# Question about organizing your books on Kindle 2....



## PianoManKD (Mar 20, 2009)

Hey guys

I'm new to this board as i JUST ORDERED MY FIRST KINDLE!!! yayyyy! I can't wait!

Anyway, so I bought a couple Stephen King books for it and some free books before it arrives so when I take it out of the box I can download immediately and start reading. 

My question is, does the Kindle 2 organize your books into categories or authors, etc? That way it's easier to find and looks more organized? I'm a neat freak and like things to be organized like that.

Thanks guys and I look forward to making new friends on here!

Kyle


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## intinst (Dec 23, 2008)

Sombody else tell him. I don't want to be the one to break it to him.


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

Welcome Kyle. Sadly the Kindle does not have folders. You can seperate your personal documents and subscriptions though. We've been trying to get folders since the original Kindle was released. 

You can sort by authors, titles, or most recent and that does help. You can also archive (fancy word for delete) books purchased from Amazon and only keep a few books on the Kindle. Many people do this to manage their libraries.


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

TAGS!  You can TAG your books!!  This is the closest thing to organization that we have come up with.  I put a note on each book title page with it's tag(s) listed.

That's good, right??

RIGHT??


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

The tags are good. But, they do nothing to organize the home page  However, they are better than nothing.

Psst...KindleKay, I'm on my iphone.


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## PianoManKD (Mar 20, 2009)

Oh so you can alphabetize the view of your books by author or title?


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## frojazz (Feb 10, 2009)

Yep.  You can also set it up to organize 'by most recent first' so that whatever book you are in last will show up at the top of your home screen.  I use that one the most since I'm usually reading more than one book.


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## PianoManKD (Mar 20, 2009)

frojazz said:


> Yep. You can also set it up to organize 'by most recent first' so that whatever book you are in last will show up at the top of your home screen. I use that one the most since I'm usually reading more than one book.


Cool! Thanks for the help man! I can't wait for the Kindle2 to arrive here!!! AHHHH


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## VictoriaP (Mar 1, 2009)

PianoManKD said:


> Oh so you can alphabetize the view of your books by author or title?


Well......yes as far as title is concerned.

As far as authors, the publishers aren't sticking to a set format for author names. Some are listed as First Name Last Name--and may sort under either. Others are listed as Last Name, First Name--usually showing under last name. Some public domain books may have things like birth & death dates for the author showing in the middle of the name! Books from sources other than Amazon may not show an author's name at all without formatting assistance (done on your PC). So sorting by Author may or may not turn out accurate.

This is the one BIG issue I have with the Kindle. At 70 books, it's plenty frustrating, and it will only be worse at 1500. This is a massive failing as far as I'm concerned, and Amazon's "reasoning" as to why they haven't done anything yet is insane.

Don't get me wrong--I adore my K2, I really do. I just hope they fix this sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile--most of the time, mine are on Most Recent as well, but I have a tendency to download books even when I'm not finished with the current read. This bumps my current book down the list again until I reopen it, etc. Tonight I went through the whole list & tagged every book that has not yet been read so I could at least pull just those with a search. Later this weekend, I'll probably tag by genre, and by series at least. I need to get a handle on this now rather than later, since at 70 books, it's already a bit of a nuisance to go back & do!


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## PianoManKD (Mar 20, 2009)

Thanks for the response Victoria....much appreciated! I'm sorry if I'm asking too many questions, I'm a Kindle newb and cannot wait for it to arrive on monday.

Can someone explain what tagging means and how you go about doing it? Is it easy? Whats the positive of tagging them? 

Thanks

Kyle


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

I add tag words to each book on my Kindle by adding a note to the title page with the tag words in it. Then, I can do a search for that word on my Kindle and it will give me all the books with that word in it.

I add a "q" before each tag word so that the search won't pull up books that just have that word in the story.

For instance: Dead Until Dark has qvampire and qromance and qread and qsookie

Then, if I do a search for *qvampire*: all the books that have that word in them will list. (Currently, I have that word in a note in all the Southern Vampire books and Twilight.) So the search results will list all those books.

Does that make sense at all?

It is a roundabout way of organizing, I agree, but it will work. The tedious thing is adding the tag words via note to each book. I had to go back and add notes to 4 pages of books once I discovered this. Now, I just add the note as I download a book.

NOTE: if you have a K2, the search feature will work immediately for tagged notes. If you have a K1, then you have to add all your notes and give your K1 about 24 hours to index it all before the search will work properly.


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

Wow, I just reread my previous post and I sound all technical and like I know what I am talking about!  hehehe....that is a first!


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## kim (Nov 20, 2008)

PianoManKD said:


> Thanks for the response Victoria....much appreciated! I'm sorry if I'm asking too many questions, I'm a Kindle newb and cannot wait for it to arrive on monday.
> 
> Can someone explain what tagging means and how you go about doing it? Is it easy? Whats the positive of tagging them?
> 
> ...


Welcome to the Boards PianoMan, it's great to have you here.

I haven't done this, but I think I can explain it. You can add your own notes to your books. So what some people do is add notes or keywords to their cover page, like 'fiction', 'romance', 'read', 'unread' (ya get the idea). Then if you want to see all of your romance genre you can search for 'romance'.

An additional hint if you want to try this: The word 'romance' could show up in lots of places on your Kindle, so people try to make their tag a little more unique, so instead of using 'romance', they might use 'tag-romance', 'genre-romance', or 'xromance' -anything to make their tags not look like normal words.

[edit] oops, I type too slow. KindleKay beat me to it.


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

That's OK Kim...maybe between the two of us, PianoMan might understand a little bit!!  

Which Kindle do you have, out of curiosity?  I have a K1


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## L.Canton (Jan 21, 2009)

There are no folders at the moment, but I'm hoping Amazon see's the light and decides to add them in via a software update at some point.


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## pomlover2586 (Feb 14, 2009)

I like the TAG idea....


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## Esther (Dec 21, 2008)

KindleKay (aka #1652) said:


> NOTE: if you have a K2, the search feature will work immediately for tagged notes. If you have a K1, then you have to add all your notes and give your K1 about 24 hours to index it all before the search will work properly.


That's why it didn't work for me when I first tried it! Thanks! Yeah! --I'm off to go add some more note/tags.


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

Esther, go ahead and tag K1 books.  Wait 24 hours then test it.  I assure you it will work.  

I tried at first, too, with about 5 books and the search didn't work so I gave up.  The next day, after reading more posts, I tried again and viola!  It worked!


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## Esther (Dec 21, 2008)

KindleKay (aka #1652) said:


> I tried at first, too, with about 5 books and the search didn't work so I gave up. The next day, after reading more posts, I tried again and viola! It worked!


Me too. I just never tried again and forgot to check back in that thread and just assumed it wouldn't work for K1. --Happy that it does! It will be a lot of work to retroactively add all those notetags. Thanks so much!


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

You are welcome, Esther!  Did you do a test on the tags you tried first?  

It is tedious going through them all, but it makes searching very easy (after 24 hours, that is)


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## PianoManKD (Mar 20, 2009)

Thanks for your help everyone.


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## Jesslyn (Oct 29, 2008)

I truly, truly love my Kindle, but will be really happy when this is no longer an issue.


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## KindleKay (aka #1652) (Jan 20, 2009)

Amen to that Jesslyn


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## intinst (Dec 23, 2008)

The only reason I would move to another version Kindle before this one dies is folders


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## Esther (Dec 21, 2008)

Yes, this 'put a tag in notes' method is very tedious, slow, kludgey and not very satisfying, but it works to create a primitive kind of sorting on the kindle.  Amazon should take notice of the lengths to which they are driving us to create a better sorting method.  Makes us look kind of desperate, in my opinion.


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## ELDogStar (Dec 19, 2008)

Esther said:


> Yes, this 'put a tag in notes' method is very tedious, slow, kludgey and not very satisfying, but it works to create a primitive kind of sorting on the kindle. Amazon should take notice of the lengths to which they are driving us to create a better sorting method. Makes us look kind of desperate, in my opinion.


I ain't bothering... (I hate "tedious"), but I decided to keep no more than 3 "pages" of books listed on my K2 at any one time. All the others can be "archived". I don't read many multiples of books at the same time, and I don't read so fast that I am reading 5-7 books a week. (In fact I am a very slow reader. Just to be honest in the thread.)

EL (ELDogStar)

P.S. The archive function on the K2 and the Apple I-Touch are independent of each other and do not cross sync. I ONLY keep 2-3 books "available" on the I-Touch, (the one I am reading, and the next 2 I anticipate I will be reading) all others are archived on it.


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