Automatically change titles to contain series info?

[HunterZ]

I'm using the Windows version of Calibre with the Nook, and I've found that the Nook doesn't allow you to organize your custom documents/books at all. Even if you put them in subfolders on the Nook, it still shows them all in one big list sorted by the author and then title that are contained in the metadata.

Is there some way that I can easily add the series names and numbers to the title metadata of the books in my Calibre library so that the Nook will see and sort on that instead of just the title? I can do this manually via a lot of cut-and-paste, but it'd be nice if there were a bulk and/or automated process that I could use to accomplish it instead.

Edit: I should mention explicitly that the Nook ignores the filename, so Calibre's excellent features for customizing filenames are pretty much useless for my case

[Adoby]

Yes, this is possible. You do this by customizing the filenames while saving, and then import the books, reading the metadata from the filenames.

1. Make sure you have a good backup of all your books.
2. Save your books using a save template that include the series and the series index as part of the title. Also make sure that you have ISBN and author as part of the filename.
3. Import the books you just saved, and read metadata from filename only. This way the title in the filename will become the metadata title. Read title, ISBN and author from the filename.
4. Fetch other metadata for the books, using the ISBN-numbers, but make sure not to change the titles.
5. Delete the books that don't have the series information in the title.

Done!

I suspect that there is a high risk of making mistakes. Try with one or two books first to make sure you know how to do everything right.

[HunterZ]

That sounds like even more work than copy-and-pasting the series names into the title names one book at a time :\

[speakingtohe]

Pretty sure there is an easier way as I did this once upon a time when I was very new to calibre.
I think I just saved the books with template, dragged them back and converted them to embed changed filename. (with merge duplicates off of course)

Another option is to embed metadata at the start of the book.

Now I just have the standard title etc. and rely on my memory and the Calibre catalogue.

To organise books on my sony in book view I would have to put author->series->number->title and that looks way ugly

[Adoby]

Originally Posted by HunterZ

That sounds like even more work than copy-and-pasting the series names into the title names one book at a time :\

Really? That depends on how many books you have to rename. Once you are sure about the procedure, you can rename all the books at once, provided that the series information is correct.

But as I said before, make a backup and test it first to make sure you don't experience data loss. I haven't tried it. But it should work. The hard work is to create the template for saving the books, and for reading the metadata back from the filename. The rest is done by Calibre.

I am not sure how the books will merge if ISBN is identical, but the title differ. But that will be obvious once you test it.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Adoby

Really? That depends on how many books you have to rename.

Don't feel bad Adoby - I thought your answer was great.

It reminds me of the definition of an engineer - Someone who will spend 4 hours figuring out how to do a two hour job in one hour. Like Adoby, I always assume I'm going to have to do that two hour job about 50 more times in my life, so I might as well figure out now how to do it well.

[Adoby]

Yes. I am quite ready to go to extreme lengths to avoid mind numbing manual repeated copy-and-paste sessions.

[HunterZ]

I definitely appreciate the suggestion, and probably I didn't understand exactly what it entailed. I bit the bullet and did it via manual cut-n-paste and it only took about 10 minutes to go through 40-50 books. For future books I'll do it when I first import them, so it won't add much extra time.

What would be ideal, though, is if the Nook driver in Calibre could have an option to inject the series name into the metadata at the time of loading onto the device so that I can keep things cleaner in my Calibre library.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by HunterZ

What would be ideal, though, is if the Nook driver in Calibre could have an option to inject the series name into the metadata at the time of loading onto the device so that I can keep things cleaner in my Calibre library.

That would be nice but currently it isn't an option for any device driver. You can send a book with that info injected into the filename on the fly, but that isn't the same thing is it.

Fortunately my ereader interprets the series info correctly and calibre places the books in series order on my device. Just to be sure I insert the metadata as a book jacket page at the front of the book and this lets me see the title, series info tags and book summary, very convenient.