Archived books missing from Fire: is Amazon working on the Carousel?
This is odd, and I”m curious if you are experiencing it as well.
I was blithely going to answer a question in the
about getting books from your Kindle archives on to your Kindle Fire. I was all ready to write about the difference between “Cloud” and “Device”, and how all the books you’ve bought previously on the account will be available to a new device registered to the account.
Only they weren’t.
When I tapped on “Cloud”, I saw the same books I saw when I tapped on “Device”.
I tried syncing and restarting (well, shutting down and starting again).
No luck.
I tried removing a book from the device (by long pressing it)…it also disappeared from the Cloud tab.
I went to
http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle
I sent a book from there to my Fire…once I synced on the Fire, no problem, it was there (it also did get a “New” tag, by the way).
This seems odd to me…many people have complained about the Carousel on the homescreen, saying it was displaying all of their Kindle store books (even thous in archives). I’m sure the Cloud listing used to show me more.
First, a question: is your Cloud tab on your Fire only showing you books you’ve downloaded to the Kindle Fire?
Second, my thought is this might be due to them working on the Carousel. Maybe they are going to add an option to display Cloud (archived) books on the Carousel…or not.
It wouldn’t take much to make the Carousel much friendlier. Giving us a “long press” to remove an item from the Carousel directly from the Carousel would be nice. Letting us hide the Carousel would be good. Letting us lock a Favorites shelf so it didn’t change when we added a new item to Favorites would help.
Collections or bookshelves of some kind would be best.
If you get a chance, let me know if your Kindle Fire is showing the books from your archives on the Cloud tab…thanks!
Update: I’m going to call Kindle Customer Service on this and two other issues. Interesting thing: when I got some freebies, they showed up as they should…in the Cloud tab, not on the Device tab…but the rest of my archives have not. I wonder if it’s the sheer size of my archives (over 2,500 titles)? Does anybody else have over…let’s say 2,048 archived items and have them on the Carousel?
Update: deregistering and registering (as Kindle Customer Service instructed me) again fixed it…and removed all downloaded books from my device. For more details, see this later post.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 
November 25, 2011 at 9:09 pm |
I have having the same problem you are having… and I’ve gone through the same routines you have to try to find what was wrong.
Also… about the second day I had the Fire, I sent several of my own Kindle ebooks (created by me) via email.
None showed up on my Fire, no matter what I did to try to find them…
Then… about 3 or 4 days later, all of a sudden, there they were. There are more than 10 books in this batch, so I could not have overlooked them..
I sent one this morning (my own creation, via email), and although it took a while, it is there now.
These books… created by me, but not published by Kindle, are under DOCs, not BOOKS.
CJ
November 25, 2011 at 9:57 pm |
Thanks for writing, CJ!
I think the separation of Docs and Books has been confusing for some people. Amazon has always separated them conceptually and functionally, but on the reflective screen Kindles, they appeared on the homescreen together…along with active content, audiobooks, and so on.
“Personal documents” include books…even commercial, copyrighted books that you got from another site (like Baen).
I appreciated you confirming what I’ve seen…hopefully, we’re on the road to an improvement.
I do plan to check out your site, by the way…just haven’t yet. 🙂
November 25, 2011 at 10:01 pm |
This separation of DOCS and BOOKS is one of the things I haven’t liked about the Nooks. I’m upset that Amazon is picking up one of their worst habits. Next thing you know, they’ll be partitioning the memory.
November 25, 2011 at 10:10 pm |
Bufo – I am seeing all archived books (many) on Books/Cloud and only the downloaded ones (only four) on Books/Device.
November 25, 2011 at 10:27 pm |
I’m not seeing the same thing. As near as I can tell (I have a lot of books, so I can’t easily be sure), all of the books in my archive are still in my carousel, and also in the cloud tab under the books tab. Certainly there are many more books in my cloud than on my device, because I haven’t downloaded many books onto the Fire; I’ve been using it mostly for magazines, apps, and the web so far.
November 25, 2011 at 10:33 pm |
I’m not sure how much time has passed since you posted this, but I just checked and all my archived books are visible on the cloud side of my Fire. At least, I presume it is all–I didn’t count. There is a *lot* anyway. I’ll update here if I notice a change later.
November 26, 2011 at 12:00 am |
Bufo,
I haven’t had any problems at all with the books on my Fire and in the cloud. I have six books on my device — one of then is your new one — and approximately 300 books in the cloud.
The Carousel looks OK, too.
__________
I received a reply from Kamil, a Customer Service Rep at Quickoffice regarding there being two icons on the apps shelf for Quickoffice — the app that was preloaded on our Fires and the Quickoffice Pro app that many Fire owners downloaded for free (or perhaps purchased). (I wanted to delete the icon for thefree version.)
Here’s what Kamil said:
Our product and development teams are aware that our users are very interested in having only one icon for Quickoffice and are doing their best to make this feature available as soon as possible.
I can’t say at this time when this functionality might be available, but please stay tuned for future app updates with exciting new features, and let us know if we can be of additional assistance.
November 26, 2011 at 1:01 am |
Bufo, like most of the earlier commenters, I have found ALL of my books on the Cloud tab. Also like at least one prior commenter, one of the (only two) books I have on my device is yours! And I thank you for writing it!
November 26, 2011 at 2:03 am |
Update to my last past:
Bufo,
My Carousel now appears to contain all of my archived books (with the downward-pointing arrow on the books in the cloud). It also contains all of my apps.
I wouldn’t want everything to remain in the Carousel, but I scrolled through the Carousel one time and was able to see all the book covers. It was nice seeing what all the color covers look like. When I got to the last item in the Carousel (the Fire User’s Guide), the images didn’t go back to the first item (Love Your KIndle Fire…).
November 26, 2011 at 2:18 am |
My cloud books are showing.at.least mostly correctly. Someone with more books than.me reported that each.of her kindles was.missing some books from the archives, but I haven’t taken the tome to.see.ifball my books are showing anywhere. I know my.cloud is showing tons of books, and device is showing 3, though.
November 26, 2011 at 2:27 am |
Thanks for writing, tuxgirl!
Interesting…I may need to try a factoty reset, but I’m reluctant to do that because I’ve already put personal files on it.
Would you mind checking your software version?
Settings Gear – More – Device – System Version
Mine is 6.1_user_2017120
Also, do you have any personal documents on there?
Thanks!
November 27, 2011 at 12:32 am
Software version: 6.1_user_2017120
I have 2 pdfs and the user guide in the docs section, and 1365 books under cloud (I counted pages, then multiplied).
I did try to send other files from myk, but they never showed.
I think the last number in the system version is actually an id for he device, but im not certain yet.
November 27, 2011 at 12:38 am
Ermmm ignore my comment about thw last number. Apparently thats not what it is…
November 26, 2011 at 5:08 am |
I was thinking about doing a factory reset also… but will wait to see what you advise.
I know you got one of the first Fire’s out the door… and mine went out the next day… I wonder if the people who are reporting no errors have a week younger Fire’s?
Maybe someone found a software error at the last minute that didn’t get done on ours?
How do you check your software version?
CJ
November 26, 2011 at 5:18 am |
Well, fiddlesticks!
You told how to find the software version!
When I noticed that, I checked and it shows that mine is exactly the same as yours.
CJ
November 26, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Thanks for writing, CJ!
That’s one of many things I found when writing my book on the Fire:
I may check with Amazon first, but if not, I think I’ll try the factory reset today. I’d love to hear from somebody with a different software version, though.
November 27, 2011 at 12:34 am |
I got my fire on the 15th, so I dont think its related to when the device shipped.
This must be somewhat rare, since it hasnt been reported on the cs forum yet…
November 26, 2011 at 12:09 pm |
Hi Bufo,
My ‘device and cloud’ are identical. My archives are not visible. I checked last night when I first saw your post and my carousel included all my books. This morning, my archives are not visible on the carousel or on the cloud in books.
November 26, 2011 at 1:39 pm |
Thanks for writing, JW!
That’s my situation as well…
November 26, 2011 at 2:23 pm |
Bufo, I just checked back again. Books are still in archive and I have the same software version as you, 6.1_user_2017120. BTW, I also got an early Fire.
You know, it’s a remote possibility, but it could be a problem with the server–that is, my archive list being stored on a different server than yours.
November 26, 2011 at 6:20 pm |
Bufo, for what it’s worth, my situation is like D. Knight’s. That is, all of my books are still in the Cloud archive, and I have the same software version as you do — 6.1_user_2017120. I received my Fire two days after the release.
November 26, 2011 at 7:04 pm |
I am having the same problem with my books on the Kindle Fire.
When I received my Kindle Fire I could initially see all of my 2000 archived books on the cloud tab in the books section. Within 24 hours, the books listed on the cloud tab were exactly the same as the limited number of books listed on the device tab. When I called technical support, they expressed surprise at this problem and stated they had not heard of anyone else having the same problem.
Technical support had me deregister my Kindle and when it was re-registered all of my archived books showed up on the cloud tab. However, 24 hours later, both the cloud tab and the device tab were limited to the same list of books. Once again, I deregistered my Kindle and the archive books returned to the cloud tab, only to disappear again after 24 hours, after I had reloaded my typical Amazon Applications. deleting the applications did not result in my archived books showing up on the cloud tab.
Amazon had shipped me a replacement Kindle Fire. Again, initially the cloud tab showed all of my archived books but within 24 hours the list of books on the cloud tab and the device tab were limited to the same short list of books, after loading my typical applications.
I decided to deregister the first Kindle and not add any applications to it, since I have 30 days to return it to Amazon. After more than 48 hours, the archived books all remained on the cloud tab.
Amazon technical support stated they would be contacting me again early next week, after the Thanksgiving holiday, to let me know what their engineers have determined is the problem with both of my Kindle Fires.
November 26, 2011 at 7:09 pm |
Thanks for writing, Jack!
I really appreciate that detailed accounting. Please write again if they tell you anything.
I haven’t turned off the accelerated page browsing (it’s on by default). Have you done that? I’m trying to isolate variables.
Web – Menu – Settings – Advanced – Accelerate page loading
November 26, 2011 at 10:26 pm |
I have the same problem, but there’s more. Like you, Bufo, I have thousands of books in my archive. I have several Kindles, and noticed this issue on ALL the devices several months ago. There’s a significant discrepancy between the complete list on the “Manage Your Kindle” page (which seems to have everything I’ve ever purchased from Amazon) and the number of items in the archive. (I don’t know the exact number because there I have many Kindle books plus personal docs, non-Amazon books, etc on all of the Kindles and I haven’t taken the trouble to do the math, but hundreds of things are missing.) Some books cannot be found by using the “search” function on the Kindle or by scrolling through the archive, but when I go to “MYK” they download just fine. I haven’t figured out what, if anything, the missing items have in common. Also, though all my Kindles have incomplete archives, they are not all the same titles (ie, certain books don’t show up in the archive on the “Kindle Keyboard” or the Fire, but can be seen in the archive on the K2 — which is missing different books).
Yes, I reported this to CS a few weeks back and they are still working on the problem. It looks like there might be a limit to how much stuff can be displayed in the archive on an individual device.
November 27, 2011 at 12:37 am |
This has beem reported on the cs forums, with someone who has over 2000 books.thwy found that each kindle device was missing a differwnt set of books…
November 27, 2011 at 1:23 am |
Thanks for writing, Margaret!
Just to eliminate a couple of possibilities :
The archived items list will have a different count for each device, depending on how many items are local to the device. The archived items doesn’t count items already downloaded to the device.
Also, not all items are available to download to all types of devices. Some apps, for example, are not available to my Fire.
November 28, 2011 at 1:14 am |
I too have this problem cloud does not show all books only shows the same as device. I do not want to deregister and register since this seems to be an issue of the cloud software. My kindle apps on Mac or ipod see all the books in archive.
November 28, 2011 at 2:27 am |
[…] earlier post […]
December 3, 2011 at 11:22 am |
I don’t know if anyone answered or not, but I haven’t had any problems with my fire display carousel. I did notice that there is a tab above the carousel to tell you what is in archives or cloud which I thought was one in the same. I thought if you had a book in the archives that it showed up in the cloud when you pushed that tab. Am I wrong abou that? I keep mine by “recent” inventory and not by title, and I have a huge inventory, so maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think so. Have I missed the point here?
December 3, 2011 at 12:43 pm |
Thanks for writing, Janice!
Are you sure you are on the Homescreen when you are seeing the Cloud/Device option? I don’t have tabs for that there, although I do when I am on Books.
Cloud and Archives are the same for books…mine hadn’t been working properly, but deregistering and registering fixed it.
December 3, 2011 at 1:09 pm
I checked and I was looking just at books when I saw the archived/cloud items. They all seem to be there. I thought that was what we were discussing, but if they were talking about all apps, I don’t have problems with those either. I know I do have some apps that are on my Kindle Keyboard that I can’t get on my Fire, so I guess what I’m saying is that I have these differences all ironed out.Thanks, Bufo!
January 13, 2012 at 4:37 pm |
I just came across your post while searching for a solution to the same problem — my “Cloud” tab showed only the books that were downloaded and stored on the device. I’ve had the Fire since 11/16/2011, this is the first time I’ve noticed the missing archives. Deregistered and re-registerd as you suggest and the full archive is now back. Thanks for helping me solve this.
January 14, 2012 at 1:03 am |
Thanks for writing, Paul!
I’m glad I could help!