Persistent books on Kindle

By Brian, 14 January, 2025

Forum

iOS and iPadOS

So I had a weird situation happened to me regarding my Kindle library. I subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, and as such I tend to download four or five books at a time, read through them, and discard the ones I don't want to keep. Sometimes I will have a weird issue where the book is not screen reader compatible, and thus I cannot read it either using Alexa, or using voiceover via the Kindle app. This is rare, but it does happen now and again.
So about a month, maybe a month and a half ago, I was going through my latest downloaded books. I eventually decided on one, and double tapped on it to open it in the Kindle app. Of course, this would be one of those rare books that was not screen reader compatible. I then went back to my library in the hopes that I could just return it to Kindle Unlimited, and move on with my life.
This is where things get interesting ...

Once I had focus on the book in question in my library, I tried swiping through the rotor actions to try and return the book. However, the optional is not even there. There were options for sharing the book, marking the book as read, rating the book, and removing from device. That last option simply removes the download, but does not remove the title from your library.
In the end, I had to actually go to my Amazon account on the web, go to my digital content, then books, and manually remove the book from my library from that page.

Has anyone else ever experienced this? If so, is there a more streamlined approach to removing said book?

Thanks for reading! 🙇‍♂️

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Comments

Screen-reader compatible books?

brian, you're absolutely right...the second paragraph, relative to the first, was much more interesting. the first was a bit like chewing old rope. I do understand, however, that it was laying the groundwork for the captivating second paragraph, on whose essence I regret I cannot help.

However, what's all this about books that you can't read with Voiceover? Never did I hear of such a thing. could you adumbrate on that in a manner that measures up to the interest levels of paragraph 2 et seq?

The more I read of Bingo the…

The more I read of Bingo the more I'm concerned apple vis has been infiltrated by a rogue legal AI...

I believe the books Brian is talking of are not produced in the same way as the accessible books, a little like PDFs, one can be digital with all the lovely accessible navigation posts and the other is more like an image and useless to us.

As I've given up with kindle completely due to jumping blocks of text when reading in brail, I've not yet experienced one of these unfortunate books so nor have I had to delete one. All I can suggest, and it's not a very useful suggestion, is to contact amazon accessibility and make them aware of the issue:

accessibility@amazon.com

They do respond, but I'm not sure if they action many of our requests.

I've switched to apple books which seems to be much more solid for ebook reading with a brail display. I get the books on BookShare on my mac, load them in, and they sync on my phone. I also believe I can just open them once I've put them in a cloud folder, assuming you're not using mac. Bit off topic.

Bingo, Bingo, Bingo

Sometime when you are feeling adventurous, dive into The "About the Kindle edition" section of any book, either in your library, or just in a list of search results. Here you may find things such as:

ABOUT THE KINDLE EDITION
Length: 744 pages
Audible audiobook: Available
Word Wise: Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Pay very close attention to the second to last item in that list. Some books will not have that at all, or they'll have that, but with the phrase "Not supported".

I try to remember to always check the section of any book I want to grab, but I am only human, and sometimes forget. I also sometimes will download a book anyway, even if they do not have a "Screen reader:" section, on the off-chance that it may still work with voiceover.

I hope this better explains my original post? 🥸

@Ollie, Re: Apple Books

Interestingly enough, I used to use Apple Books in school. I had a number of English classes, where I had to do book reports, and Apple Books was super accessible for me back then. The reason why I take the plunge, so to speak, and dive into Kindle, is because I am slightly addicted to Kindle Unlimited. Also, I really dig using the Alexa app/device to have my books read aloud to me. 😁

Great job, brian

Brian - yes, it does. I have never claimed to be omniscient and from time to time there will be an issue upon which I am in severe want of knowledge. That's a splendid explanation. There was I thinking that Voiceover meant we could read all Kindle books. I remember back in the day the in-built voice on the hardware Kindle couldn't read a massive amount of books, but I thought Voiceover solved all those problems. Clearly not. Alas I have no idea how to solve your problem other than to say that it's ironic that Kindle Unlimited is effectively a library that won't allow you to return a book.

Ollie, I always thought the selection on apple Books was much more limited than on Kindle, which is why I've not given apple Books a look for years. Is this another matter about which I am egregiously mistaken?

Not that I know anything...

There's some books I can't get rid of, or I guess just the titles in the library, on the Kindle apps on both my iPhone and my Fire tablet. I've also gotten a couple of books that are not supported by a screen reader, probably heavy in pictures, woodworking and log cabin building come to mind. Good to know they can actually be obliterated from the web site. I don't really care about them because they were obtained through the digital credits I got by not choosing next or same day shipping during certain sales.

Re: VoiceOver

In a perfect world, Bingo, in a perfect world ...
As to Amazon accessibility, they will tell you to do what I did in my original post, that is to do it through the website. It works, just not as efficient as doing things through the Kindle app, of course.

Regarding apple books and…

Regarding apple books and content... I'm not purchasing through apple books but using it as a reader for books I'm getting from either the USA BookShare which I've subscribed to or, whilst I'm still on the books, the RNIB BookShare that my former university was signed up to. There are also other sources of epub books which I won't specify here.

I believe you can use kindle in a similar fashion by emailing the epub to yourself using your kindle email, which you can find in settings but, as I say, the issues with section jumps have put me off though, Brian, it has got me interested if alexa will read an imported book. Going to give that a try now.

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