[unboggling]

Originally Posted by travger

I'm with Man Eating Duck - want to keep the db neat and want to hoard everything too, and exactly for the same reasons.

I guess I'm not much of a hoarder, except perhaps of books I want to read. If I have a Preferred book format in a readable condition (read with little to no annoyance) I'm content with it. In those cases I don't need the Original format lying around in calibre getting in the way, particularly when I can easily retrieve any Original format if necessary from the Raw folder where I keep the original download files. For some exceptions I do keep and read Original format. The temporary "read on device format" - I see no possible reason for me to keep it lying around after reading it, considering another one can be generated on the fly from "master copy" Preferred Format.

I'm too lazy to do file renaming; downloaded books have usually quite varied naming rules. If they are all in one folder... I'm afraid it'll be rather difficult to find one single file. Much easier to find it in Calibre (for me).

I don't rename most of them, just throw them in a folder. Most of them arrive with titles and author relatively intact in filename, but I do rename those that don't, such as from Project Gutenberg. Not onerous for a few books. (Or for a lot of them: Add them, edit authors, series, title if necessary, then Save to Disk with filenames fixed, they are still the raw downloaded formats). Later I just do simple OS search of Pending (awaiting Add) or Raw (added copy to calibre) folder for 1 or 2 keywords from authorname, in combination when necessary with 1 or 2 keywords from title. Such as "cordwainer underpeople". Not difficult to find something. Also, the need to look for something in Raw is rare. I do frequently search Pending folder, which has some legacy books not yet Added into calibre, no big deal, they gradually get Added.

I for one love custom columns and can't have too much of them, though most of them are invisible or shown only on Book Details panel. And, if in the future I decide to get rid of some, it's much easier to pile all the data into tags than to sort tags into different columns.

I can pile my tags from custom columns into Tags when necessary too. I have a feeling, not based on any evidence, that "fewer" custom columns may improve performance over "more" custom columns. Aside from that, for me it is an inclination toward keeping things simple and economic. Fewer places to look in calibre, fewer complications to go wrong or need maintenance. When I was a few months into using calibre, I had all my tags in Tags column. As abbreviations. So they looked like a mess and it was more difficult to see/interpret a lot of them at once due to multi-tag column internal sorting. I like them much better in separate columns, each custom column with what I deem is an important focus, for enough books to be worthwhile.

As for myself, I add a txt format to the book. There I note all kind of things - original format, conversion process (Calibre, Mobi Reader), typos and bad formatting I found when I read it in mobi, changes I did and changes I want but don't know yet how to do etc. Of course, all my changes so far are pretty simple, common S&R should undo them nicely.
Also, this txt format serves me as a 'Read' tag, as I don't have any plain text books.

I like that idea. Smart. I'm too lazy. I decided to implement that last year sometime after you mentioned it, and then stopped after a week or so.

In sum, and in general: No way is "the right way". Everyone is different, in needs, strategies, workflow, inclinations, etc. Sometimes I change my ways. (Now I've got Santana, "Evil Ways" running through my head…)