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From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: How to Make Sure You Are Receiving Your Kindle Nation Daily Subscription

Thanks to Kindle Nation subscriber Ruth R for writing in about this problem:

Hi Stephen,
Would you please let me know why I have not received any daily updates in my kindle? Is it something I am doing or not doing?
Thank you,
Ruth
Ruth, unfortunately there is a recurring problem that Amazon has promised to fix through a firmware update. Although the problem can affect any Kindle blog, Kindle Nation Daily may be more vulnerable to it because of the frequency of our posts, which average about three a day.  (One way to determine for sure if you’ve been missing posts on your Kindle is to have Amazon send the blog to your Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac App following the instructions located here, and compare notes).
We’re still waiting for the Amazon fix, but meanwhile, here’s a do-it-yourself solution that should only take a couple of moments:

From the Kindle Nation Mailbag: Make Sure You Are Receiving Your Kindle Nation Daily Subscription

If you are a subscriber and you ever notice you’ve gone a couple of days without receiving your Kindle Nation Daily posts on your Kindle, I suggest following these steps:

  1. Try a system restart using the steps below (rather than holding the Kindle power switch to the right). In many cases this will resolve some minor issue that is blocking new blog content from downloading wirelessly to your Kindle. (Here’s a previous post on this subject). Then use the Home screen menu to select “Sync & Check for Items.” If all is well, you should see the blog on your Kindle home screen within an hour or two.
  2. If that doesn’t work, go to your Manage Your Kindle Subscriptions page and make sure that Kindle Nation Daily shows up in the listing of Your Active Kindle Subscriptions. If Kindle Nation Daily shows up under Your Inactive Kindle Subscriptions, click the “reactivate subscription” link to the right of the listing. You may have to update credit card information.
  3. If another hour passes and you still haven’t received fresh Kindle Nation Daily posts on your Kindle, contact Kindle Support via the web or by calling 1-866-321-8851. To ensure that the support personnel on the other end aren’t confused, I suggest giving them the exact name and ASIN number of the blog (Kindle Nation Daily – B0029U1A08), and insisting that you know other customers — like me, for instance — who are receiving new posts.
I hope this helps, and please let me know if you’re still having problems afterward!

Step-by-Step: Kindle System Restart
  1. Make sure your Kindle is on.*
  2. Disconnect the Kindle from the USB or Power Adapter cable.
  3. Press the Home button on the right edge of the Kindle.
  4. From the Home screen, press the Menu button on the right edge of the Kindle.
  5. Select “Settings” from the Home Menu.
  6. From the Settings page, press the Menu button again.
  7. Select “Restart” from the Setting Menu.
  8. Wait a couple of minutes for your Kindle to Restart, then give your Kindle another few minutes to update files, blog posts, etc.

*If your Kindle does not come on, or seems frozen, connect it via its Power Adapter to a wall outlet and give it an hour to re-energize itself.

Kindle System Restart: A Quick Fix if, for Example, You’re Not Getting New Kindle Subscription Content


Tip: A Fix of First Resort for a Multitude of Kindle Problems

I subscribe to the Kindle editions of several Kindle periodicals and blogs including, just so I can keep an eye on it to make sure Kindle subscribers are getting what I post, this one.

Several times over the past year I have noticed that new posts of mine or another blog or newspaper were not updating in a timely fashion to my Kindle, and I have occasionally received emails from subscribers if they experienced something similar. Since I generally deliver 15 to 20 posts a week to the citizens of Kindle Nation, it’s usually a Kindle problem if Kindle Nation Daily does not appear on my Home screen when when I sort by “Most Recent.”

So here’s one of those little “fix” things that seems to work without my really having any idea why it is working. Frankly, it’s one of the first fixes that I go to — before I contact Kindle Support via the web or by calling 1-866-321-8851 (1-206-266-0927 outside the US) — with almost anything I suspect is not working properly on my Kindle. Sort of like turning the computer off and on.

Step-by-Step: Kindle System Restart
  1. Make sure your Kindle is on.*
  2. Disconnect the Kindle from the USB or Power Adapter cable.
  3. Press the Home button on the right edge of the Kindle.
  4. From the Home screen, press the Menu button on the right edge of the Kindle.
  5. Select “Settings” from the Home Menu.
  6. From the Settings page, press the Menu button again.
  7. Select “Restart” from the Setting Menu.
  8. Wait a couple of minutes for your Kindle to Restart, then give your Kindle another few minutes to update files, blog posts, etc.

*If your Kindle does not come on, or seems frozen, connect it via its Power Adapter to a wall outlet and give it an hour to re-energize itself.


If you’re still hvaing problems, contact Kindle Support via the web or by calling 1-866-321-8851 (1-206-266-0927 outside the US).

Kindle Troubleshooting 101: If You Can’t Open Any of Your Kindle Books….

Here’s the kind of situation that I tend too easily to ignore (once I have solved it) because it seems like it must be a fluke that isn’t going to occur often enough to bother bringing it up here at Kindle Nation. But after I experienced it twice in my first two weeks with my new Kindle DX, two things occurred to me:

  1. This is a problem that Amazon should fix so that it does not keep happening.
  2. It’s definitely worth passing on the “fix” in Kindle Nation so that my fellow Kindlers can avoid the feelings of panic and despair that have come over me twice now as a result of a sudden and inexplicable inability to open any of the Kindle editions aboard my Kindle DX.

Here’s the problem: suddenly none of the Kindle books, periodicals or blogs that are displayed on my Kindle DX Home screen will load. When I click on any of them with the Kindle DX 5-way, a message appears on the screen telling me that the Kindle is unable to open this document and referring me to my Manage Your Kindle page at Amazon.com, via my computer, so that I can fix the problem (I wish I had made a screenshot, but alas my panic was too intense to think of such things!). I go to my Manage Your Kindle page at Amazon.com, but it tells me nothing, and everything appears to be fine with my Amazon.com account, credit cards on file, etc. I notice, meanwhile, that my Kindle does open my Personal Docs and my Audible.com audiobooks, so it seems clear that there is not a hardware problem.

I called Kindle Support at 1-866-216-1072 and it quickly became clear that

  1. The problem had nothing to do with anything that I could address through my Manage My Kindle page; and
  2. It is such a common problem that the the support guy to whom I was speaking was able to cut me off 10 seconds into my description of the problem to start focusing on the fix.

He said that the problem was a “file index corruption” problem that has been occurring “in a few cases,” and the solution is a simple hard boot or restart of the Kindle.

So here’s the simple solution, should you face the same lack of access to your Kindle library:

  1. From your Kindle’s Home screen, press the Menu button on the side of the Kindle.
  2. From the Menu listing, use the 5-way to select “Settings.”
  3. From the “settings” display, press the Menu button again.
  4. From the Menu listing, use the 5-way to select “Restart.”

(You can also initiate a restart by holding the power switch to the right continuously for about 20 seconds, letting it go, then sliding it to the right again, but this takes longer and puts more wear and tear on the Kindle’s few moving parts).

Your Kindle will then take about two minutes to complete a hard reboot, during most of which you will see the Amazon Kindle silhouette graphic of the figure sitting under a tree reading. A progress bar will appear on the screen about halfway through, and toward the end of the reboot you will briefly (and cruelly!) be shown a nearly empty Home screen with the words “Showing all 0 items” at the top and “Archived Items (0)” just below it.