's in a collection or not. And my collections and books are all higglety-pigglety, listed on the home screen in the order of when I last opened them.

It's MADDENING, and it makes me wanna throw the thing in the ocean and buy a Nook. Is there a hack or secret setting or anything I can use to organize myself, or am I just screwed?

Kindle collections in calibre help

laura47 — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:54:00 GMT

So my kindle died, and Amazon kindly sent me a new one for free. I still have a huge pile of collections that show up in calibre when i look through my library, but they aren't on the kindle, and when i go to the kindle collections plug-in they aren't listed (there a few old collections there, but nowhere near as many as i actually have.) Can anyone tell me how to get the kindles from library to actually go into my kindle?

Thanks so much!

Another update for Paperwhite

melinafandom — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:54:06 GMT

Over at Amazon, you can now update your Paperwhite software to 5.3.4. It doesn't seem to include any major improvements, so if you'd rather not take the time now, it should install itself sometime in the next month or so, as long as you turn wifi on.

Physical Page Buttons v. Backlight, a grudge match.

belleweather — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:06:39 GMT

My poor, beloved Kindle Keyboard just went to that great bookstore in the sky. This was not unexpected, considering it had been slowly failing for about a year, but now I need a new Kindle IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner and I'm still having a hard time deciding whether to buy the normal Kindle with the physical page-turning buttons, or the Paperwhite with the backlight. I love both features, but can't seem to get them both in one device. Thoughts? Advice?

bkwyrm — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 04:09:18 GMT

Does anyone have a Kindle Fire? What do you think of it?

I'd like to get a tablet, but the iPad is serious overkill for what I'm interested in doing (reading, streaming movies/tv, doing some web browsing). If you've got a Kindle Fire, what do you think of it?

Looking for Mac help (please?)

carbonel — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 21:21:59 GMT

My mother is asking me to do the deDRM thing on her Kindle books, so that she doesn't have to worry about them going away. The problem is, she uses a Mac (I'm visiting her and am away from my desktop computer) and I don't really speak Mac.

I downloaded the Kindle for Mac app, and was able to view her Kindle books. However, I can't find the actual files. One website said they're supposed to be in a My Kindle content/documents folder, but I don't see any such thing on the Macintosh HD in the Finder.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I haven't even downloaded Calibre or any of the rest yet, because I know this is where I need to start.

Any help appreciated.

New software update for Paperwhite

melinafandom — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:43:03 GMT

Paperwhite users may now download new firmware that will take your device up to version 5.3. The improvements include:

Better Fonts: Changes to Palatino, Baskerville, and Futura fonts to make them look even better on Kindle Paperwhite.
Turn off Recommended Content in Home: You can now turn on or off recommended content from the Kindle Store on the Home screen.
Smoother sample-to-book experience: When you buy the book after reading the sample, the book will now automatically start your last reading location in the sample and remove the sample from your Kindle.
Easier access to Settings: When reading a book, you can now access Settings directly from the menu.
Improved Manga: Addition of a new Fit-to-Screen Mode that improves the readability of Manga and maximizes the use of your Kindle screen.
Page Refresh in Comics and Manga: You can now specify a page refresh setting for comic books and manga independent of the refresh setting for books
Improved Chinese support: (setting for simplified Chinese) and Chinese and Japanese font improvements.

IMO these are all worthy improvements, especially the easier access to settings and the increased ease of using samples.

Get the download and update instructions here. Be sure to follow the instructions carefully. If you aren't comfortable upgrading this way, you can hang in there a few weeks and the update will be automatically downloaded to your Kindle via wifi.

A different ebook model

melinafandom — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:06:18 GMT

The Humble Bundle is an innovative experiment in ebook sales. You pay whatever you want for a bundle of five books:

Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema
Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six
Lauren Beukes' Zoo City
Mercedes Lackey's Invasion
Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners

You download these books in a number of formats, including mobi and epub, DRM-free. And you can decide how you want your money distributed between the authors, Humble Bundle itself, and a number of charities. If you pay more than the average price, which as I write this is $13.77 for the bundle, you unlock a number of bonus titles (most of which are graphic-based PDF's best suited for desktop or tablet reading).

While I have to say these titles probably aren't ones I'd go seeking out, I'm buying this -- partly because I really like the model and want to help make it a success. They're doing very well so far, bringing in around $960,000.

There is discussion of the whys and whereabouts of this project on Huffington Post and at The Guardian. The bundle is set to expire on Tuesday.

Simon & Schuster Price Drops?

melinafandom — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:07:27 GMT

I don't know if this is a trend or just coincidence, but in the past couple of hours, eReaderIQ has informed me that two titles on my watch list, both published by S&S, have dropped from $12.99 to $8.27. If you've been waiting for a price drop on an S&S book, you might want to check it out. It also looks to me, though I can't verify it, that a lot of Star Trek titles (sold by S&S under the Pocket Books imprint) have dropped to under $6.

Amazon is still showing agency pricing e.g. "this price was set by the publisher" so I'm not sure what the deal is, although S&S is one of the settling publishers in the ebook pricing lawsuit. This might be a precursor to the termination of the agency agreements, which means prices could drop even more in coming days. But you never know. Ebook pricing often seems as mysterious as airline tickets.

ETA: eReaderIQ's advanced search is showing a bunch of price-dropped books at $8.27 and $5.51 from this publisher, including titles by Mary Higgins Clark, Sandra Brown, Meg Cabot, Jeffrey Deaver and others.

Backup Backup Backup

melinafandom — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 18:50:44 GMT

There is nothing I find quite so heartbreaking as stories on LJ/DW of fans who lost all of their fanfic, vid, whatever collections because their hard drive crashed, and they did not have it backed up. We should all backup our computers somehow, using either a local program and external storage or a cloud-based solution (or if you're a worry wart like me, both).

Kindles also need to be backed up! This is especially true for anything on your Kindle that didn't come from Amazon, like free books from small publishers, or fanfic. At a minimum, every so often, we should all be plugging our Kindles into our computers via USB cables, and simply copying the "Documents" folder on the Kindle over to our hard drive. (Or be more selective and just copy the non-Amazon stuff, but at least do something.) If you regularly download samples from Amazon, you'll definitely want to back those up, because Amazon does not archive samples.

I highly recommend using locally run software to manage and backup your files, rather than just a folder drag and drop. I prefer Calibre, because it not only catalogs your books and keeps copies in whatever format you prefer, it can also convert between those formats as long as the books are DRM free. You can direct Calibre to place the library folder where your files are kept anywhere on your computer, and my libraries (I have several) live in my Dropbox folder, which 1) means the files are automatically available anywhere in the world as long as I have a web browser and 2) they are automatically backed up. (My Dropbox folder is also backed up for me by Carbonite, so I have at least two cloud based backup copies of all my books.)

For your Amazon books, Calibre can either keep a copy with the DRM intact (pretty much for cataloging purposes only, since the file you downloaded will be locked to the Kindle device you downloaded it for, or you can learn how to remove DRM for the purposes of backing up your own files. Apprentice Alf can help, and it's actually very easy to do once you do the first time set up.

Whatever you choose, do something, and backup your Kindle today!

Things I Learned as a Fanfic Fan That Are Not Covered in the Kindle FAQ

dmarley — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 23:07:00 GMT

The recent post about downloading from AO3 has completely shamed me, because I've been doing that on my Kindle Keyboard for nearly two years now and never posted about how to get around the site's overload errors that were happening when I got my Kindle, or about how to deal with the glitch the previous poster mentioned. I just presumed that everyone else was doing what I was doing, and now I really wish I'd shared.

In penance, I offer:

Things I Learned as a Fanfic Fan That Are Not Covered in the Kindle FAQ

I've had my Kindle formerly-known-as-the-Kindle-3 Keyboard for two years now, and having spectaculary crashed, frozen, and eventually irreperably broken the software of my first one, I thought I might share some of my learnings.

First, I love my Kindle(s), and I have used my replacement Kindle with great success. But I discovered that there are things which the fannish Kindle user may consider normal use that the Kindle manufacturers...didn't. Namely, that if, like me, you're using your Kindle to read fanfic, it's likely that you've accumulated lots and lots of small files. This can be problematic for two reasons:

First, the indexing. As you add new files, the Kindle will index them for searching. There appears to be no way to stop this. The indexing occurs in the background and will suck up both battery power and processing speed until the indexing is done. If you are adding new files every day or so (as I tend to do), this can become a perpetually ongoing process if you're not careful.

Second, after a certain point, the Kindle will become overwhelmed with keeping track of all the numerous files and start to re-boot spontaneously. For me, this happened when I'd accumulated somewhere in the vicinity of 3,000 files. At least, I believe it was the number of files, since I'd never used more than 2GB of the available memory and I know users have filled more space than that without problems. My Kindle seems happiest when it has less than 1,500 files. Your mileage may (and almost certainly will) vary.

The best solution to these problems (if you have them) is to not put too many files on your Kindle in the first place. When you do add files, try to add them in small batches. Formerly, I would add stories and never delete them after reading, just filter them into categories. Now I delete most stories after I'm done and resign myself to re-loading them into a more permanent collection if I change my mind later and decide I like the story enough to read it again.

I also used to routinely add big blocks of stories at once, figuring that if I liked an author, or a series, or a fandom, I could just put tons of stuff on the Kindle and read it later, since I had the space. Now I'm more picky about adding new stories, both to keep the Kindle from getting sluggish from indexing and to keep from accumulating too many files. I also try to add stories later in the evening, so the Kindle will be doing its annoying background stuff while I'm asleep.

Other tips:

Another tip I got from a support guy (after one of the more spectacular crashes) is to re-boot occasionally whether the Kindle is wonky or not, and certainly re-boot if the Kindle starts to run more slowly. This clears out the RAM cache, which will get overloaded if the Kindle isn't re-booted after a while (this is a particular problem on Kindles because they have a solid state drive, and can't organize data as efficiently as a traditional magnetic hard drive can). I find that, with around 1,000-1,500 files, re-booting once a week keeps the Kindle running fairly smoothly. Again, YMMV.

Also, even if you don't ever use the online store or the browser, the Kindle seems happier if it periodically ~~receives its orders from the mothership~~ connects with Amazon's Whispernet. If you don't turn on the wireless and connect to the internets for a while, the Kindle will sometimes re-set its internal clock and all your "recent" files will get shuffled down to the bottom. (This can also happen when you re-boot, so be sure to re-connect to the internet and then check what time your Kindle thinks it is after re-booting.)

If you don't remember how to do to a re-boot (or hard reset or whatever they call it this five minutes), here's how: Slide the power switch to the right and hold it there for at least fifteen seconds. If your Kindle is working normally, the screen should go blank after about ten seconds and stay that way until you release the switch. After a few seconds, the power light will come on. After that, you should see the Amazon screen with the tree and after a few more seconds the same screen with the status bar.

If your Kindle isn't working normally, if it's frozen or crashed or showing some bizarre hacked bar code (okay, apparently that's only happened to me--at least according to one of the service persons I spoke to), then it might take longer than fifteen seconds to get the blank screen, and you might have the little processing arrow in the corner even then. In that case, hold the switch for another ten or fifteen seconds to see if the screen blanks. If it doesn't, just let the switch go. You should still get the same restart screen. Eventually. (Your Kindle taking a long time to re-boot is another symptom of overcrowding. And I do mean a long time; I had a couple of crashes near the end where the Kindle took over half an hour to respond to key presses after re-booting.)

Sometimes you may need to re-boot several times in a row to get over a major freeze. If this happens and you have a lot of files, try deleting down to under 1,000 files and re-booting. The more files you have, the longer it takes the Kindle to sort them all into the home page stats after a re-boot.

One other thing: When I called customer service, it didn't matter how many times I told them I re-booted/restarted/did a hard reset, how carefully I described each and every stage of every restart screen, or how technical I got about how I used my Kindle. They still walked me through a hard reset as if I had never mentioned the term before. If they do this to you, you really just have to humor them.

I hope this is helpful. If I break my Kindle again, y'all will be the first to know. :)

Downloading AO3 files directly to the Kindle - all versions?

chamekke — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:39:01 GMT

melinafandom posted recently: This may be old news if you have the KT or the $79 NT Kindle from last year, but for the first time, I was able to download a .mobi book from AO3 directly to my [Paperwhite] Kindle.

On a lark, I decided to try this out with my two-year-old Kindle Keyboard (formerly known as the Kindle 3), even though I had no reason to believe it would work.

Well, guess what — it did work!

Up until now I've always manually downloaded AO3 files to my computer, transferring them to my Kindle via USB cable. But as melina123 says: Now you can go to an AO3 story page on the Kindle's browser (requires wifi), and when you click "download" and choose "mobi", instead of an error message, you'll be asked if you want to download the file. If you do, it will show up in your home screen, with both author and title metadata properly inserted. Really quite awesome!

Weirdly, I do still get an error message when I try this for the first time in a new browser session (see screenshots below). However, if I click the error message closed and then try a second time, there's no problem; and all subsequent downloads during the same session are error message-free. So if you get that initial error message — PUSH ON AND KEEP TRYING. You may be pleasantly surprised!

So, I thought I'd share the good news with my fellow users of older (pre-Touch) Kindle models. I don't know whether this works on all wifi and 3G models now, but I'm thrilled I can do it with my "antique" KK. What a fabulous surprise!

Screenshots

Here's what happens when I first try to download a MOBI file from AO3 (Download > MOBI) during a new browser session. The error message implies that I'm trying to download "another" type of file. (I wonder how many users give up at this point?)

When I click Close, then select Download > MOBI again, the following message pops up. This time, when I click Yes, the MOBI file downloads directly to my Kindle home page. (And, for the remainder of the browser session, I see only this message each time I try downloading other files from AO3.)