[Full instructions further down after my waffle]
We’ve started getting quite a few books via Kindle apps, though none of us owns a Kindle. I have my phone and Transformer Prime, Gillian has her silly toy phone and fruit-based pad, and Little Miss has her tablet too.
Thing is, the Kindle software is missing some very obvious features. First up is the ability to catalogue your files in one way or another – you can do it on the Kindle itself, I believe, and also on the PC and Mac applications. Not on Android or iOS though. This becomes an issue when you  have 150+ books and no way to organise them into something as simple as “read and unread”.
Secondly is being able to have several “readers” on one account. We read the same books and as there’s no reliable way to transfer purchased ones from account to account, we use my Amazon account across all the devices. That way, one purchase can be read by us all. However, the WhisperNet software always syncs up to the furthest page read regardless of who’s got there. Which means only one person, realistically, can read a book at one time.
I just encountered a further problem with this. Gillian got to the end of a book and told me it was now free for me to read. I went to start it and it was synced to the end of the book. There seemed to way to convince the thing that I’d like to go back to the beginning and sync at page one.
Amazon’s “help” told me nothing. I trawled the ‘net. One site gave two sets of instructions involving stopping syncing, changing page on another device, re-enabling sync and crossing your fingers. Neither worked.
Another said “ring them and they’ll do it for you”. Hardly efficient.
One comment pointed me at a blog post saying that you could now do it via “Manage Kindle” page at Amazon. Yay!
Only I went to the page and the option wasn’t there.
Then I tried going to Amazon.COM (rather than .co.uk). Ta-dah, there  it is.
I can’t buy Kindle books from Amazon.com even though the site will take my login details and gives me an account. It isn’t even polite enough to redirect me to the same title on the UK site if I try to buy it. On the other hand, it’s the only site with full Kindle book management tools.
OK, here’s the skinny. Go to amazon.com and log in.
Select “Manage My Kindle” from the drop-down on the first page.
Locate the book you want to resync and click the “Actions” button to the right of it. Select “Clear furthest page read” and you’re done.
You can’t even do any kind of organizing of the books through the web site.
And it’s the same with their Appstore and Instant Video sections. You just get a dump of “Here’s everything you have. Good luck trying to find anything if you have a large collection.” Of course the Video library is sorted alphabetically by name while the Kindle Books section is sorted by Date Purchased. The Appstore gives you the option of either of these methods of sorting.
Amazon gives you a lot of stuff, but their management options are sorely lacking.
The Android app for Kindle doesn’t even sort the books properly. “Newest first” uses some kind of weird algorithm that has absolutely bugger all to do with how new the books are in any way, shape or form.
Amazon also try to screw you over if they sell you something that doesn’t work. Just about to write up a blog post.
Near as I can figure “Newest First” does not sort by Purchase Date,it sorts by purchase /last opened date. So things jump to the top whenever they get opened by you or anyone else on your account.
Ah, OK. I’d been trying to spot a pattern. Still bloody useless.
I think it was easier for me to spot since I’m the only one using my account.
Speaking to various friends and colleagues who read ebooks, those who are happiest with Amazon are those who have actual Kindles (including myself). Those who are using apps generally experience some/all of your frustration!
Which, if course, is the core audience they want to please leaving those using third party apps int he cold (temporarily or otherwise). Thing is, I don’t want a Kindle as it would mean carrying *another* thing around with me. Why have a Kindle that’s only useful for reading books (and maybe 1-2 other things) when I can carry a tablet that does that and a thousand things more?
One thing I’m curious about – the Kindle Fire runs Android so does it just use the Android app (and therefore suffer the associated limitations), or does it have a bespoke version that doesn’t have the limitations?
Incidentally, the multiple users reading the same book / resetting the page count to zero issues are present regardless of whether you’re using an actual Kindle or anything else. The main issue the Kindle resolves is being able to categorise your books across multiple readers.