How to Organize Your E-book Library

With all the free e-book downloads available online, not to mention the e-books we purchase, is it not any wonder our hard drives are crammed with them? I had that problem until about a month ago when I finally got all my e-books sorted out and organized into a library. One advantage of doing this is that you may not even realize that you have some e-books that you have full resell rights to. If you do and you can get those ones categorized so you can get them set up to sell, this is a great way to create some passive income. Of course, even if you have only fiction in your e-book library, it is still nice to know where these titles are, and how you can find them later on.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Microsoft Excel
• CDs

1. Put all your e-books into one folder on your desktop if you haven’t done this already.

2. Once you have all your e-books in one master folder on your desktop, look at the types of e-books that you have. Create a new folder on your desktop for each category of e-book. For example, you might have one folder for romance fiction, another might be for mysteries and still another might be for marketing e-books.

3. Set up a database spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.

4. Enter all your e-books into the database spreadsheet.

5. Save the folders you’ve created on your desktop to their own CDs, meaning one per CD when possible. This will help to clear space on your hard drive, and also since you have categorized all your e-books and entered them into your database spreadsheet, you will have a clear idea of exactly what you have.

Tips & Warnings

• Label each of your CDs with the same name as the folder that you saved to them from your desktop. This will allow you to easily find what you are looking for later.
• Enter into your database spreadsheet a column for the name of the CD you have saved that particular e-book to. This way you can go do a search on your database spreadsheet for the title, and when you find it, you can see which CD it is on and go straight to the CD to read your chosen e-book.
• If you have e-books that you have full resell rights to, you may want to include these on their very own CD separate from your other e-books. This will help to locate them when you are ready to set them up to be sold.
• If you have e-books that you have the resell rights to and you don’t want to put them on their own CD, then make sure you create a column in your database spreadsheet so that you can add that information next to these books. This way you will be able to still find them without having to actually search for and then open them in Adobe Reader just to find out if you have the resell rights.
• Save your database spreadsheet on your desktop. This will make it easier to access, and you won’t have to go hunting for it when you want to find a particular e-book.
• It’s possible if you have a large library that your folder may be either too large to fit on a CD or will completely fill the CD, making it impossible to add any more e-books to that CD. A solution to this is to separate the e-books in your overflowing folder into two or more folders.
• Many e-books that you’ve purchased online cannot be shared with others. Keep this in mind, and you might even want to mark these e-books in your database spreadsheet to avoid accidentally doing this. Of course, exceptions are e-books you have the resell rights to and e-books that you have downloaded for free and that are meant to be used as viral marketing tools. These are generally clearly marked as such.