2 Calibre questions - covers & series

[davenetman]

Hi, new to the forums here. I use the Kindle App (both iPad and Andriod tablets). I used Calibre to clean up downloaded epub books, and have 2 questions:

1. I have Calibre download metadata, and let it download a nice cover, usually a big one. Sometimes (not always), when I copy the updated book to the Kindle App, the cover is either very small or totally missing. Otherwise, the book itself reads fine. Any ideas?

2. I can't get the 'series' field to work on the Kindle App. I put a series of 10 books on my wife's Kindle App (tablet), and they are books 1-10 in a series. She wants a good way to know which book is #1, #2, #3 etc. Initally, the series fields were blank. I entered 'Sisterhood' as the series name, and put them as 1, 2, 3 etc. It saves this info in the file. But when copied to the Kindle App, this doesn't show up anywhere, and she still can't tell which order the should be read in. The only thing I can think of right now it to change the title and put a number in front of the title. Any suggestions on getting Series to work?

Thanks!
Dave

[kovidgoyal]

1. http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....or-android-etc

2. Kindle has no support for series. You can use a metadata plugboard to ahve calibre insert the series into the title when sending the fbook to the device.

[Gunnerp245]

Plugboard, template, and custom composite column recipes

[Greg G]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....or-android-etc

Here is the text from that link:

This is caused by a bug in the Amazon software. You can work around it by going to Preferences->Output Options->MOBI output and setting the “Enable sharing of book content” option. If you are reconverting a previously converted book, you will also have to enable the option in the conversion dialog for that individual book (as per book conversion settings are saved and take precedence).

Note that doing this will mean that the generated MOBI will show up under personal documents instead of Books on the Kindle Fire and Amazon whispersync will not work, but the covers will. It’s your choice which functionality is more important to you. I encourage you to contact Amazon and ask them to fix this bug.

Is this really a bug in Amazon software or just they way they chose to implement? I'm wondering what the bug is that we need to ask Amazon to fix. Is the bug that we can't sync personal documents that we side load? Is Amazon going to say that it is their design (that we happen to think sucks) or is there really something broken (e.g. that they would agree they need to fix)?

[kovidgoyal]

The bug is that amazon changed the way they process non personal documents a while ago. Now they try to download cover thumbnails for them from the cloud. That is fine. The bug is, when that download fails, either because of a not working net connection or because the file has an non-extant ASIN, they display a blank thumbnail instead of falling back to the thumbnail from the file. I have notified them of this bug over a year ago, they dont care.

I have wasted weeks of my life reverse engineering amazon's crappy ebook software, and even crappier closed ebook formats that they themselves cannot render correctly. At this point, I am fed up with them. You are welcome to beat your head against the brick wall of their indifference, I wish you the best of luck.

[Greg G]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

At this point, I am fed up with them. You are welcome to beat your head against the brick wall of their indifference, I wish you the best of luck.

Understood. I have avoided Kindle up to now in favor of devices like the Sony 500 & 505 (hacked to add features like the clock of course ) for many years. I really dislike this attitude and their avoidance of the ePub standard. I would suggest that rather than not caring, they do care and consider it a feature that they reduce the experience of people who don't do things exactly the way they want us to (buy all our books from them vice other great alternatives like Fictionwise).

The irony is that the effort you put into reverse engineering their software and book formats is what makes it possible for me to switch. You have poked a hole in their "walled garden" that is big enough to allow me through. I get that I won't get everything I want (e.g. the cover issues and proper management of collections) but I really like their new PW front lit hardware & magnetic cover combination (they have come a long way from that strange looking first Kindle). I can buy books where I want and still get them on the Kindle with a relatively small effort.

Appreciate all you have done for eBook reading!

[Greg G]

Turns out that the answer is to resize the cover images to a width of 216. Calibre is making them too small for the PW. See elgabo's post in the following thread:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...=192561&page=6