How to share only some books with Family Sharing?

[elizilla]

I have been reading ebooks for 15 years, and have collected hundreds of ebooks, many of which even I don’t want! I have several ereaders and a large Calibre collection on my PC.

But I am trying to set my dad up with a Kindle, and have it do only the normal things that Amazon doesn’t fight you on. Because the Kindle is the common reader his other friends have; it’s a familiar device in his social circle. My dad has poor vision and no patience with technology. He is not going to want to worry about DRM and format shifting and library managing and so on! He just wants to be able to read in a large font size. And I want to give him the simple user experience Amazon offers to people who read a dozen bestsellers a year and don’t push the limits.

So I ordered a brand new, current gen Kindle Paperwhite. It was delivered a couple hours ago. I set my dad up with his own Amazon account. And to get him started with a few books, I set up Amazon Family Sharing, so I could give him a few of mine. And that’s where I got in trouble. It put everything I own, onto his Kindle!

I dug deeper and found where you can turn the family sharing of Kindle books off by default, and I did that. Then I just chose a few books to check the box to share. The result is, his Kindle Library screen still shows everything I own, but the unshared books give “Download Error” if I click on them.

I thought maybe I could flush these out of there by resetting the device to factory defaults and starting over, but this did not work either.

I have not given this Kindle to my dad yet, and I am not going to give it to him until I fix this. He will never go for it if he has to dig through all this stuff. I need to get this Library pared down.

Anyone know how to do it?

[Sirtel]

Maybe use Send to Kindle to get those books to his account?

[pdurrant]

I would take this to Amazon customer service. It sounds like something is going wrong if books that are no longer being shared are still showing up in his account.

Umm... are you sure that you did a factory reset on the Kindle?

[JSWolf]

You can't only share some books. You either share all or none. I have a family account and all books are shared between us.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can't only share some books. You either share all or none. I have a family account and all books are shared between us.

I certainly have the ability to share or not share individual books.

In my list of books, those that are shared have a "Shared with..." line, those that are not shared do not.

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I certainly have the ability to share or not share individual books.

In my list of books, those that are shared have a "Shared with..." line, those that are not shared do not.

Same with me

[elizilla]

Yes, I am sure I did a factory reset. Several times, in fact. I also found a spot on the website where I could de register it, and tried that, to no avail.

I remember from my days supporting a (completely unrelated) software package that probably had a similar structure, how there is an underlying database, and then a bunch of processes that update tables. And if you can just trigger a process to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, then when it runs it updates the database and fixes things. I started looking for processes I could trigger, that touched these books.

So first I went to the content area on the Amazon website, and deleted a few books I didn’t mind losing from my account. This did not help, they were still listed on the Kindle.

Then I went to the screen on the Amazon website where you can check a box to share or unshare them in family sharing. The problem books showed as unshared, which is what I want, but I ticked the box to share one, saved, and then unshared it and saved again. Success! About ten seconds later the Kindle updated and the book disappeared.

I am guessing that when you change the family sharing default, whatever process runs, is optimized for speed rather thoroughness, and it misses the part where it’s supposed to take the listings out of the Kindle. Or perhaps when I changed the default, the process to put the books ON the Kindle was still running and had a lock on those database records, so the process to take them OFF was unable to run completely. I bet if I had waited long enough for all those books to load, before changing the default and starting the process to unload them, it would have worked just fine.

Anyways, it took a few hours but after touching each of the hundreds of problem books, my issue is mostly resolved.

I am down to just three problem books, but I have to log off now. I will post more details about those, after lunch.

[elizilla]

So, about my three remaining problem books. Remember in my troubleshooting, earlier, where I tried just deleting books from my account altogether, and it did not work? These are the three books I did that to. And since they are deleted, they no longer appear as content that I can manage on the Amazon website.

I spent about an hour in a text chat with Amazon support, last night. They were very kind, not cutting me off or anything. But they could not solve the problem. They did have one suggestion that I want to try. I have been doing most stuff from my iPad for months now, letting my PC gather dust. They suggested I try to work on this issue from the PC. I am going to do that, but it’s not a quick thing to try, because when I boot that neglected PC, you know it will immediately start doing windows updates and throwing screens where I have to acknowledge terms of service and set up two factor authentication and whatnot. So I am procrastinating.

Anyways, once I work on it from the PC, if I am still stuck I will hit up Amazon support again, from there. I will update the thread when I solve it.

And I will keep checking in here, in case someone here has a great suggestion to try.

Thanks!

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can't only share some books. You either share all or none. I have a family account and all books are shared between us.

Fake news. I selectively shared with my Mom and I’ve been doing so for years. As you can see I share novels with her, but I don’t share comics/graphic novels with her. This can also be done directly on the Kindle.

https://imgur.com/a/VwW4oZa

[elizilla]

Still putting off messing with my PC. But in the meantime I have been reading with this Kindle, to get myself familiar with it. I have to say I am not crazy about it. I might just let this Kindle issue go and get him a Kobo Sage instead. The direct integration between Kobo and the library, without any intermediary device, might please him more. And the page turn buttons.

It’s about time to add to my ereader collection anyways. Everything but the Elipsa is dead, these days. So I ordered the Sage. I will test both, give one to him and keep the other.

[jackm8]

One alternative to setting up sharing is just downloading all the books, de-drm them, and then uploading them to the devices as personal documents.

Originally Posted by JBaby

Fake news. I selectively shared with my Mom and I’ve been doing so for years. As you can see I share novels with her, but I don’t share comics/graphic novels with her. This can also be done directly on the Kindle.

https://imgur.com/a/VwW4oZa

Offtopic. Are KJ Charles novels any good? I've a mild interest in them.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jackm8

Offtopic. Are KJ Charles novels any good? I've a mild interest in them.

LOL! A question that presumes the answer, if someone's got a lot of them.

In my own opinion which I expect is not shared, the novels are not to my taste, at all. With one exception: the wonderful The Henchmen of Zenda. As the title indicates, it's a retelling of The Prisoner of Zenda. Fits entirely within canon and is both funny and persuasive with a wee bit too much graphic sex for someone of my pearl-clutching sensibilities, but well worth it.

Thanks as always to hildea who recommended it.

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by jackm8

One alternative to setting up sharing is just downloading all the books, de-drm them, and then uploading them to the devices as personal documents.




Offtopic. Are KJ Charles novels any good? I've a mild interest in them.

I haven’t read the books pictured, but I’ve read several of her other books and I’m a fan. I really loved the Magpie series! If you try and like her style I’d also recommend Jordan L. Hawk’s Whyborne & Griffin series. KJ is Hawks editor.

[elizilla]

Originally Posted by jackm8

One alternative to setting up sharing is just downloading all the books, de-drm them, and then uploading them to the devices as personal documents.

That is what I do with my own books so I know exactly how fiddly it is, and how regular updating is needed as the arms race with Amazon progresses. My dad would never do it. And he would never tell me when he needs help. His ereader would just get abandoned. I want this to work for him, so it needs to be in the conventional ecosystem.