Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[TheSmitty]

Originally Posted by haertig

This is exactly the thought process they want you to have.

Of course, same with Kobo or any other. I have issues with Kobo, etc. Maybe Apple, as they are responsible for the change in model but whatever. I've never understood some people's disdain for Amazon or other big companies (Walmart?). Back in the day, many people disliked Amazon because they sold physical books so much cheaper than brick-and-mortar stores, particularly "Mom and Pop" shops. That may still be the case, I'm not sure since I do not purchase many physical books these days. I've yet to see a "Mom and Pop" shop sell ebooks so far.

As for Kobo, I have a Libra 2 and thinks it great. I love that you can configure so much more and load in things like NickelMenu. I just tend to use Kindle the most because I use Whispersync between ebook/audiobook a lot.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by TheSmitty

I've never understood some people's disdain for Amazon or other big companies (Walmart?).

It's a team sport these days. The biggest wheels always seem to generate the most squeaking from the masses. The winner always sucks, and 2nd and 3rd place are somehow inherently more righteous in their inability to win.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It's a team sport these days. The biggest wheels always seem to generate the most squeaking from the masses. The winner always sucks, and 2nd and 3rd place are somehow inherently more righteous in their inability to win.

If you take a look, at how far Amazon is ahead of the competitors, things like Amazon not paying taxes, treating their employees like shit, busting unions, anti-consumer behavior etc. is just that much more egregious.

Saturn/Mediamarkt at least pay their taxes. Coolblue probably too.

[JSWolf]

Tomorrow I'm going to remove all of the eBooks from my PW3. I'll add some from calibre and some form Kindlegen and leave WiFi on and see if any get deleted. I'll report what happens or not.

I'm hoping the Kindlegen versions remain meaning there can be a solution to this issue. of the vanishing eBooks.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

If you take a look, at how far Amazon is ahead of the competitors, things like Amazon not paying taxes, treating their employees like shit, busting unions, anti-consumer behavior etc. is just that much more egregious.

Saturn/Mediamarkt at least pay their taxes. Coolblue probably too.

Yada, yada, yada. I'm tired of the Amazon hater noise (not to mention all the armchair anti-trust experts' squawking). Use them or don't. But just stop trying to get everyone else to help you (rhetorical) feel good about a pointless crusade against the enemy du jour.

[acprinter]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Your situation seems to be a bit different from that described by others. In the end were any sideloaded books removed from your Kindle? It would be really useful to know the name of a book that was deleted when examining the log files.

Each log is a text (.txt) file and they can be several megabytes in size. The associated folder with the same name should only contain a small file, which is unimportant.

As JSWolf stated you can zip the log files and post them here for analysis. But beware, they may include Amazon account information that you may not wish to share publicly. Also, without a specific missing book to check for in the logs it will be difficult to find anything useful there.

It is probably best that I don't post a zip file of the log. Since I have no idea how to go about that it is a mute point. But out of curiosity, how would one go about creating a zip file that is on the kindle.

When the latest kindle update came out I felt that it was worth getting and I did lose all of books on the kindle after the update and none came back. So yes, what happened yesterday is rather unusual. I turned on wifi this morning and so far nothing has happened.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Tomorrow I'm going to remove all of the eBooks from my PW3. I'll add some from calibre and some form Kindlegen and leave WiFi on and see if any get deleted. I'll report what happens or not.

I'm hoping the Kindlegen versions remain meaning there can be a solution to this issue. of the vanishing eBooks.

How long are you planning on leaving your PW3 in airplane mode (and probably asleep) since that was what triggered the removal on my PW 10th gen?

[jlinear]

Originally Posted by jhowell

If you enter ;dm in the search box your kindle will create three log files with names like all_system_logs_as_of_Thu_Feb_1_10.00.54_EST_2024. txt in the documents folder. This would need to be done within a fairly short time after the deletion occurred since the logs only contain recent data. Those logs might reveal more details about what triggered the deletion of the book files.

I did this on my 11th gen. Paperwhite today. My Calibre sideloaded AZW3 files were deleted, I believe, on 1/27/2024 or 1/28/2024. I extracted data from the "all_systems_logs" file pertaining to the dates 1/26/2024 - 1/29/2024 and created a zip file you can download. Perhaps you can discover something.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by jlinear

I did this on my 11th gen. Paperwhite today. My Calibre sideloaded AZW3 files were deleted, I believe, on 1/27/2024 or 1/28/2024. I extracted data from the "all_systems_logs" file pertaining to the dates 1/26/2024 - 1/29/2024 and created a zip file you can download. Perhaps you can discover something.

I looked though that log and did not see anything unusual. The device was turned on and off several times and books were read. It appears to have been in airplane mode for the entire duration of that log.

One possibility is that the date/time entries in the log are incorrect because the Kindle's internal clock drifted during the time it was unable to connect. So the time range shown in the logs may not be the actual time when the device connected to Amazon and books were deleted.

I suggest posting the entire system log and also the netlog.

[jhowell]

One possibility that occurs to me is that some Kindles may have particularly inaccurate internal clocks that drift over time. When they do eventually connect back to Amazon the Kindle's clock may be so far out of sync with the actual time that the timestamps of changes made while the Kindle was offline cannot be trusted.

That could be triggering an extreme synchronization mechanism meant to bring the Kindle back in sync with the state of books in the user's account. And that mechanism may be what is deleting sideloaded books, specifically those whose internal metadata indicate that they were Amazon purchases, as those produced using calibre typically are.

Perhaps someone who has experienced this problem in the past and has had their Kindle in airplane mode for weeks since then could check what time their Kindle shows to see if the clock has drifted since it lasted connected to Amazon.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Perhaps someone who has experienced this problem in the past and has had their Kindle in airplane mode for weeks since then could check what time their Kindle shows to see if the clock has drifted since it lasted connected to Amazon.

When I still used Kindles, I kept mine in the airplane mode for months and even years without ever connecting. The clock was always correct, though - I never saw any drifting. This was well before the current issues, though.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

When I still used Kindles, I kept mine in the airplane mode for months and even years without ever connecting. The clock was always correct, though - I never saw any drifting. This was well before the current issues, though.

Some of my kindles drift very slowly and some drift annoyingly quickly, but they all drift. The best ones would take a while to drift 1 minute, but I think it would be less than a year.

Kindles only display time to a minute, but with jailbreak it is easy to check to a known good time.

date -u; ssh root@voyage date -u; date -u

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Some of my kindles drift very slowly and some drift annoyingly quickly, but they all drift. The best ones would take a while to drift 1 minute, but I think it would be less than a year.[/CODE]

It's possible they may have drifted a few minutes, but not so much that I noticed it. If they had drifted half an hour or more, I'd have seen it.

Edit: both my Kobos have been offline for more than a year. One of them has drifted 4 minutes, the other 5. I don't think that's enough drifting to trigger something as drastic as deleting all sideloaded content, but who knows. Anyway, this deleting issue is a fairly recent one; it never happened to me when I still read on a Kindle (about 2 years ago was the last time).

[Gone]

Originally Posted by jhowell

(...) that mechanism may be what is deleting sideloaded books, specifically those whose internal metadata indicate that they were Amazon purchases, as those produced using calibre typically are.

It's still not clear for me when people talk about sideloaded books produced by Calibre. What does it mean exactly?

When I convert an ePub with Calibre to KFX, I always check if there's a Kindle version and then edit the metadata with the correct Ids in Calibre, like amazon_ca:B01xxxx If I don't find the book on Amazon, I use Send to Kindle.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

It's still not clear for me when people talk about sideloaded books produced by Calibre. What does it mean exactly?

When I convert an ePub with Calibre to KFX, I always check if there's a Kindle version and then edit the metadata with the correct Ids in Calibre, like amazon_ca:B01xxxx If I don't find the book on Amazon, I use Send to Kindle.

Using Send-to-Kindle is not what's commonly termed sideloading. Usually sideloading means transferring via USB, although different people certainly use the term differently.

The deleting problem only seems to affect USB-transferred content.