[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[jangell2]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

What name are you seeing actually displayed on the Kindle for those books? Have you re-sent the books to your Kindle after changing your metadata plugboard to that expression above?

That is my existing expression, been that way for quite some time. What is being displayed is series number, book name. As in "2 Book Title".

Are you saying that when ever the plugboard is changed, I must resend the books in order for the changes to take effect? Makes sense.

[kiwidude]

You are missing the :|| after series

i.e.
{series:|| } not {series}

Edit - fixed my post.

[scottyman]

Originally Posted by eddyj

I found a program (http://kindlean.com/) that claims to be able to handle collections, including on the Touch. So there must be a way to do this. I have not tried it myself, but it is free with less than 100 books.

Serves me right for transferring 200 books before trialling the app
Do you guys think that creating collections on my kindle 3, then using the 'transfer collections' option will work?
I'm trying to think of some way to fudge collections into working more or less globally (and without shelling out for an unproven application)
Cheers
Scott

[essdee]

Can confirm Kindlean works for adding collections to the Kindle Touch. Hopefully this can be ported over to this plugin, it would be nice to be able to have that done as part of syncing books from Calibre.

[jangell2]

I just had something weird happen to my K2. I've been using Kindle Collections and had things nicely arranged. It had been several months since I had turned wifi on, but I did so to get some samples I had ordered online.

After the samples were downloaded, I lost all my collections. Everything is just sitting out there on the home page. Fortunately, I should be able to recreate everything with KC. Anybody else have this happen to them?

[Ferrian]

Hi I have a quick question. How do I reset changes made to the settings like margins, fonts, and line spacing to the Kindle default? Do I just delete the files Calibre made in the root directory of the Kindle?

[heeby]

Noob questions sorry. The directions are a bit overwhelming.

First..I made test collections by Author but the individual books were still listed on the home page followed by the collections. I couldn't find a way in calibre to remove the individual listings.

Can you sort collections within collections? Like by Genre....then Author....then Series etc?

I did a test sort by genre...but how do I then sort by Author and then Series and then Book order within series? It allowed me to sort by latest, title, or author as the Kindle normally does but if you for example sort by author it whacks the books out of chronological order of release.

[meme]

The Kindle doesn't allow nested collections. But you can alter the title in calibre (just when sending to the device) to help series and other books show up in the right order when you sort by title.

[heeby]

Originally Posted by meme

The Kindle doesn't allow nested collections. But you can alter the title in calibre (just when sending to the device) to help series and other books show up in the right order when you sort by title.

Thanks. That is disappointing. I much prefer a tree structure for organizing. I don't want to have to rename hundreds of books so they show up in order. No choice it seems.

[kiwidude]

@heeby - you don't have to rename the books to get them to show in series order. Look at the metadata plugboards sticky thread in the Library subforum - it has the instructions you need to ensure the titles include the series information for sorting without wrecking your title data in calibre. So for instance you could do as I do of collections per author, with titles sorted by series within.

@Ferrian - the modifications for margins etc are not calibre files, they are managed through a system file belonging to the Kindle. Do some googling and you can find the details, there are wiki pages how there for instance describing how to change the margins on your Kindle. I would imagine just doing a factory reset of your Kindle will ensure everything gets back to its defaults if you can't be bothered with tracking the info down, though of course you may need to reload your books etc.

[heeby]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@heeby - you don't have to rename the books to get them to show in series order. Look at the metadata plugboards sticky thread in the Library subforum - it has the instructions you need to ensure the titles include the series information for sorting without wrecking your title data in calibre. So for instance you could do as I do of collections per author, with titles sorted by series within.

Thanks. Will give it a look tomorrow.

[diremommy]

Help! I have been using the Collections Manager for months and months now, with no problems at all. But all of a sudden, it is spitting several books (3 pages worth on my Kindle) out of their collections every time I do a re-set to sort new books.

I have double and triple checked my Tags in Calibre, they haven't changed. I haven't changed the settings in the Collection Manager Plug in. Whenever I manually put the books into the proper collections on my Kindle, then go back into Calibre and add new books, those same books get booted back out of the collections. EVERY. TIME.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I haven't changed any settings anywhere since the day I set it up, and the books it keeps booting out have all been on my Kindle for at least several weeks, some up to a year.

ETA: I use the Create collections on Kindle from Calibre option to sort, and I have it sort by Tags.

[kiwidude]

@diremommy - post the contents of the log that appears after creating the collections into a post here between SPOILER tags and I am sure someone could point to what is wrong.

You say you are putting some books into some collections manually on the Kindle? Have you made sure to not having some naming convention conflict to prevent the calibre plugin from overwriting them? Also have you ticked the box saying to preserve Kindle only collections? State some examples of collection names of both what you are manually creating, and what you are having the plugin create based on tags along with the log output.

[diremommy]

I only manually added the ones that kept getting kicked out of the collections on reset. I do have the box ticked to preserve Kindle only Collections. I did finally get it fixed- I deleted the books that kept getting kicked out from my Kindle, re-sent them from Calibre, hit create collections, and they went back in like they were supposed to.

Since I fiddled around so much, I don't know how to find the contents of the log to post it here.

Collections- I have the same collections on my kindle as I have tags in Calibre. I go by genre, with a few author collections for authors with a lot of books. So- urban fantasy, contemporary romance, m/m, historical, etc. Same thing, Kindle to calibre tags. I don't know where a naming conflict might come into play, as these are books that had been in their proper collections for weeks and months, before suddenly getting kicked out, and no changes were made in my tags or settings. It seemed to be all the books by one (or in this case 3) author getting kicked out of the collections (two different collections)they belonged in.

Right now, it's working fine, but if it happens again, I will be sure to save the log and post it here, unless there's a way to get back to the log now.

[BeeTee-Ess]

Originally Posted by heeby

Noob questions sorry. The directions are a bit overwhelming.

First..I made test collections by Author but the individual books were still listed on the home page followed by the collections. I couldn't find a way in calibre to remove the individual listings.

Can you sort collections within collections? Like by Genre....then Author....then Series etc?

I did a test sort by genre...but how do I then sort by Author and then Series and then Book order within series? It allowed me to sort by latest, title, or author as the Kindle normally does but if you for example sort by author it whacks the books out of chronological order of release.

Hello heeby...

You cannot create nested collections, but...

1. You can still create your Calibre collections based on Authors' names (I have mine arranged on Last Name, First Name). I also have a collection called _Assorted. I use that for those authors for whom I have only 1 book;

2. Tell your Kindle Collections plugin to use a prefix character such as ~ when transferring these to your Kindle;

3. Then tell your Kindle to sort by Title. Because all of your collection names start with ~, they will precede the individual books when you go to the home page. Even the collection called _Assorted will show on your Kindle as ~_Assorted, and will be the first collection in your list;

4. I also choose to have a manually created and maintained collection called __Reading (note the two underscores at the beginning). Because underscores sort ahead of tilde characters (~), __Reading is the first collection on my Kindle, even before ~_Assorted. I manually copy my current selection of half-a-dozen books from their home collections to __Reading, and do not have to go rambling through the Kindle except when I need to update my reading selection.

Happy reading.