How Many Books on Your Reader?

[ficbot]

I don't use an SD card because I worry I will drain the battery faster with it. I only keep unread books on my Sony. I use Calibre to make collections. The most-used collections I have:

Anthology (omnibus, short story collections etc)
Mystery (self-explanatory)
Mobile Read (books I get from here)
Fictionwise (Fictionwise multiformat books)
Converted (other Fictionwise purchases which have been, shall we say, 'liberated')
Magazines (Asimovs and other magazine issues)
Recipes (I have several recipe sub-sets; I use my Sony like a cookbook)
Fanfiction (favourite stories from Fanfiction.net and elsewhere)
Teaching (teaching guides for the program I use; I adapted these myself from 400-page print versions)

[Lady Blue]

Originally Posted by kazbates

I, for one, am glad you told us! I haven't used the Collection option yet to separate my books. Do you use that when creating your categories?

So far, I use the Sony eBook Library exclusively (I've not tried Calibre yet), and yes, I use the Collection option for my categories/collections (folder wannabes.) It's easy to set up, and then I just sync to the Reader after original creation.

The one advantage of the non-folder type Collections set-up is that if you're not sure which category you want to put a particular book in, you can put it in two or more collection/categories without actually duplicating the book file (like you'd have to do with true folders). I'd still like real folder support though.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

So far, I use the Sony eBook Library exclusively (I've not tried Calibre yet), and yes, I use the Collection option for my categories/collections (folder wannabes.) It's easy to set up, and then I just sync to the Reader after original creation.

The one advantage of the non-folder type Collections set-up is that if you're not sure which category you want to put a particular book in, you can put it in two or more collection/categories without actually duplicating the book file (like you'd have to do with true folders). I'd still like real folder support though.

Do you use the Bookmark/Notes feature? I place a Bookmark on the first page of every book with a notation containing a summery and an indicator as to whether or not I have read the book. When I have used Sync, it has messed with my notes, ie. duplicating, deleting, so badly that I have had to delete everything and start again. I would love to start using Collections but am extremely hesitant.

[Lady Blue]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Do you use the Bookmark/Notes feature? I place a Bookmark on the first page of every book with a notation containing a summery and an indicator as to whether or not I have read the book. When I have used Sync, it has messed with my notes, ie. duplicating, deleting, so badly that I have had to delete everything and start again. I would love to start using Collections but am extremely hesitant.

I'm afraid I can't help you there. I have a 505, so can't do the Notes thing. But it does sound like what you describe would be a big problem.

I guess the only way around that problem would be to create the Collections you want and Sync it initially, and then any future book additions would be done by the drag 'n drop method (without Sync to mess you up). Don't know if that would be worth it.

Maybe it works better using Calibre, but I wouldn't know.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by Lady Blue

I'm afraid I can't help you there. I have a 505, so can't do the Notes thing. But it does sound like what you describe would be a big problem.

I guess the only way around that problem would be to create the Collections you want and Sync it initially, and then any future book additions would be done by the drag 'n drop method (without Sync to mess you up). Don't know if that would be worth it.

Maybe it works better using Calibre, but I wouldn't know.

Because I like to add notes and can't do that in Calibre, I load everything to my reader with Library. I may try it with a few books just to see what would happen. Your point about doing the categorizing initially is a good one and I probably could do it quite easily without Syncing. Thanks.

[ctol]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Because I like to add notes and can't do that in Calibre, I load everything to my reader with Library. I may try it with a few books just to see what would happen. Your point about doing the categorizing initially is a good one and I probably could do it quite easily without Syncing. Thanks.

Have you considered doing the following for your book notes. It can be alot of work and time consuming, but what I am doing is creating a series of text files for all of the books in my collection. I break them down by genre, write brief summaries about them and save them as individual master text files. I then use calibre to convert the individual genre text files to LRF files and save them on my reader for ready access. By breaking them down by genre I know exactly where to look for the book(s) in question. The beauty of this system, for me at least, is that I can set the files up either by author, title, or subject, which makes things easier to find.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by ctol

Have you considered doing the following for your book notes. It can be alot of work and time consuming, but what I am doing is creating a series of text files for all of the books in my collection. I break them down by genre, write brief summaries about them and save them as individual master text files. I then use calibre to convert the individual genre text files to LRF files and save them on my reader for ready access. By breaking them down by genre I know exactly where to look for the book(s) in question. The beauty of this system, for me at least, is that I can set the files up either by author, title, or subject, which makes things easier to find.

Great minds and all that! I do that with the bundled ebooks I purchase. I create a Word doc and load that onto my Sony. It's a great idea to do the same with the rest of my ebooks, too. Thanks.

[ctol]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Great minds and all that! I do that with the bundled ebooks I purchase. I create a Word doc and load that onto my Sony. It's a great idea to do the same with the rest of my ebooks, too. Thanks.

You are very welcome.

[wayrad]

I have 687 books at the moment, living on a 2GB SD card. They're divided into folders "Books" (for newly purchased/scanned books that I haven't read yet), "A-C", "D-F" and so forth, organized by author's surname. I'm getting to the point where I need to start subdividing some of the folders to minimize scrolling, though.