While I was spending Thanksgiving with my family, my wife’s aunt asked me a question that came naturally to me regarding the position of all old Kindle books on the new Kindle Fire. Like many new Fire owners, she collected dozens of eBooks on her old black and white Kindle. When she ordered the new Fire she was upset that they “automatically loaded all my old books” on her new Fire and couldn’t remove them she. I was surprised because this didn’t happen to me. Then “How do I archive the books and where is the archive? I can not find.”
The terminology for books stored locally and stored in the cloud has changed with Fire and this has confused my wife’s Aunt. He looked at the Books tab of the Fire and Cloud section, where all his books were listed. He mistakenly thought that these were installed in his Fire.
In case you’re in the same situation, let me explain the difference between the way black and white Kindles and Fire handle books stored locally and in the cloud. First, a little background. The old Kindle had two storage categories. Locally stored books appear on the home screen. Any book not stored locally will appear on the home screen in a section called archived, listed last (see the white Kindle on the left, below). To get your old books on your Kindle, you open the archived books section and select the book to download and the book will be transferred to the home screen.
There is no section called Archived with Fire. Instead, you have two tabs on the Books screen – Cloud and Device (see Fire at top right). Think of the Cloud as Archived Items and Device as locally stored books. To move a book from Cloud to Device, simply tap it.
When you’ve finished reading a book, you can remove the book from the Fire by tapping and holding it until the pop-up menu appears. Tap Remove and the book will no longer take up local storage, it will be listed in the Cloud section.
Also, the Store tab at the top right takes you to the Kindle eBook store. There you can buy books or get samples. You can also take advantage of the free book borrowing feature, where you can read selected books as long as you download them and finish them within a month. Not all books can be borrowed for one month and you must be an Amazon Prime member.
