Kindle 3-What about my Samples?

I ordered the Kindle 3 as soon as I saw it was available for purchase.  I was lucky enough to get picked for an Amazon marketing video (which they haven’t used yet) so I’d gotten a early preview of the Kindle 3 and knew prior to the announcement that I had to get one.  I ordered the 3G Graphite model and am eagerly awaiting its arrival although still undecided on covers.  I don’t know whether to get the Amazon cover or wait to see what M-edge puts out as I’ve been using M-edge covers since my Kindle 1 days.

But I digress.  Here is my issue.  I’ll be either selling my Kindle 2 or giving it to my hubby.  I don’t have as much of an issue if I keep it in the family, but if I sell it?  What the heck am I supposed to do with my as-yet-unread Samples?  This may sound trivial, but I have 135 of them.  If only a few, I could just write the names down and call it a day, but with over a 100, I am faced with somewhat of a quandary.

After calling and a bit of back and forth with Kindle Customer Service, it’s been explained to me that while my collection of Samples (the name anyway) can be synched from one device to the other, the sample books themselves won’t be.  Heavy sigh…..Do I go thru them one by one and add to my wish list? Do I transfer them to the new device? Do I just forget them and rebuild a new list?  Frankly, I don’t want to just forget about them; I find books via Twitter links, Twitter and GoodReads recommendations, Amazon recommendations and just browsing. I don’t think that I’d ‘re-find’ many of the books in my Samples and I wouldn’t have added them if I didn’t think they’d be worth my time.

I hope you don’t have the same problem, but if you do, I have a couple of recommendations. Neither is fun, both are time-consuming, but I don’t believe there’s any other way to do it.  If you start now, you have a few days to get it done.

Add the books to a Wish List. This is the least techie way to transfer Samples.

• Go to your Amazon account and  create a new Wish List called Samples, if you don’t have one already. This is the only step that will require your computer
• On your Kindle, turn on the Wireless
• Highlight your Sample book and click right on the 5-way
• On the next page, use the 5-way and highlight Book Description

• On the Book Decription page, use the 5-way to highlight Add to Wish List

• Click Enter on the 5-way and the next page shown will allow you to choose a Wish List
• Highlight the Wish List that you want to add the Sample to and press enter on the 5-way

• Click to confirm
• If successful you’ll get a box that states the book was added

• Click to close the confirmation box
• Click the Back button 4 times to get back to your Sample collection or if you haven’t created a collection, just click the Home button.
• Rinse and repeat for all of your Samples

If you want a quicker way and feel comfortable when navigating around your Kindle files and directory structure, you can screenshot each page of your Samples, pull the screenshots onto your computer and then review and add to your next Kindle as needed.  This is made easier if you have your Samples in a single collection, but if they are mixed in with your books, the Sample lable next to each one make them easily identifiable.

Create a Screenshot Book list/Transfer Sample files to your New Kindle

You can copy the Sample files from your Kindle to your computer and then to the new Kindle.

• Connect your Kindle to your PC via the USB
• Navigate to the documents folder on the device
• Do a search for EBSP in the documents folder
• Copy all files to a location on your computer
• Connect the 2nd Kindle and copy all the EBSP files into the documents folder

If you don’t need to bring over all your samples, you can create a screenshot list and transfer at your leisure or save for future uploading

• Open your Sample collection (or go to the first page that lists a Sample)
• Hold down Shift+ALT+G to take a screenshot of the page (Shift is the up arrow)
• Go to each of the pages in succession that contain Samples and take a screenshot
• Transfer the screenshots to your computer (Instructions for Windows)
• Connect the Kindle to your computer
• In Windows Explorer, open the Kindle documents directory and copy all .GIF files to your computer
• The files are given random names similar to screen_shot-<numbers>.gif

• The screenshot will list all the books and Samples as shown on your Kindle.  You can transfer the books listed in the screenshot to your Kindle either via the above method (easiest) or the Amazon site from your computer or search for them from your Kindle

I hope this helps if you’re like me and have a lot of Samples.  The above methods will work on all Kindle devices, Kindle 1 thru 3 and including the DX models.  As of now, unfortunately, you cannot organize your content into collections on the Kindle Anywhere applications for your iPhone/iPad, PC/Mac, Blackberry and other smartphones.  The Kindle for PC app notes that library organization is being worked on–perhaps in the future, we’ll have an easier way to deal with Sample from device to device.