Editing Kindle Metadata

[geoelectric]

Way late in the discussion, but I used mobi2mobi last night to add title/author data to a BAEN free download for my Kindle. Worked great. However, this was a Mobi PRC->mobi conversion, not an azw file.

[Hawk]

Editing metadata for azw files is problematic. I tried on both mac and windows platforms using mobi2mobi command line and GUI, no joy due to crashes at conversion.

Anyway, if you want the cover, author, title, etc to all stick and work well with the Kindle, here is one way. This also lets you reconstruct the metadata painlessly using online searching. You will need to end up with kindle-compatible .MOBI files instead of .AZW files - but who cares as long as they work great on your Kindle?

1. Download Calibre (its free and open source)
2. Use Calibe to (relatively) automatically reconstruct book title, author, series, book# in series, and Cover image from your files.
3. Save file as a .MOBI in from Calibre (you can use the convert option with output formatted for Kindle, but save as a .MOBI, not .AZW.)
4. Drop the .MOBI files in your kindle's documents directory.
5. Presto! Title, Author, Cover, etc all formatted correctly within the Kindle.

[aru]

I am trying to edit the metadata with Calibre on my Kindle DX, but double clicking on the author (or any other field for that matter) does not do anything.
It worked fine when I was still using a Sony 505.

Does anybody have a solution?

[quettandil]

Originally Posted by Hawk

Anyway, if you want the cover, author, title, etc to all stick and work well with the Kindle, here is one way. This also lets you reconstruct the metadata painlessly using online searching. You will need to end up with kindle-compatible .MOBI files instead of .AZW files - but who cares as long as they work great on your Kindle?

1. Download Calibre (its free and open source)
2. Use Calibe to (relatively) automatically reconstruct book title, author, series, book# in series, and Cover image from your files.

As far as I can tell from my own experience thus far, Calibre works great with one caveat -- you really need to fix the metadata BEFORE you make any notes or marks on your Kindle. In Mobipocket Reader you can make new notes and your Kindle will recognize the book or document as still being the same book or document you started with, but in Calibre when you edit metadata you then have to add it back onto your Kindle, losing all your notes and marks in the process. For most people, fixing the title and author first thing probably isn't a big issue, but it's something to be aware of.

And if anyone knows how to work around this caveat, I'd be grateful -- I'm a writer and I'd like to keep old drafts of my novels on my Kindle, as it's nice to have one backup that's so usable and easy to read. Unfortunately, I can't save my latest draft that way, because I didn't realize the title issue when I put it on my Kindle and it's just titled by the name of my novel. I thought I would change it to the draft name later. And since saving the annotations is the whole point of the way I have my draft system set up, I don't want to delete those, either.


(In my pre-Kindle days, I'd print out a draft of a novel, edit it with red pen, and later file it away labeled as, say, Draft 2-3 -- Draft 2 for the original printout and Draft 3 for all the handwritten edits which turn it into the new Draft 3 on my computer. I wouldn't necessarily go back and look at old versions a ton, but it's nice knowing they're backed up in one more way and I can see changes at a glance if I want to. Thus far I've only used Microsoft's track changes feature for edits I enter directly into my computer, with no paper intermediary. Now that I have a Kindle the original document is like the original printout and my annotations are like my red pen. It's much easier to move those edits back into my computer, while I keep the increased productivity from being able to do my editing anywhere and not having to psych myself up for a long session at a keyboard. And if I wanted to add a whole scene or something I could just use Mobipocket. I wanted to save those files the same way as my old paper ones, as Draft 2-3 etc., and I still can I guess... just not my latest draft, at least, not on my Kindle.)

[ATDrake]

The Kindle annotations actually go by filename, not necessarily the book title. I don't know if Calibre generates a new file with an altered name (I use mobi2mobi and effectivly edit things in place), but usually renaming the .mbp file so that it's got the same filename as the .mobi should keep the annotations.

At least, that's always worked for me with the Baen Free Library books which I've started to read, noticed the author field was wonky, fixed, and put a fresh copy back on the Kindle to continue.

You can also output them to plain text using the MBP Reader Perl script which someone has very kindly whipped up.

[quettandil]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I don't know if Calibre generates a new file with an altered name (I use mobi2mobi and effectivly edit things in place), but usually renaming the .mbp file so that it's got the same filename as the .mobi should keep the annotations.

Thank you! Calibre does generate a new file -- first you can edit the metadata, but unlike Mobipocket Reader and apparently mobi2mobi, the only way it seems to communicate to the Kindle that anything's been edited is to click on "Send to device" -- but all you have to do to keep the annotations with the new file is to rename the .mbp file, like you said. I don't know why I didn't think of that, unless it's just that trying to change the title on the Kindle by editing the file names directly was so unsuccessful that I was on a don't-edit-file-names-it-won't-work kick. But whatever. Thanks!