Yes, this does fall under the category of First World Problems. I know that. I choose to point it out anyway.
My newest baby/toy/gadget has arrived. You know how those commercials say “Every Kiss Begins with Kay”? The implication seems to be that if you really want to get some sugar from your woman, you buy her diamonds. Heh. Not in this house. In this house every Kiss begins with K as in Kindle. Actually, I do kiss my husband without being paid in gifts because I love him and I’m not a high-class call girl with one client. Yet he does know the way to my heart is not with diamonds and roses; rather it is with gadgets and stargazer lilies. And so when the new line of Kindles came out he saved up and purchased for me a Kindle Touch.
It just came via UPS, and once the dogs quit spazzing at the doorbell I fetched it from the porch and opened it with glee.
And here is where the “difficulty” sets in.
This is my third (well, technically fourth) Kindle. The Kindle 3 I got last Christmas (and had replaced last January due to faulty memory) has been used daily. It’s got four pages of collections and more than 500 books sorted into those categories. That’s a year’s worth of collecting, categorising and just flat-out managing my library. There have been days that my reading time becomes instead a Library Management time; I’d estimate the set-up on Quindle Mark III: GobiE-Reader has about fourteen hours worth of work behind it.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve been spoiled by years of Apple products. Or maybe it’s because I’m an efficiency junkie from way back, a computer afficionado since the age of 10 and a nut for spreadsheets, filing and other systems of data organisation. But I would have assumed that I could have plugged the old Kindle3 into my Mac, downloaded the contents in one gulp and reversed the process to put everything over onto the new Kindle Touch.
Apparently that was a wrong assumption. Apparently I have to transfer the books ONE AT A BLOODY TIME from the “Manage Your Kindle” page at Amazon or from the Kindle Touch itself, as if I were buying them over again. Once I’ve moved all the books–one at a bloody time–I then go into the Kindle Touch and import my collections.
As much as I love my Kindles, as much as I can’t live without them, I think this is pretty much what I would consider an Epic Fail on Amazon’s part.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Oooh! I’m expecting mine today! I’m so excited.
I’m hoping for an easy switch. I use Calibre to manage my collection and it should be one swoop of transferring, but it occurs to me that I haven’t checked to see if Calibre has been updated to be compatible with the new devices so maybe I’ll get home tonight and find I’m in same irritating one at a time boat.
I need to start a small business of organizing people’s digital libraries for them, including book transfer. 😉
So two things…
One: This would soooo annoy the crap out of me, too. But I have been spoiled by Apple products as well. 🙂
Two: I am planning on buying someone (family member) a Kindle Touch for Christmas, but I’m not sure if I should get the ads-free version or not because I’m not sure what the ads are. Do they pop up in the middle of reading a book and force you to watch a 20-second video before you can continue, or are there banners on the top of random pages? I guess I’m just trying to get an idea on whether it’s worth $40 more dollars to avoid them and am curious what your take on it is. 🙂
I suspect the problem is because Amazon doesn’t expect you to keep a lot on the Kindle itself. They’re heavily pushing the ‘Kindle for PC’ as a way to archive your stuff so they didn’t make a way to move large numbers of books at a time because they don’t expect people to do that.
The ads aren’t obtrusive. They’re at the bottom of the menu screen and they act as a screen-saver type thing when you put the Kindle on standby during times you aren’t reading. I’ve had mine for two weeks and it hasn’t been a probelm yet.
Oh, man, Megan. I’m sorry I forgot to answer this. I read the comment during a meeting and spaced on coming back here.
Glad W has actual experience because I don’t. I DID buy the ads-free version because you CAN opt to add the ads (weird sentence) on those and then turn them off if you are tired of seeing them.
I personally like to keep ads away from my books–I associate them with periodicals. So I like having an ad-free model very much. It was worth it to me.
W, I know you’re right. Every time this topic comes up in the Kindle fora, folks are surprised at those of us who try to keep the majority of our library on our devices. I realise it isn’t that much different technically but the ebooks are already so ephemeral I feel better if I at least keep them where I can lay hands on them without grasping into the ether.
I tend to agree with you. I haven’t had a kindle long enough to have a large library, but I want them all where I can see them. For me, the whole point of having a Kindle is so I can carry my whole library with me.