How to configure automatically hundreds of ebooks lying on my hard drive

[akkachotu]

Over a period of time, I have collected hundreds of ebooks and they are lying there on my hard drive.
Now I want use Calibre to configure *automatically* all those books so that I can manage my ebooks easily.

I have ebooks on my hard drive in various formats like .chm, .pdf and also some in audio format like .mp3.
ebooks name can include anything like combination of isbn, publisher, ebook name etc. and ebooks does not have proper format in their file names.

Now the problem is, I have to load each and every ebook manually into Calibre and then specify the isbn manually in Calibre and then ask Calibre to fetch other metadata for the ebook. If I have to do this for each and every book on my hard drive then it is very painful process and so I want avoid this process and want Calibre to automatically download all the metadata as soon as I load an ebook from my hard drive into Calibre. How can I do this ?

Also, how do configure mp3 files in Calibre so that managing/searching them is easy ?

Can you please clarify.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by akkachotu

Over a period of time, I have collected hundreds of ebooks and they are lying there on my hard drive.
Now I want use Calibre to configure *automatically* all those books so that I can manage my ebooks easily.

I have ebooks on my hard drive in various formats like .chm, .pdf and also some in audio format like .mp3.
ebooks name can include anything like combination of isbn, publisher, ebook name etc. and ebooks does not have proper format in their file names.

Now the problem is, I have to load each and every ebook manually into Calibre and then specify the isbn manually in Calibre and then ask Calibre to fetch other metadata for the ebook. If I have to do this for each and every book on my hard drive then it is very painful process and so I want avoid this process and want Calibre to automatically download all the metadata as soon as I load an ebook from my hard drive into Calibre. How can I do this ?

Also, how do configure mp3 files in Calibre so that managing/searching them is easy ?

Can you please clarify.

Welcome.

Simple answer... No!
Not an have the results in any useful condition

You sound like you have a "Mish-Mash" of stuff

Calibre does not have any way to know a MP3 book from a MP3 music.. Besides, Calibre does not manage MP3's at this time.

If all your files were named with exactly the same convention, import filters could be set.
If all the Books, folders existed in the same directory path, Calibre can work with that.
Let us face it. Downloaded Meta-Data is mush.
There seems to be no consistent values, even for books:
by the same Author,
from the same Publisher,
in the same Series


Careful, hand massaging of the data for your library is the only way it will be useful. Any other way, and you end up with something like you have already

[booksonthemove]

Originally Posted by akkachotu

Over a period of time, I have collected hundreds of ebooks and they are lying there on my hard drive.
Now I want use Calibre to configure *automatically* all those books so that I can manage my ebooks easily.

Nope nothing will do that. The trick to sorting it all out is to enjoy sorting it all out.. This is where you channel your inner perfectionist and drink lots and lots of coffee

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by booksonthemove

The trick to sorting it all out is to enjoy sorting it all out.. This is where you channel your inner perfectionist and drink lots and lots of coffee

That is so true. Organizing can be loads of fun, expecially when you have many thousand of texts, but drinking tea, preferably green, helps keep the nerves under control.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by akkachotu

ebooks name can include anything like combination of isbn, publisher, ebook name etc. and ebooks does not have proper format in their file names.

Now the problem is, I have to load each and every ebook manually into Calibre and then specify the isbn manually in Calibre and then ask Calibre to fetch other metadata for the ebook. If I have to do this for each and every book on my hard drive then it is very painful process and so I want avoid this process and want Calibre to automatically download all the metadata as soon as I load an ebook from my hard drive into Calibre. How can I do this ?

The other answers are essentially correct. OTOH, I've been working on this problem for a while, too, and have submitted several patches to the source code, trying to help. Read this thread for my latest and most ambitious proposal for source code changes that may help.

Your problem breaks into 3 parts. First, you need good solid author and title data. I think it's easiest to get that into the filename before you try to import, then choose the "Read metadata only from filename" option in Preferences, Add.

To get your filenames fixed, you can use tools like BookSorter I provided a tiny bit of code to improve the logic used to get the author's name from the filename. (I'm thinking of another improvement - use a comma in the name to signal "lastname, firstname" format instead of having to turn the option for this on/off - but that's for later.)

Second, you need to be able to get multiple formats of the same book into an existing record. Right now, you can only do that when you first add the book. That's what the code changes discussed in the link above are all about.

Finally, you need to get metadata as automatically as possible. I added some code that made that a lot easier. It used to be that downloaded metadata overwrote your title and author. That's fine when you're closely watching - you can cancel, but doing bulk automatic updates was hard. Since the quality is spotty and the matching is risky, I lost a lot of good author/title data (step 1 above) when all I really wanted was the best Calibre could do at getting a cover image, description, tags and social metadata, but I didn't want to lose the correct data. You can now keep your correct author/title data (that's what Calibre uses to identify a book) and let it run free with doing the best it can to get the rest of the data, then clean up the secondary stuff later later if you want.

As you can see, I've been trying to deal with similar issues for a while. Calibre has a great community of people around it, led by Kovid Goyal. Automatic operation will improve with time, but I doubt it will ever be totally hands-free for a mess of oddly named books.

[chainring]

Starson17,

Thanks for the link to BookSorter. Are you the author? If so, would it be possible to add "~" tilde as a separator? Something I've always done with my audio files when renaming and tagging is to use the tilde instead of a dash (-) for a field separator. It makes the break much easier to see and I've never seen it used in a title so no software confusion.

Example:
Ayn Rand ~ Atlas Shrugged
or
Rand, Ayn ~ Atlas Shrugged

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chainring

Starson17,

Thanks for the link to BookSorter. Are you the author?

Nope. It looked useful, although I've only used it a few times. After a lot of time spent adding books to Calibre, it's my conclusion the most important thing is to get the author and title right when you add the book. For most books, that seems to be easiest to do by putting that info into the filename and relying on the filename when importing into Calibre.

Caliber has some great features for reading other metadata internally from the files you are adding, but unfortunately, that data is too often wrong. As much as I wish we didn't have to pre-process the filenames, it seems to be the best way now to be certain the import will go well.

Later, you can use the automatic global fetch metadata tools, to fill in the other blanks.

[chainring]

Starson17,

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe I'll put the tilde as a separator in as a request to the author. I can't stress enough how much pain it's saved me when performing automated operations with tagging music files.

Metadata...it's a fun one alright. It's only as good as the source, and then only as good as how diligent the person is that's doing the application, or not applying. I find with anything of this nature, that it's best to get a handle on it quick before collecting too many files, be it eBooks, music, video, etc...

[booksonthemove]

Thing is, the book filename might be wrong. Or the author, wrong. Or even the title.

Best way to sort this is to read the first few pages of the book. Nothing automatic will substitute, given a disorganised starting point. Once you've got the author and the title right, then you can search for metadata. Then again, lots of books, particularly the older ones, have no ISBN, so you've got to enter the data in manually there anyway.

The calibre software does allow you to view the book whilst in the metadata bit, so this makes things a bit easier. But yeah it's daunting if you've got loads of books.

[Sabardeyn]

Originally Posted by chainring

Metadata...it's a fun one alright. It's only as good as the source, and then only as good as how diligent the person is that's doing the application, or not applying.

This is absolutely true! I've found so many mistakes that appear to be simple neglect because someone did not do a thorough job while reviewing the output.