Thursday, August 12, 2010

Kindle Skills - Calibre Knows

August 12, 2010 Cindy O'Neal

Calibre Knows where your Kindle Documents folder is.
This is for all you folks who are comfortable downloading books from places like manybooks.net but have a tendency to roll up in a ball when it comes to sending them to your Kindle using a mouse and file management skills.

If you use Calibre to organize your downloaded (non DRM) public domain or otherwise free books, sending them is as easy as opening Calibre (or having it opened already), connecting your Kindle with the USB cable to your computer, and clicking the Send to device button. Calibre just KNOWS to send the book your have selected to the Documents folder on your connected Kindle.

The first time I noticed the Send to device button at the top of Calibre on my PC I was surprised. I had just connected my Kindle and happened to have Calibre opened. Within a few seconds the Send to device button appeared with a little down arrow (indicating choices) to the right of it.
Send to main memory was kind of confusing... There is no other choice available (the others are greyed out), but it did send the selected book to the actual Documents folder on the Kindle.

I also like the Eject device option. It is nice and handy, and allows you to safely remove (eject) your Kindle without having to right click anything or otherwise hunt for the option. Slick...

Another button also appears when you connect your Kindle. It is named Reader and clicking the little arrow to the right of it gives you a couple of other interesting choices.
Clicking the words Show books in the main memory of the device does exactly that... Amazing huh? 
Special Note: This only works with book files... not audio files (music) or audiobook files.
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