Calibre – a Kindle’s best friend, Part 2
The initial post on the calibre software guided one through the process of installing and running the program to download preloaded periodicals. This post will describe a method I have devised to automate the entire process of downloading and delivering the periodicals to your Kindle every day, week, and/or month–without requiring one to leave calibre running or their computer turned on.
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Configuring calibre to deliver periodicals to an email address (optional)
Calibre can “push” (send) downloaded periodicals to one or more email addresses. This can be either setup as the default delivery method, or simply alternative delivery options whenever the need arises to email the eBooks rather than transfer via USB cable.
Step 1: Open calibre
Step 2: Click on the “Preferences” icon in the top toolbar; select the “Email Delivery” icon
Step 3: Enter an email address from which calibre will email your periodicals. You will need to have POP/SMTP access for the email address, therefore, calibre recommends the free Gmail for those who are uncertain about this or do not have access (e.g. free Yahoo accounts). To use your Gmail account, enter your gmail address in the “Send email from:” field, click the “Use Gmail” button, and enter your gmail address again in the “Username” field as well as your password.
Step 4: Add email address(es) to which you want to send your periodicals and choose the format (e.g. Kindle owners: MOBI) in which the periodicals should be.
Step 5: Check the “Auto send” box(es) for the email address(es) to which you want calibre to automatically deliver the periodicals whenever they are downloaded and created.
Step 6: Click the “OK” button
[Note: If you choose your Kindle email address (e.g. xxxx@kindle.com) as one of your email addresses, you must add the sending email address (from Step 3) to “Your Kindle Approved E-mail list” from the Manage Your Kindle website. ]
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Schedule your computer to “wake up”, open calibre, and download your periodicals (optional)
To avoid keeping your computer and calibre running all the time, yet still have your periodicals downloaded and pushed (or ready for transfer via USB) to your Kindle, follow this guide:
Step 1: (Windows users) Download the free software, WakeupOnStandby (only 409 KB). This program does not intall itself on the computer or registry, so after extracting the compressed zip file, place the wosb.exe file in a folder or even a portable USB drive for it to remain (e.g. the Desktop; My Documents; folder labeled “Auto Wake” in your C: drive; etc.)
Step 2: Open the program by double-clicking the wosb.exe file
Step 3: Specify the time when you want your computer to first wake from sleep/hibernation (e.g. tomorrow morning). Be sure you select the correct AM/PM option.
Step 4: Check box number 2 and enter the location of calibre in the field, “”Run the following file/program/web page when computer wakes up.” This is best done by clicking the “…” button next to the field and browsing to the calibre.exe file (e.g. “C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\calibre.exe”)
Step 5: In box number 4, indicate how ofter you want this action to happen. For example, for daily downloading of morning newspapers, click the “All” button to check all the boxes.
Step 6: In box number 5, click the “Start” button.
Step 7: Ensure that Windows allows WakeupOnStandby to auto-wake your computer. For Windows 7 (visual guide here):
- Open the Control Panel in the Start menu.
- Open Power Options in the Control Panel.
- Select Change plan settings next to the power plan you want to set.
- Select Change advanced power settings.
- Select Change settings that are currently unavailable in the Power Options window.
- Set Allow wake timers to Enable under Sleep and then click OK to save the changes.
[Note: for laptops, you do not need to leave it unfolded–the program will wake the computer and run calibre even with the screen in the down position if you choose.]
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Scheduling your periodicals
Assuming you have identified the periodicals you wish to regularly download (see previous post on calibre), you next need to schedule their downloads to coincide with your WakeupOnStandby schedule (or at a time when you plan on manually leaving your computer and calibre running).
Step 1: Click the icon labeled “Fetch News”
Step 2: Locate a desired publication in the catorgorized tree-list (note: there is a )
Step 3: Check the “Schedule for download” box and select the frequency and/or time of the download. [Note: an ideal time is probably 5 minutes AFTER the scheduled wake up time of the WakeupOnStandby program] A few examples:
- For a daily newspaper, choose “Every day” and enter a time (e.g. WakeupOnStandby is scheduled to wake the computer at 6:30 am–> choose 6:35 am as your download time)
- For Sunday-only newspapers, choose “Every Sunday” and enter a time
- For weekly periodicals, choose the day of the week that corresponds to the morning after the periodical tends to be update online (e.g. Time – updated Thursdays, so choose “Every Friday”; Newsweek – updated anywhere from Friday to Sunday, so choose “Every Monday” to be safe) and enter a time.
Step 4: Repeat the same for any other desired publications, clicking the “OK” button when you have finished.
[Note: make sure you enter your username/password for sites that require registration when the calibre subscription dialog box has such fields (e.g. New York Times)]
You can now exit calibre.
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Concluding remarks
You should now be set. If you did not check an “Auto send” box(es) for any of your email address(es) from the first set of instructions, then your periodicals will be transferred to your Kindle once you connect the USB cable to the Kindle (note: if your computer has gone back to sleep, you will need to wake it up, first). Otherwise, your periodicals will have been sent to your Kindle (if you selected the “Auto send” box for your xxxx@kindle.com email address) or other email address(es) as soon as calibre finished downloading them.
Expect .5 – 3 MB per periodical and remember that Amazon will charge 15 cents per MB for deliveries to your Kindle via the xxxx@kindle.com email address (i.e. $4.50 – $13.50 per month of automatic deliveries).
For me, I either connect my Kindle to my hibernated laptop before bed or in the morning–calibre automatically transfers the periodicals to my Kindle–for free–in less than 30 seconds. When I vacation, I can simply select the “Auto send” box for my xxxx@kindle.com email address.
I also have my wife’s BlackBerry email address in my email list and have the “Auto send” box checked. For instructions on opening these attachments from your Kindle for BlackBerry app, see here, saving your periodicals to ‘Device Memory’ -> ‘home’ -> ‘user’ -> ‘kindle’ -> ‘eBooks’.
Kindlelove or: How I Learned to Stop Dawdling and Love the eReader 
Compare to Ipad please…
Hi.
Do you know how I can get Calibre to only download “new” news? I’m using it primarily to fetch blogs so I can’t really set a regular schedule. I would like it to only download the new entries, it however downloads the last X entries (X = max number of articles as set in add custom news source).
Thx in advance for any help
I used to be able to download the Wallstreet Journal (Free). Recently it disappeared from my list of 247 English sources. My brother still gets it and his sources only show 241 English sources. We are both using the same up to date 7.15 version of Calibre. I have tried uninstalling and the re-installing the program Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot for this guide. It made the process understandable and very easy to follow.
Thanks a lot for putting this guide together. I’ve just received my Kindle and am getting to grips with how to get the most from it. Calibre is a great tool – but this will make it so much better!
Do you know of any way to send some periodicals to one Kindle and others to another Kindle? Short of running 2 instances of the software, that is.
Thanks!
Hi Roger,
Did you work out how this can be done within one instance of Calibre? I want to do the same – send some periodicals via email to my Kindle, and others to my wife’s.
Thanks for any help.
Nick
Great info, although I am increasingly frustrated at the difficulty of editing the sources – I was the television, opinions and film news from NYT but can’t set it to get them. I want the opinions, media and TV news from The Guardian but can’t again. The defaults is only news, and then attempts at editing them barely change anything.
Hi,
Great post!
I have set it up the way you described. The news gets downloaded, but it is not being sent to my kindle account.
If I send it manually, it asks me if I want to auto convert it (from Epub to Mobi). If I select Yes, it converts the book and sends it perfectly.
I have checked and double checked the settings and the Auto Send option for my Kindle account is set to On.
Can you help me to get this working?
Check your calibre preferenes (Preferences->Sharing books by email) and make sure the “Auto Send” box is checked.
Also check to see what file formats you have allowed for your Kindle. Delete all but MOBI.
Make sure your Kindle device is the default email address (if you have more than 1 email address listed).
I had the same issue. under preferences set MOBI to be the highest priority import (mine defaulted to epub) once I did that it worked just fine.
Great explanation! My question is: how do I get my kindle to automatically archive or delete old editions of periodicals (say, 2 weeks old). I set calibre to download them from its library after 14 days, but I don’t think this will automatically delete them from my Kindle. Thanks!
I Agree with Kathy, is there any way to remove old periodicals automatically?
I have a question that maybe you can help me with. I have two kindles that are 3g and no wireless. I have moved to a place that does not have 3g. So, I downloaded kindle for pc and synched kindle 1 to it.
PROBLEM, I simply CANNOT sync Kindle 2 to Kindle PC. I even tried downloading the Kindle pc onto another computer and syching Kindle 2 on it. I can’t. It will not sync.
I have tried google searches but cannot find any help. I cannot use whispersync or wireless because of where I live and the type of kindle I have. I must use usb.
I tried connecting both kindles to my computer and then dragging and dropping all the files off of kindle 1 onto kindle 2. It looked like it worked, but when I tried to open the book it says that the book belongs to another registered user.
Any help would be great. The kindles are for our teenagers school and we really need them.
You can also use your “free” kindle email address – which means the file will be transferred over WIFI only (therefore not costing you money as the standard email address attempts to transfer over 3g)..
e.g. xxxx@free.kindle.com
Does this work when the Kindle is in sleep mode? If not, is there any way to stop Kindle from entering going to sleep or at least lengthening its “on” duration.
Curious that you recommended people use a specific program when the same thing could just as easily be accomplished by the task scheduler. Also, the “Enable Wake Timers” option can be kind of annoying, because programs you install on your computer often make tasks, and sometimes tell the computer to wake from sleep (this is luckily not quite as common as it once was). You can go into task scheduler and specifically disable this option for non-user created tasks, though. This sort of thing is really only practical if you have your computer set to automatically sleep, or else you’re computer will be waking up and staying on until you specifically turn it off again. You probably also want to make sure not to enable wake timers on battery power.
Its wonderful as your other content : D, thankyou for posting .
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