New! Collection management comes to MYCD (Manage Your Content and Devices)
Thanks to a reader who let me know in a private e-mail (if you want credit in the blog, just let me know) about a new development!
It’s something people have wanted for years…or at least, it’s a step in that direction.
There was a banner at
MYCD (Manage Your Content and Devices), formerly MYK (Manage Your Kindle)> (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
saying,
“Cloud Collection Management is launched. Cloud Collections can be created, edited, and shared from the Manage Your Content and Devices page.”
I’ve had a chance to check it out, and it’s going to be useful, but it may not be everything people expect (but what is?). 😉
A little overview on Collections first…
“Collections” are sort of like folders on a computer or a phone. They are organizational tools. You can “put” books (and some other items) “into” these Collections.
The Collection is not the books, though. You can delete the Collection without losing the books.
Originally (once we eventually got them), the Collection just lived on one device. You created it on your Kindle (nowadays, that might also be a Fire device), and it was just there…it didn’t exist on another device on your account. You could import them, but that was a bit tricky.
Then, Amazon introduced “Cloud Collections” in 2013…I wrote about them in some depth here:
Understanding Cloud Collections
Those were visible from any compatible devices on your account…and I use them a lot. I have a Collection which is the “Guest Bookshelf”, and I’ve used that on multiple devices. I have one for apps which is “Bufo Morning”…that goes from one Fire to another.
What we haven’t been able to do, though, is actually create, rename, or delete Collections from the cloud (Amazon’s central account management system).
Well, you can now!
When you are on MYCD, you can switch where it says “Show” in your top left corner to be Collections.
From there, you’ll see your Collections, including how many items (it says “Books”, but some of mine don’t contain books) are in them. Depending on how they are sorted, you’ll get a modified date or created date. You can sort by those (either newest to oldest or oldest to newest) or alphabetical (A-Z or Z-A).
In an Actions column, you can delete or rename the Collection.
You can also use checkboxes to select Collections, and then bulk delete (you’ll see the button after you select at least one).
Those are nice…it will allow us to easily delete unused Collections. Many people experimented quite a bit at the beginning, so this is a good opportunity to clean up.
There are two big things it can not do that people want.
It won’t tell you which books (and other items) are downloaded to which devices.
You can’t move books into and out of Collections.
So, you can’t work on the items in the Collections here, but you can work on the Collections themselves.
Update: thanks to regular readers and commenters Edward Boyhan and Ann Von Hagel for pointing out that you can, in fact, move books in and out of Collections at MYCD now!
I was looking at the Collections selection, thinking that I would be able to choose a Collection and move things in and out of it. That’s an option on your device. It works, though, the other way.
You set the “View” selection to Books. Then, if a given book in at least one Collection, you’ll see that indicated with the number of Collections of which it is a part. There is a dropdown, and you can select a Collection. If you select the Collection in that dropdown, you then get to see all of the books in the Collection. That’s great! I hadn’t realized you’d be able to see them there. From there, just as you can in the Books view, you can click the Actions ellipsis (…) and choose to add or remove from Collections.
One interesting thing there: when I added one to a Collection on MYCD, I could then remove it from there. When I got to the Collection with the method I described in the previous paragraph, where I selected the Collection from the dropdown in the Books view, it was showing me it was in a Collection…but didn’t give me the option to remove the book from a Collection. I may have to experiment with that more…it might be that MYCD doesn’t give you the remove option unless it was added there.
When you choose to add a book to a Collection at MYCD, you get the option to create a new Collection in situ…that’s also a nice feature!
I just did that…very simple, pretty much just typing in a new name. It was smart enough to add the book to the new Collection, without having to take an extra step. I added a few books to that Collection, then checked on my now discontinued Kindle Fire HDX…and the Collection was immediately there (I was connected to Wi-Fi, but did not have to tell it to sync).
That means that (unless I’m missing it), the only big thing I’m not seeing is on which devices the books/Collections reside currently.
Thanks, Ann and Edward!
This is a beginning…I’m sure there will be more coming in the future. They do have a content management system for enterprises (companies and schools and such) called Whispercast, but this is unrelated to that.
The other thing they’ve added to MYCD that I noted was that they’ve added Prime Reading
Frequently Asked Kindle Questions: Prime Reading edition
to the choice of items to review.
As long as we have Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*), I don’t think we’ll ever see anything in that section in my family…just in KU. People who don’t have KU will see their Prime Reading borrows there.
What do you think? If you have any questions or th0ughts, feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.
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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 
Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.
I Love My Kindle 
October 13, 2016 at 3:58 am |
Thank you very much for this article. So if I create a collection on /mycd, it will appear on all my Kindles?
October 14, 2016 at 2:25 am |
Thanks for writing, iseroma!
If the Kindles are compatible with Cloud Collections (that’s been true for generations), and your Kindles have synced with Amazon (they will have to have been connected to wireless since you made the Collection), then yes. 🙂
October 13, 2016 at 4:20 am |
Actually, you can move books in and out of collections on the MYCD page — just not from the “collections” item on the Show drop down menu. If instead, you choose “books” (or possibly some others) on the Show drop down menu, it will list all your books (or whatever else you chose). For each listed book there is an “action” button (the square with 3 dots).
If you push this button, you will see quite a lot of options two of which are “add to collections” and “remove from collections”.
The latter choice will show you all the collections in which the title is resident. You can select the collections you want to remove the book from (or just hit cancel, if all you wanted to know was what collections the book was in).
If you choose “add to collections), you will be presented with a dialog containing a checkbox list of all your collections which you can use to specify the collections you want the book added to. You can also create new collections from this dialog, and search for your collections by name.
October 14, 2016 at 2:27 am |
Thanks for writing, Edward!
I assume you saw that I updated the post…thanks! Interestingly, I didn’t get “remove from Collections” even if a book was in a Collection…unless I added it to a Collection while at MYCD.
October 13, 2016 at 4:37 am |
Actually it would be nice if on the action button for each collection shown on the “Collections” dialog display, there was an option to list all the contents of that collection including title, item type (book, doc, blog, etc), and (as long as we’re asking :grin) the date the item was added to the collection in addition to the “rename” and “delete” actions already provided.
Since collections, and content items can either be resident (downloaded) or not on each of your devices, it would be nice if the MYCD page could also show what devices collections, and titles are downloaded on. Alternatively, on the MYCD page Devices tab, the action button for each device could have “show resident collections” and “show resident content” options.
Of course that’s probably too much to ask (:grin). After all how long has it taken them to add cloud collection management? Three years since they introduced cloud collections — so maybe by 2019???
October 14, 2016 at 2:28 am |
Thanks for writing, Edward!
Those both sound nice…and I think you are right, we won’t see them right away.
October 13, 2016 at 6:37 am |
One simple collections-related improvement I’d like to see is the addition of a little icon somewhere in the thumbnail of a book indicating if it is in any collection or not. I now I have forgotten to always place a new book in a collection, but I can’t easily tell which books those are. (I suggested this to Amazon’s Kindle Feedback address long ago.)
October 14, 2016 at 2:35 am |
Thanks for writing, rogerknights!
Hm…I don’t think I’d use that (I think I know which books are in which Collections), but it would be fine with me. 🙂
October 13, 2016 at 11:19 am |
You CAN add and remove books from collections via MYC&D. If you’re looking at a book, there’s a column all the way to the right for collections. The number indicates how many collections the book is in. If you click the drop down, you can then check any collections you want the book in, or uncheck to remove them.
Similiarly if you want to put multiple books in the same collection (you can do up to 10 at a time as with any other MYC&D manipulation) just check them on the left side. Then click the ‘collections’ button and say what collection(s) you want them in.
I have confirmed that once you do this on line, the next time you go to your device — and it’s synced — the books will have been collected there as well.
October 13, 2016 at 6:13 pm |
Thank You! I missed that — that would be a better way to find out what collection a title is in rather than using the remove from collection action.
I didn’t notice before, but if you click on any collection in the show all collections view, it will show you everything in the collection, and a greyed out menu bar will appear at the top of the view. Selecting one or more of the collection’s contents will cause that menu bar to become active. From that bar you can add to collection, remove from collection, delete the selected books from your account, or deliver the selected books to one or more selected devices — very handy that last.
The devices you can deliver to include all real kindles, fire tablets, and all kindle reading apps — including those installed on smartphones. You cannot deliver items to echo , or fire tv devices.
So all in all a little more powerful than it appeared at first blush.
October 14, 2016 at 2:41 am
Thanks for writing, Edward!
Much more powerful! I like it a lot.
October 14, 2016 at 12:34 am |
Yes the Collections number is nice to have. I thought I was pretty good at adding new books to collections as I went; turns out I was quite wrong about that.
I would like it if you could designate on collection as ‘default’. This might be ‘to read’ or ‘uncatagorized’ or whatever..
Only 10 at a time, though. And I wish you could add and remove in one step.
Also they show App collections (for Fire devices) which is worthless as they are completely irrelevant to Books.
In any case many hours of amusement awaits us all. 🙂
October 14, 2016 at 2:46 am
Thanks for writing, Tom!
I’m going to have fun with this, too!
October 14, 2016 at 2:36 am |
Thanks for writing, Ann!
I missed that, and I appreciate you and Edward pointing it out! I updated the post and credited you both. 🙂
October 14, 2016 at 12:14 am |
I don’t see this option.
October 14, 2016 at 2:42 am |
Thanks for writing, Robert!
Do you have another browser you can try?
October 14, 2016 at 11:22 am
Missing on my Chromebook, but there in Firefox on Windows 10.
October 15, 2016 at 3:04 am
Thanks for writing, Robert!
Interesting…is Chrome the browser on the Chromebook (I assume)?
October 14, 2016 at 8:39 pm |
Very helpful! One problem I’m having is that my Currently Reading collection says “showing 9 books” in MYCD, but only five titles are visible. Any ideas how to see all nine? Thanks, Bufo and commenters!
October 14, 2016 at 8:47 pm |
Thanks for writing, Len!
Are they all the same type of items? Any personal items/docs?
October 14, 2016 at 11:59 pm |
On MYCD, my Currently Reading collection shows many more books than what it shows on devices. It is because the others are books I’ve borrowed via Overdrive and returned, or borrowed and returned via Kindle Unlimited. And yes, MYCD does not deal with Docs.
October 15, 2016 at 3:02 am
Thanks for writing, Tom!
That does make sense…it’s possible that a book is in a Collection and then you no longer have it. You would expect it to be removed from the Collection’s account as well, but perhaps it stays there in case you borrow it again (just like your notes and highlights would still be available to you).
Actually, MYCD does have docs…for sure if you have Personal Document Archiving turned on (I do, and I see my Docs in MYCD).
October 15, 2016 at 3:09 am
On the Show drop down menu on the MYCD page it defaults to Books, but if you push the arrows, you will get a drop down of all the types of content managed on MYCD — one of these is “docs”.
It will show all the “docs” you’ve stored on Amazon Cloud drive (either directly or implicitly via the personal documents service). Docs can be put into collections (but only from a device on which it resides).
Unfortunately the collections admin stuff on MYCD only deals with books. I put a doc in a collection from my oasis. The collection appears on MYCD, but the doc does not appear in the collection count of books (if you only put docs into a collection that collection will appear with a count of 0, and the only actions are delete or rename).
October 14, 2016 at 11:43 pm |
My belief that Amazon knows what things are on your kindles was based on their removing a contested copyright version of “1984” way back at the beginning of the kindle era. I have subsequently thought of some ways of doing the removal without knowing what’s on a kindle device.
There are some privacy, cost, and performance issues why Amazon might have chosen not to provide a “free” service keeping a record of a device’s contents on their servers. If you think about it, all device related actions (save initial title delivery) are initiated from the device.
With the new collections management facilities, I have thought of a way (with admittedly some work & discipline required) to provide some device-oriented administration. It requires that you have a relatively few (say less than 10) collections that you use. Then you create on each device a collection whose name is the same across all your devices (and one for the Cloud) save that the name includes some device indicator. For example let’s suppose you have two collections: TBR (for to be read), and AR (for already read). Let’s suppose you have a kindle touch, a paperwrite, and an Oasis. The TBR collection on the touch would be named “KTTBR”; on the paperwrite “PWTBR”, and the oasis “OATBR”. Similar names would be created for the “AR” collections. You would also create a universal/master/cloud collection: “CLTBR”, and “CLAR”.
Every time you buy a new book, and deliver it to your default device, you need to add it to the local TBR collection. If you specify “downloaded” when looking at a devices collections, you will only see the local collections — so getting a newly bought book into the appropriate device-oriented shouldn’t be too difficult.
With the new MYCD facilities it would be easy to deliver titles to other devices and put them in the appropriate collections. Periodically, you could get a list of all your books and add them to the cloud collections. Extra work would be required if you routinely remove titles from your devices (I don’t — my devices end up being a local backup to Amazon’s master copy of what I’ve bought).
Stuff sideloaded or bought from non-Amazon devices typically appear as “docs” rather than “books” (unless you want to fiddle with Calibre) which can also be put into collections.
So what do you think?
October 19, 2016 at 11:29 am |
Thanks for writing, Edward!
Sorry to take a while getting back to you! Our dogs took us to a hotel. 🙂
I think the idea of using what geeks like me would call “naming conventions” makes a lot of sense! If only one person uses the account, I think that could work fairly well. I think many people want to know which books are on which devices because multiple people use the account. For example, there may be children on the account, and it could be helpful to know who has what.
Another example might be a reading group. Maybe twenty people are on an account, and the share books (this could happen at work, if the account itself isn’t for commercial purposes…or just a book club). If it’s the typical book with six “simultaneous device licenses”, it would be nice to know that so-and-so has had the book for two months…so you could ask them to return it to make it available for someone else.
Still, your idea definitely has merit…I’m going to assume it’s okay with you if I credit you publicly if it happens to come up today. If it does, I’ll let you know. 🙂
October 15, 2016 at 4:03 am |
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October 16, 2016 at 2:39 pm |
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