[thermopyle]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

So, it seems that if you have one book that would fall into more than one collection (tag, category...), you would have to have more than one copy of the book on the Kindle (which a couple of people were asking).

If I want a book in the "mystery" and also "paranormal" collections, I'd have to have a copy of the book in each folder? And after the book has been read I'd have to add another copy to the "books I've read" collections? Am I understanding this correctly?

Ah, I understand what you're asking now. The answer is yes and no. Even if books are in separate locations on the Kindle, they'll still end up in the same collection if the directory name is identical. If you have multiple columns you use for genres and read/unread status, you can have those used in the output Calibre uses (or make the directories yourself, which would be a pain.) Here's an example:

In Calibre, if you add and use fields for Genre1, Genre2, Read Status (values being read and Unread), here could be your save to disk template:

({author_sort}/[{series}/{#genre1}/{#genre2}/{#read_status}/{title} - {authors}

Here would be the output of a book whose genres are Mystery and Paranormal, which has been read:

x:/documents/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Mystery/Paranormal/Read/Storm Front.mobi

Now, Calibre will not output a variable if there is no value for it. If you have Genre1 set but not Genre2, you'd get this instead:

x:/documents/Jim Butcher/Mystery/Dresden Files/Read/Storm Front.mobi

Now, the key thing here is that when the AKC program is run, books are added to a collection based on the directory name. So, these three will all be added to the same Mystery collection:

x:/documents/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Mystery/Paranormal/Read/Storm Front.mobi
x:/documents/Dan Brown/Robert Langton/Mystery/Unread/Da Vinci Code.mobi
x:/documents/Mystery/Unread/Collection of Mystery Stories.mobi

Note that the second and third examples above would also end up in the Unread collection.

Basically, if you can have a directory name in the path, no matter where that directory name is at in the path, (as long as it's a sub-directory of documents, anyway), then the book will appear in that collection, as will every other book with that directory name in its path.

Now, there is one downside to this: If you have two authors with the exact same name, their books will end up in the same collection. Or if you have two series with the same name (two authors happen to write trilogies with the same name, titled Boy Saves World, for example), those will also show up in the same collection. Either case is pretty rare, however. Even if this were to happen, Author1's collection would have the BSW trilogy, as would Author2's, so the books would be separate there.

So, while you can't use the comma-seperated "Tag" field in Calibre to organize books by collection, using unique values in your own columns and then having them as part of the "Save to Disk" path works just fine. Genre1 and Genre2 and Read_Status would be good examples of this.

NOTE: If you DID try to have multiple copies of the same book on your Kindle, in the way you specifically asked about, it would actually create multiple entries if the directories were repeated. For example:

x:/documents/Paranormal/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Storm Front.mobi
x:/documents/Mystery/Jim Butcher/Dresden Files/Storm Front.mobi

This would end up putting Storm Front in the Paranormal collection and the Mystery collection, yes, but then you would have two copies of Storm Front in both the Jim Butcher and Dresden Files collections. So, no, you wouldn't want to take this approach.