Kindle not showing sideloaded books

[fogice]

I purchased 4 books from Amazon today. I prefer to download them to my computer, get all the info the way I like it on Calibre, then transfer it to my Kindle Voyage (first version) directly.

The first two books I accidentally had delivered straight to the Kindle, which actually helps as information for the troubleshooting. I also downloaded those two and processed them through Calibre.

In Calibre, I deleted the two downloaded books in On Device view, and transferred the books over in KFX. I can see all 4 books in On Device view in Calibre. However, on the Voyage, I first could only see the original downloaded books (attempting to open them says Item Not Available). About 10 minutes later, one of the other sideloaded books appeared as it should. The other three transfers are nowhere to be seen.

I have restarted the Kindle to no avail. I did a search for a nonsense word to check if anything was stuck in indexing; the search results do not indicate that indexing is stuck. If I look in the Mac's Finder, I see that the books are properly placed in their respective folders, but there is no associated .sdr file (I presume this file is generated after the book is opened, but I can't find much information on that).

Stats:
Calibre 4.12.
Kindle Voyage firmware 5.12.4
1013 books on Kindle
948 MB free on Kindle

tl;dr: Why won't the Kindle interface update to reflect the books I sideloaded?

EDIT: After a half hour, the other three books magically appeared and the deleted books vanished. What would take so long, how do I get it to work faster?

[Barbara1955]

Check for them under ALL ITEMS.... RECENT

[fogice]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

Check for them under ALL ITEMS.... RECENT

I am always in Recent view. I was on DOWNLOADED, where they eventually appeared. I shall try ALL next time and see if that helps.

[fogice]

I transferred three books today. One appeared after a couple of minutes. The second a few minutes after that. It has been an hour and the third book is still missing. Anyone have any other ideas what’s happening?

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by fogice

I have restarted the Kindle to no avail. I did a search for a nonsense word to check if anything was stuck in indexing; the search results do not indicate that indexing is stuck. If I look in the Mac's Finder, I see that the books are properly placed in their respective folders, but there is no associated .sdr file (I presume this file is generated after the book is opened, but I can't find much information on that).

Stats:
Calibre 4.12.
Kindle Voyage firmware 5.12.4
1013 books on Kindle
948 MB free on Kindle

tl;dr: Why won't the Kindle interface update to reflect the books I sideloaded?

EDIT: After a half hour, the other three books magically appeared and the deleted books vanished. What would take so long, how do I get it to work faster?

What's your folder hierarchy?

1013 books is a lot and if they're all in a single folder, that might be causing the slowness.

Try adding extra levels by changing your send to device template to something like:

A/
--Author/
----Title

Also, any books with non-ASCII or overly long filenames?

[kovidgoyal]

These are all issues with the indexer on the Kindle. THere is no cure for those short of resetting the Kindle.

[fogice]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

These are all issues with the indexer on the Kindle. THere is no cure for those short of resetting the Kindle.

Thanks. Do you mean a full factory reset, or is there something less aggressive I can do?

[kovidgoyal]

You can delete all books off it and resend in batches, see the calibre FAQ there is an entry about books not showing up on the Kindle.