# What Tag Words Do You Use?



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

OK- so many people are using the note feature of Kindle to add a note to the title page or the first page of a book that has "tag" words in it. You can then do a search on Kindle for the tag word which will result in search results for what you are looking for. This is the closest thing to organization that Kindle has to date. (of course we are all anxiously awaiting the FOLDER update... but I digress)

Anyway, I have never used tags before and am struggling with what to use. I do "make" my own word so that the search does not yield results that an author would write. I do this by adding a q before the word. Below are the tags that I am using. Help me out: what words do you use regularly for tags?

***NOTE*: _K1 owners need to allow 24 hours to pass before attempting a search for tagged words._ K1's need the time to "index" the added words. It is my understanding that the K2 does not need a wait time and searches work right away.

My tag words so far:

qmystery
qromance
qbargain
qfreebie
qrecommended
qread
qunread
qsample
qvampire
qwerewolf
qevedallas
qsookie
qstephanieplum
qseries

What are your words and ideas?


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

I use tags for source, price, recommendation source, read/unread, subject and/or genre, and personal review scale with 10 high. I plan to add tags for position in series. I have not yet tagged all of my books. EDIT: You can probably tell from below that I use abbreviations.  EDIT: Updated to match latest list. I keep a list of the tags with my Kindle. I have stopped tagging for source, price, and personal review.

qtbr for To be read
qo for opened. I follow this with the date I started the book. When I finish the book then I replace with qrd.
qrd for read. I follow this with the date the book was started and finished.


*Genres**Types**Subjects**Series*qsfqnonficqscienceqser for series followed by series tag and numberqfantasyqficqcookqdisc for Discworldqhistfqclassicqkindle, qk2, qkdxqalice for Alice in Wonderlandqhistqspeechqchickenqoz for Wizard of Ozqmysteryqshortqcatqalterra for Alterraqromanceqbio, qautobioqanimalqmythqhumorqgarden*Misc*qsuspenseqcollectionqreligionqnotesqalthistqyaqpresidentqillus for illustratedqvampqchildrenqUSAqgbww for Great Books of the Western WorldqadultqChinaqdownload for downloading books from feedbooks, etc.qessayqwriterqkb for aquired due to Kindle Boards recommendationqpers for items I have createdqlargeprint (because I could never remember which book was formatted for large print when I wanted to show the difference in fonts)

Items have one or more tags as make sense to me.

Anna


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

I keep a spreadsheet with all my books, which have my own user-defined categories that roughly follow their Amazon categories (sometimes I think a book is a category different than they do and I also combine similar categories). So I use short versions of those categories on my tags:

Adventure/thriller = qadv
Autobiography = qautobio
Biography = qbio
Fantasy/scifi = qsff
Fiction = qfic
Humor = qhumor
Mystery/suspense = qmys
Non fiction = qnonfic
Romance = qrom
Urban/paranormal = qpara

I don't bother between read/unread, and my samples are on a different Kindle so I don't tag those. Doesn't matter to me on Kindle whether it was free or not; I track that on my spreadsheet.  For series, I put either a main character name or the series name (usually what's on Fantastic Fiction) and -01, -02, etc., all as one word, for instance:

qstephanieplum-01

You can get to the dash from the sym button on K1, not sure if it's the same on K2.

So far, I actually have found myself rarely using the tag/search system since I started tagging everything, so I'm trying to keep things simple and easy rather than putting a gazillion tags on everything.  But that's just me.


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

OOOOO, I love the idea of the series with the "-#"!!!  I have been reading the "in death" series and have been trying to come with a search that included the # of the series.  I am going to go add that!  Thank you!!

qevedallas-01

or 

qindeath-01

Why didn't I think of that?


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

I really like the idea about the series number. Yes, the dash is available the same way on the K2 (and according to the manual, the KDX as well). 

Good idea about the price on the spreadsheet. I will probably remove the cost, source, and review tags as I update my spreadsheet. I often don't get to the spreadsheet until the weekend (or even the weekend after). I plan to keep the opened and read tags but haven't marked many with unread. That tag is likely on the way out for me.


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## Stephanie (Apr 28, 2009)

What a great idea! I've only had my Kindle a couple of weeks & I plan to start doing this tonight!



Annalog said:


> qnrd for not read
> qo for opened. I follow this with the date I started the book. When I finish the book then I replace with qrd.
> qrd for read. I follow this with the date the book was started and finished.


Love this idea to keep track of what I have read & when I read it! (Sometimes I forget!) 



Steph H said:


> For series, I put either a main character name or the series name (usually what's on Fantastic Fiction) and -01, -02, etc., all as one word, for instance:
> 
> qstephanieplum-01


Another great idea!!

Thanks for starting this thread, Kindle Kay!


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

You are welcome!

I am getting great ideas as well!  I know that some people are experienced in tagging things in fun, new and interesting ways.  Not me.    In fact, my Kindle books are my first experience with tagging!!!  I am getting the hang of it, though.  And with my luck, as soon as I get it perfected and just the way I want it, Amazon will give an update that includes folders so all my work will be for naught!!!  

I just went in to the last 2 In Death books and added a tag "qindeath-15" and "qindeath-16".  Yea for the dash and series number!!!!


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

I've never really tagged things before either; I don't use gmail, which uses tags instead of folders for email, nor do I use any of the photo organizer programs that have you assign tags for ease of finding pics (I should). That's one reason I'm trying to do this as simple and easy as I can, so I can remember what I've used for tags! 

Glad to hear the dash/series number idea is helpful to others!  I'm honestly not sure how much the number will come in handy for *searching*, but once the search results are brought back with the character/series name, at least the series number is in the note/tag as needed for quick reference.


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

I think that the number will come in handy for me.  I cannot remember the order of series for anything so I can just search the title-# and figure it out!  (One of the worst for me is the Southern Vampire Mysteries!  I do not know the order of those books at all.  I have one co-worker who can give you a title off the top of your head if you ask a question like "which book had that shower scene with Eric?"  Not me!)

I have wished many times that I could modify the title of a book purchased at Amazon to include the series order number but since I cannot, your superb idea is my next best option!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

For books that are series, I have gone to fantasticfiction.com, found the order, and made a file that I then put on my Kindle so I can look up the order when I need it.

Though, if I was starting over with a tabula raza type Kindle, the tag idea is really a good one.  Too hard to do after the fact, though. . . . .at least for me.  

Ann


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## VictoriaP (Mar 1, 2009)

I have to admit, I'm terrible about keeping up with tags.  So much so that I've given up all but one--unread.  Yep, don't even put another letter in front of it.  The tag goes on the first page of the book or the table of contents.  I've tried numbering series, etc., but I'm just not at all consistent about it.  I think the problem is me--I hate tags as a primary organizational system.  I'd rather have a dual setup--folders for sorting by genre (and for read/unread/samples), and tags for series, dates, notes, etc.  Having to tag every single book just doesn't happen in my universe--here OR in gmail.

Thankfully, I pretty much know what category everything fits into at a glance, the unread tag really just tells me what I have piled up for the most part.  The few series I've numbered are similar to the way others have done it, either by main character name or by a series-unique word, followed immediately by the number.  I prefer the look of having the "-" in there, but having to use multiple keys to put those in proved impractical for my lazy mind. 

Sigh....if only there were folders.....


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## marianneg (Nov 4, 2008)

Steph H said:


> That's one reason I'm trying to do this as simple and easy as I can, so I can remember what I've used for tags!


I think some people keep a document on their Kindle with all their tag names.


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

marianner said:


> I think some people keep a document on their Kindle with all their tag names.


I think that I may do this....keep it simple and handy....


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

That works, too, but I'd rather just have a few simple tags that I can easily remember, instead of having to flip back and forth between a potentially complicated tag cheat sheet and doing a search [use the tag "qcheatsheet" or "qcheat" to find that document easily! LOL].  But that's why we have options, so we can each do what works best for ourselves!


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

Kindle is super for that, huh?

I am so into personalization that I am wishing that K1 had a font hack, too!


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Font hack would be cool! I'm major jealous of the K2 folks for that one. *pouts*


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

Anyone we know on here that will make a hack for K1  Cause I am pouting, too  :outs::


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## Rasputina (May 6, 2009)

why q in front of everything? I've never tried tag notes on kindle yet but I use tags on librarything.


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

I put the q infront of everything otherwise if I search for "eve" (for example)  the search results will pull up everytime the word "eve" is used in the book.  "qeve" is my made up word and the search will only have that result.  Does that make sense??


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## Rasputina (May 6, 2009)

oh, good idea! That makes sense. I guess that is also why 1 word tags would be best. I'm spoiled with real tags on librarything so I thought I'd just use the same ones but yea that would result in a lot of search answers.


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

And I think q has ended up the default for a lot of people (me anyway) because it's easier to hit on the keyboard than z or x, and less likely to be part of a real word than some of the other easy-to-hit letters.


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## Jill75 (Mar 19, 2009)

Steph H said:


> I keep a spreadsheet with all my books, which have my own user-defined categories that roughly follow their Amazon categories (sometimes I think a book is a category different than they do and I also combine similar categories). So I use short versions of those categories on my tags:
> 
> Adventure/thriller = qadv
> Autobiography = qautobio
> ...


At the moment, I am a bit lazy placing tags on my books but getting confused now finding them. So I must make use tagging them. I am also to thinking of using words associated with the book and that are easy to remember. The spreadsheet is a good idea but need to update it once in a while if you add anything, right?


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Oh yeah, I update my spreadsheet every few days. I don't put in there the tags associated with the Kindle version, but rather it's used for general info to track what books I have -- format (because I used it pre-Kindle so it still tracks paperbacks (PB) and hardbacks (HB), as well as Kindle (K) and Kindle samples (KS)), whether PB and HB are available for Kindle, title, author, category, series, notes, and price (kindle only).

But yeah, to the extent that you use more tags for a book, such as a descriptive phrase or some other easy identifier, you could always include those on a spreadsheet as well, to keep track.


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## luvmy4brats (Nov 9, 2008)

I have not gone in and started tagging my books yet. I know, bad. It's pretty daunting with the 270 books and probably just as many samples..There's also not enough time in my days to get all of my To Do list done.

Like the ideas that I'm seeing though. Adding a list of tags document to the Kindle is a good idea. I know I'd tag things and then forget the tags I used.


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

I hear that on the "time" issue, Luv.  As I mentioned earlier, I didn't bother with samples, because I have too dang many of them (if I did, it would be category only probably). And I only did what was on my Kindle at the time when I did it the first time, which was still something like 175 books; anything that had already been deleted from Kindle (offloaded to Amazon and/or my computer) at that point because it had been read, hasn't been tagged and won't be tagged unless it comes back on to the Kindle for a re-read.

With a sort of "most recent first", I started at the back and worked my way forward so that my sort list stayed in the same order, and it probably took a couple of hours or so to do the 175ish books. That was definitely the hardest part. Keeping up with tagging new books is easier, though sometimes 10-15 books come on at one time, when loading from non-Amazon sources or if Amazon freebies/bargains are particularly good over a few days.


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## hunsakermountain (Apr 24, 2009)

I am new to Kindle and to Kindleboards.  So, please be patient with me.  Why and how do I tag books.  When a book is tagged where do I see that, for sorting purposes.  Does it show up on the home page?  What about on Amazon?  The spreadsheet interests me too?  Would you be willing to share?

Im sorry.  I know that I am asking a lot of questions that probably seem simple.


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Welcome to Kindle and Kindleboards, Hun!  We use the tagging as our defense against not having folders to sort our books into; the only sorting available, as you may have found, is "alphabetical by title", "by author" (which doesn't always work well, because within the books, sometimes it's by first name and sometimes it's by last name, depending on the data for each particular book), and "most recent first". Amazon hasn't given us a way to sort by genre/category, for instance. And the K2 (but not the K1) also has an "archive", I think it's called, folder, for those books bought from Amazon and deleted from Kindle but still available to re-download from Amazon -- but that doesn't work for books bought/obtained elsewhere and deleted from Kindle.

So what we do is add a note to our books and within the note, we type in these tags as noted within this thread. You can use whatever tags you want. And then use "search" to search the tags to bring up just those books that have those tags. So for instance, if you use qpara to tag your books that are in the paranormal genre, and you search on qpara, it will bring up all your paranormal books in the search results.

You still can't sort the books that way on the home page, and none of the tags show up on Amazon or anywhere else. It's just a way to make search results come up with something specific.

Make sense? 

Edit to add: Here are a couple of older threads about tagging-for-searching, just to give you some more background, if you want it:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,4932.0.html
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,5019.0.html

I'd be happy to share a sample of my Excel spreadsheet with anyone who wants to see it. It's nothing special, just something I came up with for tracking my books, originally mostly so that I could track series and what books of a series I had and which I needed, and also when I found I was starting to accidentally double-buy some paperbacks because I didn't realize I already had some in my to-be-read stack. LOL It works well with Kindle too, because I have SO many samples, that sometimes a book sounds vaguely kinda familiar and I can quickly search and see that yeah, I do already have a sample of it and just haven't gotten to it yet.  As long as you/anyone has access to Excel (or OpenOffice or Google or anything else that reads/writes in Excel-compatible format), you should be able to open it and use it. Just PM me your email address and I'll send it out (have to do it from home in the evening, don't have personal email access at work).


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## SharonK (May 19, 2010)

I've been reading over all the information about tags and collections.  Do you feel that with the new collections feature on the Kindle 2, that tags would still be a great idea?    I've just finished reading my 1st book on my new Kindle and don't want to wait until I have a huge amount of books to organize things.  Also, people have mentioned using spreadsheets to keep track of their books.  And I've heard about a program called Calibre while reading on the boards.  Is that just another way to maintain your list of books, or is a spreadsheet system the better way to go?  I'd really appreciate any feedback you're willing to share.  

S.


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## SharonK (May 19, 2010)

VictoriaP said:


> I have to admit, I'm terrible about keeping up with tags. So much so that I've given up all but one--unread. Yep, don't even put another letter in front of it. The tag goes on the first page of the book or the table of contents. I've tried numbering series, etc., but I'm just not at all consistent about it. I think the problem is me--I hate tags as a primary organizational system. I'd rather have a dual setup--folders for sorting by genre (and for read/unread/samples), and tags for series, dates, notes, etc. Having to tag every single book just doesn't happen in my universe--here OR in gmail.


One more question, VictoriaP mentions putting tags in the book on the table of contents or the first page. Is this where most people put them? Where do people put them?

S.


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

Sharon, I plan to keep using tags along with collections. Some of my tags will not make sense as a collection. When possible, I put my tags on the last word of the title. If that is not possible, then the tags are on the first page of the document.


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## SharonK (May 19, 2010)

Thanks for the update.  After thinking about it I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to do a search, I'd best use the tags.  And with only 73 books at the moment I think I'd better do it before I download anymore books.  I actually added tags to the book I finished last night.


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## sleepy6553 (Nov 21, 2010)

I'm reviving an old thread on tags. I'm a little confused. Are you putting these tags (qfiction, qhumor, etc.) in the notes section of the book residing on your Kindle? Do these tags have anything to do with the tags used on Calibre? If you were to search for "qhumor" on Calibre, would the book also show up there, or does that tag only work when you're searching on the Kindle? I hope I'm making sense here. It's hard to understand when you don't have an actual Kindle to play with yet. 20 more day!


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

sleepy6553 said:


> I'm reviving an old thread on tags. I'm a little confused. Are you putting these tags (qfiction, qhumor, etc.) in the notes section of the book residing on your Kindle? Do these tags have anything to do with the tags used on Calibre? If you were to search for "qhumor" on Calibre, would the book also show up there, or does that tag only work when you're searching on the Kindle? I hope I'm making sense here. It's hard to understand when you don't have an actual Kindle to play with yet. 20 more day!


The tags are usually placed as a note at the beginning of the book or document. For Kindles without the ability to create Collections, tags provided a way to organize the books. Even though I now have collections on my K2, I still tag my books for the search feature. I don't think there is any connection between these tags and the ones in Calibre but I do not know as I do not use Calibre yet.


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## sleepy6553 (Nov 21, 2010)

Annalog said:


> Even though I now have collections on my K2, I still tag my books for the search feature.


So help me understand, Ann. If you have collections, why do you use tags? Can you give me an example of some of your "Collections" and some of your "tags"? I'm just trying to figure out if I even need tags. I don't want to find out I do after I have lots of books loaded. I'd rather get it right from the beginning. Thanks.


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