Update:
Good news!!! Automatic downloads magically started working again. I probably could have been more patient and not reset the device to factory settings, because that made no difference (at least for the first several hours).
Thankfully, doing a device reset on a Kindle isn't a big deal like doing it on a PC would be - all of my previous downloads are no longer on the Kindle itself, but I have everything already sorted into collections, so it's easy enough to recover what I need to. (I'll probably just stick with a clean slate.)
I have no idea if there was some kind of server or cloud issue, but I'm glad it sorted itself out finally.
crebel said:
That would be frustrating. Are they at least showing up on your P4 under the "All" filter? That would at least be a slightly easier way to pull to the device itself than going back online to Device and Contents.
I'm sorry I don't have a better suggestion for you, hopefully someone else will.
I had it set to "all" and books were still showing up in the cloud, so I could have retrieved them that way. Still, I was concerned that automatic downloading was somehow "broken."
Truthfully, if there was a way to officially shut off automatic downloading, I would probably use it as an actual "feature."
But since there isn't a way to do that, I would prefer for it to work.
John Hopper said:
I have been having this problem on and off (mostly on, though) for the last two and a half years. I have tried to sort it out with customer services, but with no success. It's frustrating, but I've stopped worrying about it. It happens on all e-ink kindles I've had during that time, Oasis 2 and 3, PW4 and Voyage, but not with the Android Kindle app.
Can you elaborate? When the problem is "on" for you, how long does it take for books to automatically download? 30 minutes? Several hours? Several days?
When my PW4 is working as it should, books start queuing up almost instantly - but there are definitely still times it takes 30 minutes to an hour for new books to push through.
On my previous PW2, it would occasionally take several hours - I always assumed those instances were related to PW2 running low on space (not an issue with the 8GB PW4).
One theory I always had: Kindle book downloads somehow seem slower between midnight - 3 a.m. (EST). I wonder if Amazon is doing something behind-the-scenes with its Kindle servers during that time? I could just be seeing something that isn't there though, or maybe only noticing it during those hours because I tend to read books before bed.