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From: Kie <kie@home.now>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.e-books
Subject: Re: Test post read NFO Version 1 - "Pauline Rowson metadata edited books - comments wanted.nfo"
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 00:16:02 +0000
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On Fri, 11 Mar 2016 23:55:04 -0500, Hawkeye <Hawkeye@MASH.com> wrote:
Snip
>>
>>I'm surprised people don't want the series titles and numbers displayed in the
>>library pages of their eReaders. How do you find the next book in the series?
>
>That's an easy one. I use Calibre, but I also use my PC as my primary
>repository of books. I have a separate Caliber library for the books
>I have loaded to my Kindle, which are duplicate copies of my primary
>library on my PC. I also copy the booklist from Fantastic Fiction
>into a text file and load it under Author Name-Book List if I am
>interested in a particular order.
>
>This gives me a list on my reader I can easily access if I am reading
>a series. I keep a small group of books to be read on my reader and a
>group of "favorites" that I enjoy re-reading from time to time.
>
>If I have a book in a library I wish to read I can add a -number after
>the title to show the series position and then load a copy to my
>reader, retaining the original. I copy the file to my Loaded library.
>When I have read a book I mark it as being read, copy it back to my
>PC, and replace the copy in my library. I remove the copy in my
>Loaded library, of course.
>
>I do code my books as to tentative quality for those I have not read
>by adding ~Bx or ~Cx after the title, with x being a number to show
>relative readability. A ~B1 looks OK, while a ~C2 is unreadable. I
>use ~A1 for read and OK or ~A2 for read but could stand replacing. In
>this way all of my books reside on my PC and are regularly backed up
>along with my other files. I can tell at a glance if I have read the
>book, if my copy is OK, and if I have what appears to be an acceptable
>copy I can now read if I so desire. I update the Metadata file at
>this point insuring the series data and any necessary tags are in
>place before adding the Book Read flag to the name and filing it away
>permanently.
>
>For example:
>
>These are most useful in my PC database:
>
>A Mighty Fortress~A1 - David Weber.mobi Read and OK
>A Mighty Fortress~A2 - David Weber.mobi Read and needs replacing
>A Mighty Fortress~B1 - David Weber.mobi Not read appears OK
>A Mighty Fortress~C2 - David Weber.mobi Not read appears unreadable
>
>Most useful in my reader:
>
>A Mighty Fortress-4 - David Weber.mobi Not read, number 4 in series
>
>My reader contains my 'books in process' more or less, and having had
>three readers crap out on me without losing anything but my place in
>whatever I was reading at the time I am well satisfied.
>
>I can easily replace or update any book list at any time, the files
>are small, and don't clutter my reader (especially if I set up
>separate groups by author) and I have found this to work quite well
>for an absolutely insane number of books.
>
>
>>
>>I only posted two versions of the books, version 1 with corrected full metadata
>>and version 2 was with the titles changed to include series & number and
>>metadata stripped.
>>
>>There is a version 1.5 of the books I could post, full metadata with the titles
>>changed to include the series. It would mean another save during the process
>>but I have plenty of hard disk space. (Or this could be version 2?)
>>
>>I could then remove the metadata for people I normally supply books to and not
>>bother posting this version?
>>
>>I'm editing the books anyway, for me and a few relatives. I just thought I
>>might as well share the work I've put in with the people on usenet since this is
>>where the books are from originally.
Sorry about the delay, life gets in the way. I've just re-read this
and I've rambled a bit, ignore if you wish, it's only the last
paragraph that has the important bit about posting.
Almost everyone I know, that has an eReader complains about the
problems of finding the book they want to read, particularly if they
want to read books in series order. It doesn't help that when they
buy eBooks, the publshers can't even get basic information like author
sort correct and sometimes switch author and title. Sometimes
publishers add "A Series Name mystery" to the title but don't bother
putting the series number. The kindle not having a sort by filename
or the fact that author sort uses the publication date as the
secondary sort doesn't help either.
But despite the problem of not finding books, no one is interested in
using calibre, particularly if it means removing DRM. Everyone loves
the books I provide though, not just because they're free, but the
series names in the library view and books in the right order make the
kindle easy to use. I assumed that the people who used the newsgroups
would want the same "pre-done" books ready to load onto eReaders, I
was wrong.
The comments by people on here have been interesting and I've realised
that I've not been using calibre to its full potential. I've been
doing a bit of googling and reading the mobileread forum for the first
time and after learning more about what the current version of calibre
can do, I understand why cut down versions aren't what subscribers to
these newsgroup want.
We're all grateful for the posts of Psychopath, BlueDenim, TreeSaver
etc and will accept the books in any format they choose to post. We've
all had to learn how to use calibre to some extent and it seems
everyone else but me has been using it more than a bit of editing and
converting. I've never stored books in calibre, as soon as they're
edited and saved, I delete them.
I've started using Boyo's suggestion of the ISBN plug-in that finds
the number from the ebooks before updating the metadata. Prior to
this the results would show two or three versions of the same book,
now I usually only get one, with all the links consolidated.
I keep track of the quality of books. I use powerdesk which is a
windows explorer replacement. It has an easy way to copy a list of
all the files in a directory into the clipboard, which I can paste
into a text file. I go through all the books I've just done using
Adobe Digital editions or sumatrapdf reader on my PC and mark next to
list the quality of the ebook, such as retail, good scan, etc. I've
been reading about creating custom columns in calibre and that might
be an easier way to see which books need better versions. Using the
tag browser (on the left of calibre main screen, it will be easy to
see which books are marked as "bad scan"
I also used to create epubs using sigil, with details for each author,
list of books from fantastic fiction and the description for each
book. Ideal for the people who have ereaders but no computers. Lack
of time and too many books by some authors means I now just do a doc
file that can be printed. I've discovered that calibre can now create
an epub book with the entire contents of my library. I need to set
it up with the right tags, but if I can get it working this is going
to be incredibly useful. I really need to start reading the "what's
new" bit in the update pages.
In another thread, Fisherman mentioned that he saved ebooks with the
series details included. It was only when I came across metadata
plugboards that I understood what he meant. I've sat at this PC
renaming every James Patterson book, when all I needed to do what just
save.
I've been trying to find a way to display the information stored in
the IDs box but can't find any reference anywhere. The calibre
template language is a tad complicated. I've decided to delete the
mobi-asin numbers from the IDs box, since these seem to be used by
Amazon to identify ebooks they've sold. The link to the book in
Amazon uses a different number. I'm making sure amazon, goodreads and
fantastic fiction are linked but if kobo and barnes and noble aren't
linked automatically I don't bother adding them.
I'm still having a problem with tags. There's no consistency across a
series when downloading metadata. Goodreads has too many tags, but
Fantastic Fiction seems to be think every book's a mystery. I'm
thinking of just using a few basic ones from Amazon and adding
nationality of author and location the books are set (if I've read
them). David Hewson is a British author but the books he writes are
set in Rome, Denmark and Amsterdam, so I think it's relevant. Some
people might be surprised when I post the Lee Child books and they
discover he's English.
I've also started a goodreads account and started linking the books
I'm doing, it's a work in progress, I need to change british-crime to
crime-british, the genres important not the nationality. The account
name is Kie if you want to look at what I'm working on when I get
time. I'll keep updating it as I add new authors.
So your comments have been extremely useful and it means I can edit
books series with a bit more purpose, creating a Calibre library for
reference. When I've completed the 300+ authors I want to do it's
going to make life easier.
It's going to take a bit longer than I thought to get the first batch
of authors completed, a lot of the series that I'd already done, now
have retail versions and metadata downloaded still isn't all that
accurate. I do about 200 books at a time. I still haven't worked out
fonts either, getting consistency on size. I've got all the Jeffrey
Deaver ebooks, but nearly all have weird embedded fonts that don't
display properly on the Nook or Sony. I read the books in paperback
(now at a charity shop) and I remember (boring) long lists of evidence
being repeated regularly with different fonts being used, so I don't
think I can just delete them.
I should start posting next week in alt.binaries.e-book.flood. I'm
don't think it's worth posting versions with the title changed since
this is so easy to do with the metadata plugboard and the stripped
versions are only for old ereaders which I doubt many newsgroup users
have. I'll put that as an option in an NFO though.
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