Amazon loves to promote the Kindle, but finding your personal list of titles and deploying them on multiple devices is NOT a click away.
On a recent trip into Manhattan on Amtrak, I chose to take only my iPhone with me, which was mostly a weight decision. When I travel by train and then have to lug my handbag and light briefcase around in Manhattan, I've learned to pare it down to essentials.
But as I flipped on my iPhone 3GS, I realized there was content I had purchased specifically for my Kindle that I wasn't seeing in the Kindle reader. So my question was, where was it?
I looked in vain on the Kindle app on the iPhone for some way to connect to a personalized library or bookshelf. I'm not fond of the way Barnes & Noble makes you work for your eBook experience, but this actually felt worse!
My only interest is to share titles between the Kindle itself and my iPhone, but other people might want to read a Kindle eBook on their Mac, PC, Android, or BlackBerry. Whatever the device, it seems to be a bit of work to manage the "virtual bookshelf." At least on Barnes & Noble, they build this concept into their site navigation.
After returning home that evening, I figured out one way of accessing the Kindle libary of my eBooks (Method #1). Then, after a little further work, I figured out an alternate method (#2). Here they are for anyone who's having this same problem.
METHOD #1
- Login and go to "Your Account"
- Scroll down until you see a section called "Digital Content"
- Click on "Manage Your Kindle"
- From the next screen, you can download any of your Kindle titles to any of your Kindle readers. But boy, it's not obvious. Now you'd think, with all the promotion Amazon does for the Kindle, they'd put a little something on the main navigation to help you with managing your Kindle titles, yes?
METHOD #2 (discovered much, much later)
- This same information is available from your personal "Store" (personalized Home page), which for me I woudl get to by clicking on "Meryl's Amazon."
- Scroll wayyyyyy down until you see a link under "Your Account" "Your Media Library."
- That takes you to a page with a small window of scrolling media items - in my case, eBook titles.
- Clicking on a title will give you an information page on that title
- On that page, there is a small box on the right with a link allow you to "Manage your Kindle" as per the Method #1
Whew! Is it just me, or is this a lot of work? If Amazon & Barnes & Noble want eBooks to take off, they might try to make it a little more obvious how to find your own titles and easily get them onto the devices of your choosing.
Just a suggestion...

It’s been over 3 months since I started using my iPhone and I thought it was time to report on it. For the record, I’ve been using Apple computers for over 20 years and a more loyal supporter you won’t find. I think when it comes to industrial design the folks in Cupertino wrote the book.
