Combine two formats of the same ebook

[edgreenberg]

I have two formats of several ebooks. I downloaded the ePub and pdf versions of various O'Reilly books that I've purchased.

When I dragged them both into Calibre, I got two entries for them.

When Calibre CONVERTS an ebook, I get one entry with both formats underneath, eliminating clutter.

Is there a way to obtain this result without converting the ebook myself?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by edgreenberg

I have two formats of several ebooks. I downloaded the ePub and pdf versions of various O'Reilly books that I've purchased.
When I dragged them both into Calibre, I got two entries for them.

Turn on the autosort/automerge option located at Preferences|Add/Save|"If books with similar author and title found ...."

It will cause Calibre to identify the second book by author and title, determine if there is another matching book with that author/title and then add the new format to the existing matching record.

[edgreenberg]

Thanks for your reply.

Running Calibre 0.6.3 for Linux (as packaged in Ubuntu 9.10) I'm sorry to say that I find no such option. Under Add/Save I find two tabs, Adding Books and Saving Books. Adding Books is totally concerned with reading metadata.

Saving books does not offer anything that looks like "If books with similar author and title are found."

I also looked in Advanced (In fact, I reviewed all these nice preferences to see what else I might have missed.)

Can you tell me, perhaps I'm using too old a version? Or Linux is different? Or, well, I'm not sure what else.

[devilinside]

Or perhaps you should add first the ePub format to calibre. Then click on the newly added book, and click Edit Metadata. You can see available formats, click add new format and add the PDF file. Then OK. So you'll have one database entry with two books added without changing the original books.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by edgreenberg

Running Calibre 0.6.3 for Linux (as packaged in Ubuntu 9.10)
Can you tell me, perhaps I'm using too old a version? Or Linux is different? Or, well, I'm not sure what else.

Install Calibre from the Calibre web page.
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux
Just copy and paste something that looks like this
sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read(); main()"
to a terminal window. But always use command line from the original site, not this one, to make sure you have the newest and greatest version. Kovid, with the help of many volunteers add interesting features very often, so it is advisable to use the newest version.


But you can also add another file regardless of the settings in Advanced Preferences.
You add one book, called
Jack London - The Call of the wild.pdf
Calibre recognizes author an book. But, you also have another file, called
Call_jlondon.epub
and Call_cover.jpg
and you want to add this.
So. Position yourself on the book in Calibre library.
Click Edit metadata or press 'E' shortcut
On the top right of the dialog panel you see smal window with all formats of the book. Click on the Add button on the right side. Now navigate to the epub file. If you have more files, you can select them with Crtl pressed, you can select range of files using Shift and click.

Now clock on Browse for Cover on the bottom right portion of the dialog panel and navigate to the jpg file with cover.


Another way of accomplishing the same thing.
Just drag and drop the new file. It gets added as a new book. Select the old book, with the proper metadata, now press Ctrl and select the new one. Press 'M' for Merge, or select Merge books from main menu or context menu. Now you have two files saved as one book.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by edgreenberg

Running Calibre 0.6.3 for Linux (as packaged in Ubuntu 9.10) I'm sorry to say that I find no such option. Under Add/Save I find two tabs, Adding Books and Saving Books. Adding Books is totally concerned with reading metadata.

Saving books does not offer anything that looks like "If books with similar author and title are found."

I also looked in Advanced (In fact, I reviewed all these nice preferences to see what else I might have missed.)

Can you tell me, perhaps I'm using too old a version? Or Linux is different? Or, well, I'm not sure what else.

Calibre 0.6.3 is way too old to have any of those options. I doubt it has Merge, either. Calibre changes way too fast for the packages to keep up. You'll want to use the binary installer.

[edgreenberg]

I'll uninstall the package and reinstall the binary.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by edgreenberg

I'll uninstall the package and reinstall the binary.

That would be the best.
When you installed the package, all dependences were resolved, so after uninstalling you just issue the command for binary install and in one or two minutes you can run the new version of Calibre.