Kindle Paperwhite for Dummies (13 page)

Figure 4-3:
Use Recommended Content to choose what is displayed in Cover view.

To switch from List view to Cover view, simply tap Menu⇒Cover View. To switch back, tap Menu⇒List View.

Types of Content

We would hazard a guess that if we picked up a stranger’s Kindle Paperwhite, the most common type of content on the device we would see would be books. But that’s not the only type of material that you can read, as you can see from the following list:

Books:
Every type of book, from traditional novels to short stories, serialized books, Kindle Singles, and more.

Periodicals:
Newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Docs:
Personal documents that you create and send to your Kindle whether using Send to Kindle or e-mail (see Chapter 7 for details on this process). In addition, if you capture content from the web and send it to your Kindle Paperwhite using the Send to Kindle browser feature, this material will be categorized as a Doc.

Active Content:
Games such as Every Word.

Throughout this book, when we refer to
content,
we mean any of the preceding categories.

Moving around the Home Screen

When you first get your Kindle Paperwhite, you may have only one page of content listed on your Home screen. You can easily open a book from the list by tapping anywhere on its name. As the amount of content on your device grows, however, you’ll want to be able to move around quickly and easily.

How do you know how many pages of content you have on your Home screen? Look at the bottom-right corner in Figures 4-1 and 4-2. Note the two numbers separated by a slash. The first number is the page you’re on; the second number is the total number of pages of content. For convenience, we refer to these numbers as the
page indicator.

As you add books and other content, your Home screen can quickly become many pages long. After all, your Kindle Paperwhite can hold about 1,100 e-books! You’ll probably accumulate books quickly, given the availability of free material and the ease with which you can download content.

What’s more, if you get in the habit of sampling books before you buy, your library of content can really start to mushroom! (We discuss sampling in Chapter 6.)

So how do you manage your fast-growing library? The following sections describe features available from your Home screen that help you browse through your library and find books efficiently.

Sorting and displaying content

The top-right corner of the Home screen provides four options for sorting content: Recent, Title, Author, and Collections. To change the current sort method, simply tap it and then tap your new choice
.
Presto!
Your list appears, re-sorted.

The Recent option displays the most recent content either loaded or viewed on your Kindle Paperwhite. Title, Author, and Collections are displayed alphabetically. If you haven’t set up any collections, the Collections choice appears dimmed on the menu. We discuss how to organize your content into collections in the “Creating Collections” section, later in this chapter.

You can also restrict how much content is shown on your Kindle Paperwhite by tapping the down arrow next to My Items. By default, the device displays My Items, which displays every type of item on your device, with the total number of items listed in parentheses. Tap Books, Periodicals, Docs, and Active Content (see the “Types of Content” section) to display content only in those categories. The number in the parentheses will change depending on the number of items on your Kindle Paperwhite in that particular category.

Removing content

Although it’s great to keep adding books and other content to your Kindle Paperwhite, sometimes you’ll want to remove items — whether to save space or because you don’t like clutter. Some Kindle users don’t like to re-read books, so they have no reason to keep books they’ve read on their device. Whatever the case, realize that sometimes removing content is permanent.

If you long-tap a book’s title, you will see that Remove from Device is the last choice on the menu that appears. If you purchased the book from Amazon, it will be available in the Cloud, which is your archive of Kindle books at Amazon. If you remove the book from the device, it is still available to you to download via the Cloud.

However, if you have purchased a book from another source, it will not be backed up in the Cloud, unless you have sent it to your device using one of the options described in Chapter 7. In this case, when you remove the book, it is permanently deleted unless you have backed it up on your computer.

Unfortunately, the menu doesn’t indicate whether the removal is permanent — you need to remember where you acquired the material.

If you long-tap the title of a sample, you will see the Delete This Sample option at the bottom of the list. Deleting is permanent, although you can always download the sample again from Amazon.

Paging through the Home screen

If your Home screen has multiple pages, you can flip forward and backward through those pages by swiping from right to left (to move forward) or left to right (to move backward). Note that this swipe can be horizontal or diagonal in List and Cover views, as well as vertical in List view.

From the Home screen, you can navigate directly to a page in your list of books. Begin by tapping the page indicator at the bottom-right corner of the screen. A pop-up window appears, allowing you to enter a page number to jump directly to the list of content. If your Home screen is sorted by Recent or Title, you also have the option of entering the first few letters of a book’s title. If your Home screen is sorted by Author, you can enter the first letters of an author’s name. Tap the Go button and you’re taken to the corresponding page in your list of content.

Searching from the Home screen

Another way to find a book is to use the device’s powerful Search feature, which can scan all your content to find items containing a word or string of characters.

To search from the Home screen, tap the Search icon on the toolbar. The Search screen and onscreen keyboard appears, as shown in Figure 4-4.