My Kindle Fire Page 9
1. Click Add Books.
2. Browse to the folder on your computer that contains your eBooks.
3. Select one or more eBooks to add to your Calibre library.
4. Click the Open button to import the selected books into your library.
5. Wait until Calibre finishes importing your eBooks.
6. If Calibre notifies you that it found duplicates, click No so that they won’t be imported.
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Adding New Books
If you download new eBooks after you’ve built your Calibre library, you need to add them to Calibre using the Add Books button.
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Searching for New eBooks
Calibre has an integrated search engine that makes it easy to locate new eBooks. Calibre’s search engine searches eBook stores on the Internet for the search term you enter, and many of these eBook stores sell eBooks that are compatible with your Kindle Fire.
Calibre searches for either authors or titles. In other words, you can’t enter “boats” to find books about boats. Instead, you’ll find books with “boats” in the title or books written by Mr. or Mrs. Boats.
1. Click Get Books.
2. Click OK in the information dialog.
3. Enter your search query. Calibre searches using only the title and author.
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Choosing Book Stores
You can uncheck any book stores that you don’t want Calibre to search. As you get more accustomed to the results from certain stores, you’ll likely find some that you don’t want to search.
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4. Click Search.
5. Double-click on a search result to view details in your web browser or to purchase the eBook.
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Pay Attention to DRM
Pay special attention to the DRM status of eBooks. If you see a red lock next to a search result, it means that the eBook is protected with DRM and can only be read on certain devices. Your Kindle Fire supports only Amazon Kindle DRM. If a book is DRM protected, and it isn’t from the Amazon Kindle Store, it won’t open on your Kindle.
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It’s Not All Good: Use Caution When Searching
Some eBooks that turn up in search results might be copyrighted books that are being offered illegally. It’s not a bad idea to only search for eBooks from sources that you know are legitimate. For example, if a site is offering an eBook for free and that same eBook is $10 everywhere else, that’s a good sign that something’s not right and you might want to avoid that site.
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Editing Book Information
Some of your eBooks might not display the correct author or title. The most common cause of this for Kindle users relates to personal docs emailed to your Kindle email address. When Amazon converts these documents, it uses the sending email for the author name. It’s easy to use Calibre to edit the author, title, and other information about an eBook.
Downloading Metadata
Calibre can locate information about a particular eBook using well-known book sources such as Amazon and Google.
1. Select the book you want to edit.
2. Click Edit Metadata.
3. Click Download Metadata.
4. Click on the title that matches your search.
5. Click Next.
6. Click on a cover picture for your book. Not all results include a book cover.
7. Click OK.
8. Click OK to add the new metadata to your eBook.
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Better Metadata Searching
If you don’t find a result when downloading metadata, try adding an ISBN number (you can get it by searching the Books section at Amazon) to the IDs textbox and then clicking Download Metadata.
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>>>Go Further: Finding Covers
I have to admit that I’m a little bit obsessed about having covers for all of my eBooks. I’m even more obsessed with it now that I have a Kindle Fire with a beautiful color screen.
Calibre can usually locate a cover for your eBooks, but if it can’t, an Internet search will usually turn up a cover, very often at Amazon.com. Try searching for the book title in quotes (for example, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”) and if that doesn’t turn up anything, try removing the quotes and adding the author’s name. You can increase your chances for success by using the image search available in Bing and Google.
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Manually Editing Metadata
If Calibre can’t find your eBook when you try to download metadata, you can edit the metadata manually.
1. Enter the new metadata in the Edit Metadata dialog.
2. If you need to add a cover, click Download Cover.
3. Select a cover if one is available.
4. Click OK to add the cover.
5. Click OK to add the new metadata.
Transferring eBooks to the Kindle Fire
Calibre can sideload books to your Kindle Fire, and if the book requires conversion to Kindle format, Calibre can take care of that as well. In fact, using Calibre to sideload books is preferable because you can use a special technique to make sure that sideloaded books show up in your Books library instead of the Docs library on your Kindle Fire.
The best way to transfer eBooks to your Kindle Fire is a three-step process; convert the eBook to EPUB format, delete all formats except the EPUB format, and auto-convert and transfer the EPUB format to your Kindle Fire.
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Add a Cover Before Transferring
Before you use this technique to sideload an eBook to your Kindle Fire, you should add a cover to the eBook’s metadata. The technique I show you also transfers the cover art to your Kindle Fire.
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Converting to EPUB Format
This step is not necessary if your eBook is already in EPUB format. However, if your book is in any other format, you should convert the eBook to EPUB format before transferring it to your Kindle Fire. The reason you do this is because when Calibre converts an EPUB eBook to a Mobi eBook for your Kindle Fire, it creates a Mobi book that shows up correctly in your Books library.
1. Select the book you want to convert.
2. Click Convert Books.
3. Change the Output Format to EPUB.
4. Check Use Cover from Source File.
5. Click OK.
Deleting Non-EPUB Formats
When you transfer the eBook to your Kindle Fire, you should transfer the EPUB format and let Calibre convert it automatically. Therefore, you only need to keep the EPUB format in your Calibre library. This ensures that when you transfer the eBook to your Kindle Fire, it uses the EPUB format and auto-converts it.
1. Right-click the book you just converted.
2. Point to Remove Books and click on Remove All Formats from Selected Books, Except.
3. Select the EPUB format. This is the format that you want to keep.
4. Click OK.
Transferring the eBook to Your Kindle Fire
Now that you have an EPUB copy of your eBook in your Calibre library, you can transfer the eBook to your Kindle Fire. When you do, Calibre automatically converts the EPUB format to a format that is compatible with your Kindle Fire.
Before you complete these steps, make sure that your Kindle Fire is connected to your computer and that it says that you can transfer files from your computer to your Kindle Fire.
1. Select the eBook that you want to transfer.
2. Click Send to Device.
3. Click Yes when asked if you want to convert the eBook.
4. Wait until Calibre shows that the eBook is on your device.
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Finding the Sideloaded Book
You can find the book that you sideloaded to your Kindle Fire in your Books library. Tap Books on the Home screen and your new book should appear, complete with any cover art that you added.
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Emailing eBooks to Your Kindle Fire
If you configured
email when you set up Calibre, you can have Calibre email eBooks to your Kindle account. The eBook must already be in Microsoft Word, Rich Text, HTML, text, or Mobi format.
1. Right-click on the book that you want to email to your Kindle email address.
2. Point to Connect/Share.
3. Select Setup Email Based Sharing of Books.
4. Click Add Email.
5. Enter your Kindle email address. (Tap Docs on your Kindle Fire to find your Kindle email address if you’re not sure.)
6. Double-click on the formats and delete all of them except for MOBI.
7. Enter your email address (your regular email, not your Kindle email address) in the Send Email From box.
8. Click Use Gmail and enter your Gmail information if you want to use a Gmail account to send the email.
9. Click Use Hotmail and enter your Hotmail information if you want to use a Hotmail account to send the email.
10. If you don’t want to use Hotmail or Gmail, enter your email server information to send the email. (If you don’t know the email server information, check with your Internet Service Provider.)
11. Click Test Email to test your email settings.
12. Click Apply.
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Use an Approved Email
The email address that you configure in Calibre needs to be an email that is on your approved email list for sending docs to your Kindle Fire. For details on adding an email to your approved email list, see “Adding an Approved Email for Docs” in Chapter 4.
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6. Accessing and Listening to Music
In this chapter, you learn how to access and listen to music on your Kindle Fire.
• Browsing and Downloading Your Music
• Searching for Music
• Playing Music
• Using the Now Playing Queue
• Managing Playlists
• Buying New Music
• Sideloading Music
The Kindle Fire is arguably the best way to play music that you have in the cloud on Amazon’s Cloud Drive. Because it has only a bit more than 6GB of user-accessible memory, you likely can’t carry all of your music on it when you’re offline, but you can make playlists and easily download some of your music to enjoy when you’re away from a Wi-Fi connection.
In addition to playing music, you can also browse Amazon’s extensive library of MP3s to add to your music collection.
Browsing and Downloading Your Music
Your Kindle Fire integrates directly into your Cloud Drive and provides a first-class interface into browsing and listening to your music. As soon as you start your Kindle Fire for the first time (after you’ve signed into your Amazon account on the device), it begins indexing the music on your Cloud Drive.
This chapter deals primarily with music in the cloud because that’s likely the way you’ll listen to music on your Kindle Fire. However, all of the information presented is applicable to interacting with music that is stored on your device.
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Add Music to Your Cloud Drive
If you haven’t added any music to your Cloud Drive, see Chapter 2, “Amazon’s Cloud Services,” for information on how you can do that now.
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Browsing Artists
Your Kindle Fire can provide you with a list of all artists in your music collection in alphabetical order.
1. From the Home screen, tap Music.
2. Tap Cloud to view your Cloud Drive.
3. Tap Artists to display artists in your collection.
4. Scroll up and down to view artists.
5. Tap an artist to see a list of albums in your collection by the artist.
6. Tap Songs to see a list of all songs by the artist.
7. Tap Shop This Artist to open the Amazon Music Store where you can buy songs and albums by the artist you are viewing.
8. Tap Download to download all songs by the artist that you have stored in your Cloud Drive to your device.
9. Tap an album to see details on the album.
10. Tap Download to download the album to your device.
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Faster Way to Download an Album
When you are viewing a list of albums from an artist, you can tap and hold an album and then tap Download Album to download it.
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11. Tap Music to quickly go back to a list of artists in order to choose a new artist.
Scrolling Quickly in Music
It’s not uncommon to have a large number of artists, albums, or songs in your music collection. To make it faster to find a particular item, you can quickly scroll to items that begin with a particular letter of the alphabet.
This technique works in all lists in your Music library.
1. From a list of music items, tap and drag to begin scrolling.
2. As soon as the scroll handle appears, immediately tap and hold it.
3. Drag the scroll handle up and down to quickly browse by letter.
4. Release the scroll handle when the desired letter appears on the screen to jump to items that begin with that letter.
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Quick Scroll
Quick scroll is available in most screens while browsing your music collection.
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Browsing Albums
You can also view a list of all albums in your collection in alphabetical order.
1. From your Music library, tap Albums to see a list of albums.
2. Scroll to locate the album you want to view or play.
3. Tap the album to see details.
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Browsing Songs
You can use this same technique to browse songs on your Cloud Drive.
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Monitoring Downloads
Tracks that are being downloaded are added to a list of downloads. You can view the currently downloading track along with completed downloads.
1. From any screen in your Music library, tap the Menu icon.
2. Tap Downloads.
3. Tap the Pause icon to pause the current download.
4. Tap See Completed Downloads to see a list of tracks that have already been downloaded.
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