THE KINDLE BOOKS APP ON KINDLE FIRE HAS A GLITCH THAT CAN CAUSE BOOK TITLES TO NOT DISPLAY -- THE SOLUTIONThis dilemma of Kindle book titles seeming to disappear from Kindle Fire listings of book titles on The Cloud especially (the server library area) and also from the listing for the Device has been happening to more than a few, per reports from the forums -- and it happened to me twice in a few days.
Forum members, as usual (in this case, 'Q' and 'Mona') came up with the answer a few weeks ago, and more and more of us are needing to use their solution. The problem seems to have started or worsened after the last Kindle Fire upgrade.
I think it's important that all of Amazon Kindle Support be told about this solution, because I was told by two members of Amazon Kindle Support to set my KFire back to Factory Defaults (as a 2nd or 3rd step!) which would have lost me the personal documents I had on the device. I told them I would NOT do that, as it has always been a last-ditch step when nothing else solves the problem and that it causes more unnecessary work for customers when there is a simpler solution.
Later we were reminded by 'affinity" on the forum that Q and Mona had provided the simple solution, and it worked like a charm for me and for MANY others on the forums.
I called Amazon Kindle Support back to let them know there was a simple solution and this time (when I asked to be connected back with 2nd level support as before), I got Kindle Customer Support representative Ryan. He knew about this glitch and the workaround (and started to tell me what it was before I could tell him what forumners were doing) and was surprised that other areas of Customer Support apparently did not know about it, but he said himself that the 'factory default' settings was a FINAL step that shouldn't be taken until other steps proved not to work.
Amazon, Ryan is a prize. I wish I could talk directly to him whenever I have questions. It'd be nice to have someone like him in charge of letting all of Kindle Customer Support know what the latest known glitches and workarounds are. It would help situations like the one in which one of the two free-book-forum-thread leaders was told to go back to factory defaults and then had to gather (from her computer and Amazon's servers) the personal documents that were of course 'gone' when going back to 'factory' defaults.
For the future, here is, essentially, what Q and Mona discovered.
The first clue that something is amiss is that the Cloud listing doesn't show all your books, but the Amazon servers -will- have them there. The servers and our libraries on the servers are the 'Cloud.'
One may or may not be able to access the Cloud directly from the Kindle Fire - doable with music and books and not doable with personal docs (at this time).
I'll do a blog entry later on the several types of storage (and sometimes streaming) that are referred to as the Cloud, at Amazon.
When the problem with the Kindle Fire that I'm writing about occurs, our books-app "Amazon Kindle Books" is not "seeing" all the titles that are on the Cloud (our personal server library where our Kindle books are kept by Amazon) due to a software glitch that is in the Kindle App on the Kindle Fire. Some book titles MAY be missing from the 'Device' display (the Kindle Fire itself) also.
Mona and Q discovered that to correct this software glitch -- you should make sure that "WiFi" is ON and then go to the Gear or wheel icon at the top right of the Kindle Fire and tap that, and then choose "More" -- then go down the Settings list a bit to see "Applications" and select "ALL Applications." Once there, you can actually select the Amazon Kindle app to be managed in this way when there is a problem.
The Steps: (a clearer way to see them)
Make sure WiFi is 'ON' when doing this)
Go to the Gear wheel at the top right when you're at the HOME Screen
Then click on:
. More,
. Settings,
. Applications
... (choosing ALL applications to view),
Select 'Amazon Kindle' and then
. Click to option to clear DATA (which clears the cache at the same time)
. Press Home at bottom left
SIT BACK (as Mona says) as it all returns to The Way It Was. :-)
No restart needed. No need to remove the app. No Factory Default setting involved (and never should the latter be chosen unless nothing else has worked.)
The Kindle Fire then rebuilds the Cloud and "Device" library information, and it doesn't take that long.
Always back up personal docs (as opposed to Kindle books) onto your computers.
NOWadays, we can send those personal documents to our Kindle via email addressed to the Kindle (see earlier articles cited at the bottom of this post), and Amazon will back those up for us, since they give us 5 free gigs of space for personal docs on their servers now (in addition to the 5 gigs for ALL Amazon customers for personal data in general) and they even sync those personal docs across devices too, as long as you send them to your Kindle in email across the Net, which gives them permission to store these for you.
Thanks again to Q and Mona for the steps that have helped several of us.
EARLIER ARTICLES ON PERSONAL DOCUMENTS
- How to send documents to your Kindle
- How to send WORD docs to your Kindle
- How to use Amazon's own SendtoKindle for PC
This last one, however, results in a PDF file, which is not very readable at all on a 6" Kindle.
Added Note
The Amazon SendtoKindle for PC feature is different from other tools previously discussed (below):
. sendtoreader
. the Google Chrome add-on, sendtokindle
. the original, Instapaper.
These last three 3rd-party web-to-Kindle tools are helpful in other ways, mainly for sending documents from web pages without ads included, to your Kindle.
| US: Kindle Fire 7" tablet - $199 Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109 Kindle Touch, WiFi - $99/$139 Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow 3G web |
UK: Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89 Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169 Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149 Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB | OTHER International Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109 Kindle Touch WiFi - $139 Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189 Kindle Keybd 3G - $189 Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB |
Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
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Andrys,
ReplyDeleteFYI, I have been dealing with the issue of missing cloud books since last October. As recently as this last weekend I was told--by a 'Kindle Specialist'--to reset my Fire to factory defaults, because that "might work". Thank you for finding this fix, and thank you thank you thank you Mona and Q.
Bob
Bob, for some reason I thought I'd responded earlier, but I don't see it here. You've seen the problem since the Kindle Fire was released?
DeleteYes, Kudos to Mona and Q !
Andrys,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the very illuminating description of this problem and the solution. I wonder if you've encountered or heard of another type of problem that I seem to have with the Fire. When I purchase a book, it appears in the cloud and on the carousel as expected. I always download the book so I can read it with the Wi-Fi off. At seemingly random times, when I tap on the book's carousel icon to open it, the cover of the book enlarges and a message at the bottom informs me that the download is incomplete and and I need to turn on the Wi-Fi. I am unable to open the book until I do this. The next time I close the book and re-open it, the same thing may happen, OR it may open perfectly normally. This behavior occurs often enough to be really annoying because, of course, it always happens with the Wi-Fi off. It is as though the Fire has forgotten that the book was downloaded, and/or the Wi-Fi was shut off during a download -- but that did not happen.
Does any of this jiggle a recollection ?
TIA,
Frank
Frank VC,
DeleteI haven't seen it happen nor heard of it before, but I'd recommend removing the book from the device and then re-downloading it from the Cloud, and you'll probably have better luck this time.
Long-press the book on the Carousel and choose to remove it from the device. Then get a new copy! Let me know if this works, if you can. Thanks!
I did try this, but it wasn't a fix. The first time I tried the book after re-downloading it worked fine, but on a subsequent access the same old problem showed up. OTOH, it has not required a re-download for several days now, so dare I hope that Amazon changed something and fixed it? I've seen nothing from anybody else about this kind of problem, so perhaps it's a strangeness associated with my Fire....
DeleteF
Frank, your never quite completed download has definitely been a strangeness, as you say! Sounds like it was corrupted in the download but it must have been something to do with that book...
DeleteGlad it's not happened for days. Fingers crossed.
Andrys,
DeleteThanks very much for your help and advice. It's really wonderful how the Kindle community pulls together to help those with troubles!
It's more than one book -- it's happened with several books, all purchased from Amazon and downloaded from "the cloud". It's never happened with other books I've loaded on the Fire from various sources. It almost seems like the downloading-from-the-cloud process gets fouled up in some way. When it happens, the last-place-read sync is also reset back to the beginning, or sometimes to two reading sessions behind.
Since I seem to be the only one with the problem, I'll investigate further with Amazon CS. Thanks again, and happy reading!
Frank
Frank,
DeleteIf I were going through what you have, I'd definitely accept an offer of a replacement by Customer Svc. Let me know what they say.
I've had the same problem several times. Just started happening. Any fixes?
DeleteAnonymous, the same problem as Frank has had? It's highly unusual and I would call customer support at 1-866-321-8851 or go to amzn.to/kcall_me which you can ask to call you and almost as soon as you press enter, you get a phone call.
DeleteIf they can't solve it, they'll replace it.
Before doing that, have you tried the solution to disappearing books that is described in this blog post?
If that doesn't work for your more unusual problem, Kindle Customer support will need to work with you.
Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
Thank you ALL for providing this solution. I recently noticed that my Cloud list was incomplete and had not yet researched solutions. So thank you for saving me time and possibly from a reset.
ReplyDeletebfree2read,
DeleteGlad we caught you in time!
There are apparently several "blank", or missing book issues on the KF. Stopping the reader app,clearing the cache, and hard restarts have all been suggested as solutions (and all have been reported on the forums as working in some cases). Release 6.2.2 was supposed to fix at least some blank book problems. I have had a problem that appeared only after 6.2.2 was installed on my KF. Several .Prc files of books bought from Barn (which appeared under documents, but were readable) would open to a blank page for a few seconds, and then the reader would crash, and you'd be thrown back to the carousel. Going back to Barn revealed that all the. Prc's I had bought had been converted to. Mobile -- redownloading them (they then appeared under books, and were now readable. The KF reader app is clearly a little sensitive to book formatting idiosyncracies.
ReplyDeleteEdward,
ReplyDeleteFrom my own experiences converting files with Mobipocket, prc files and mobi files are interchangeable.
Amazon uses the Mobipocket tool of course, since they own it though they've not done much with it.
Probably the best way to make sure they're most compatible is to send them to the Kindle via email rather than just sideload them.
The fix for incomplete listings of the server library (or 'missing books') is a definitely 100% effective method for Kindle books apps on the Kindle Fire. I'll be interested in your further experiments with personal docs.
Thank you!! I had a book, it disappeared before I was ready to read it, but I got it back just now using this info. Very grateful.
ReplyDeleteSophie,
ReplyDeleteThat's great! Glad it helped.
Thanks to all for the feedback.
I have this problem on my new Kindle Touch. I would love to know how to solve it. I have to go the Amazon site on a computer and send books to the device to get them!
ReplyDeleteRachael,
ReplyDeleteYour home WiFi sends it to your Kindle Touch, but Amazon doesn't otherwise?
At the ManageYourKindle page where you send the books to your Kindle Touch, is it set up to send to another, older Kindle by default?
Can't imagine what it might be otherwise, since your WiFi is working.
When you've bought a book, do you turn on the WiFi on your Kindle and then press Menu and do a "Sync and Check for Items" ?
If you've done all that, I'd call Kindle Support. I did that today and they called me back as soon as I hit Return, I swear. You can go to http://amzn.to/kcall_me, identify your model, select a topic, and let them know if you'd like a call back 'Now' ...
This is good because they'd tend to route these to appropriate areas.
Hope this helps.
saved me! thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteGlad that helped, Anonymous :-)
Delete