Unbearable Oversight of the [Original] Nook Tablet Devs!

[sarahmelissa]

So I've just gotten my new Nook tablet. Note that I use Calibre to maintain my (somewhat sizable) book collection. I spent many, many hours lovingly wading through the metadata nightmare of all my books and giving them meaningful tags, sorting them into series, etc. I've loaded them onto the SD card, popped that into the Nook, and bam! there are my books. I realized, though, that there is no discernible way to browse my (newly sideloaded) books by tags, series, publication year, etc. Nothing other than your standard Author, Title, and Date Added. What the frack!?! Please, for the love of reading, someone tell me there is a way to circumnavigate this epic oversight of The Stock Nook Development Team. Is there an app available through the BN app store? What if I root it, is there an app available in the Android Market? Thanks in advance for any replies...

Edit: Oh, by the by, the ability to browse by tag would be most important to me. And I dislike the idea of Calibre2OPDS or whatever it is, since I'd need WiFi to access my books.

[Nahgem]

If you root, Mantano Reader recognizes the tags you set in Calibre. I'm sure there are others that do too, but I'm not sure what they are since that's only the one I use.

As for series, you can set up a metadata plugboard so that (rooted or not), the series title and number are inserted ahead of the book title in the title field when you send it to your device/SD card via Calibre. That way, when you title-sort, all books in a series are grouped together, and in order (i.e. Harry Potter 01 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone). Just choose the file format and device it applies to, type in the command template, and tell it to send it to the title field, and once you save the plugboard, it'll do that for all books that are part of a series.

[tarzanphan60]

I do wish that there were better ways to organize books on the Nook Tablet and Nook Color. I'd really love a way to categorize and order my books without going through a massive amount of effort.

[kevinp]

I know this doesn't address the original question, but I'm a little confused as to the purpose of putting thousands of books on your Nook.

I usually keep ten or less on my Nook (in addition to my magazine subscriptions). I only read one book at a time and then move to the next in the series or whatever when I'm done with that one. I keep all my books in Calibre as well where I can easily sort through them. I'm usually never more than a day or two away from my computer, so transferring books is not a problem.

Other than bragging about carrying around your whole library, is there really any point to it?

[Apache]

I mostly do not know what book I want to read after the current book. I am an eclectic reader and vary my reading genres all the time. I read three Westerns last and am reading Science Fiction now. Before that I was reading a Biography. Having a lot of books on allows me a larger selection to browse through. Sort of like my own bookstore.
I bought a Nook Tablet and returned it. I find it ridiculous that a 16 gig Nook Tablet allows me to side load only one gig. I do not think I will be buying 15 gigs of books from B & N.
Apache

[weltonsfancy]

On my Nook Tablet I have my books sorted by author instead of date loaded. Also Calibre loaded the books into the main section. Then I make my own shelves and put the books into categories: romance, paranormal, historical etc..
B&N will make their 15 gig smaller if you want them too. But be sure to back up before u take as they wipe it.

[MooseFam5]

I have been on the Nook platform (STR and NT) for some time after switching from Sony Readers. After the switch, the only thing I missed about the Sony Readers was the ability to create collections with the series as tags. I also am perplexed at what the rationale was in the oh-so-limited functionality of the Nook Shelves feature.

BUT- I stumbled onto Calibre's ability to create a Catalog in ebook format listing the contents of my collection. This absolutely provides better flexibility in how I manage my books on the device. The downside is that the catalog is a separate ebook and you can't select books from within the catalog but I can live with that.

Try creating a catalog (under the Convert Books button). You may be happy with the result!

[Apache]

Originally Posted by weltonsfancy

B&N will make their 15 gig smaller if you want them too. But be sure to back up before u take as they wipe it.

How do you get them to make the proprietary size smaller?
Apache

[geertm]

Originally Posted by Apache

I mostly do not know what book I want to read after the current book. I am an eclectic reader and vary my reading genres all the time. I read three Westerns last and am reading Science Fiction now. Before that I was reading a Biography. Having a lot of books on allows me a larger selection to browse through. Sort of like my own bookstore.
I bought a Nook Tablet and returned it. I find it ridiculous that a 16 gig Nook Tablet allows me to side load only one gig. I do not think I will be buying 15 gigs of books from B & N.
Apache

The B&N partition is not only for books, but also for magazines and apps. Some of these enhanced magazines can be 1 to 2GB in size. Some of the interactive childrens books can also be that large. If you are someone who subscribes to several Nook magazines, or buys interactive childrens books you really need that space.

You can let B&N reformat your Nook's memory. That will give you about 8 GB for sideloaded content, and about 5 GB for B&N content.

[kevinp]

...or you can just buy an SD card to put your stuff on. A 16 GB Micro SD is $15 US or cheaper these days.