Is sideloading on the Nook a dealbreaker?

[Lucyloo]

Hi. I am currently looking for a new reader, but I already have an extensive collection of epub and pdf books. I've read about the issues on the Nook and Nook Color about sideloaded books appearing ad dissapearing from shelves and not able to put on the home screen. Aside from those, I'm interested in sort of the overall experience with sideloading. Do I really have to sort them all onto shelves again? Will they alphabetize automatically? Someone else on another forum said, "I bought a device, not a storefront interface." I plan on buying new books, but I'll be thinking twice if loading the books I already have is a pain. Could someone share their sideloading experience?

[chas0039]

I also had an extensive collection of epub books which ruled out Kindle. My early experience with Nook almost led to a return before I found softrooting. I looked at the new B&B shelf update and gave up when I found out I would have to add each book, one at a time, using their keypad. Nook has no interest in really supporting sideloading at all.

I switched most of my reading to the Jetbook where sorting is simply a matter of moving books to folder. Gee B&N, how hard would that be???

My advice would be to only go to Nook if you are confident that you can softroot. Without that, you will be frustrated beyond belief.

[Roscopcoletrain]

am I missing something simple here? I just drag n drop them on my SD card and it reads them all. Doesnt seem that difficult?

[leday]

My entire collection (over 350) of epub books is sideloaded and I haven't experienced any problems. I used Calibre to sidelkad them all. Yes I had to tweak the epub files a little bit to get ALL my cover art to show, but B&N is aware of this issue and are working on a fix. Yes I had to recreate my shelves once I got all my books onto the nook but adding the books to the shelves took only minutes for me as you can add them in bulk to each shelf. Once I got my collection set up in my new Nook, I didn't have to worry about it anymore unless I addad a NEW book that I would need to place in whatever shelf I wanted it to go in. Navigating to your books is easy. You go to your shelf and pick your book OR you go to your library and navigate by alphabetical title or author or most recent OR you type the author or subject or other term into the search box.

[chas0039]

Originally Posted by Roscopcoletrain

am I missing something simple here? I just drag n drop them on my SD card and it reads them all. Doesn't seem that difficult?

Yes you are. When you already have 1500 books, B&N requires that you enter them one at a time on their keyboard in order to get them into shelves. Other readers just ask you to set up folders with names and move the books in bulk. Additionally, B&N has an upper limit of 1275 and if you have books above that number the sorting system begins to fall apart. Three times, it lost the order of the books I was reading and just ordered them randomly.

Lastly, and worst, there is no searching within sideloaded books. So if I want to look at a book title starting with the word "The". I get to hit the right page turn button, Oh... about 125 times to get to those titles. ALL of these problems are solved in nookLibrary when I rooted.

The OP asked specifically about shelves and and extensive current collection so these B&N defects are right on point.

EDIT: the above poster has figured out how to move the titles in bulk, it appears. I and others would be grateful if we find out how this is done as this is the first I have heard of it.

Always something new here.

[IrishEyes]

Lucyloo said

I've read about the issues on the Nook and Nook Color about sideloaded books appearing ad dissapearing from shelves and not able to put on the home screen. Aside from those, I'm interested in sort of the overall experience with sideloading. Do I really have to sort them all onto shelves again? Will they alphabetize automatically?

"

I've sideloaded about 100 books onto my nook classic in the month I've had it. No problem at all with sideloaded books disappearing. No problem with the 50 B & N books I've downloaded either. I use Calibre to organize my 4000 book library on my laptop and that's how I transfer books to my nook. It is very easy to drop and drag too but a color thumbnail of the book's cover shows on the nook if you use Calibre.

After sideloading, you can set the nook to automatically display books by the last name of author, the title, or date or display them on their shelves sorted one of the three ways.

chas0039 said:

"Lastly, and worst, there is no searching within sideloaded books. So if I want to look at a book title starting with the word "The". I get to hit the right page turn button, Oh... about 125 times to get to those titles. ALL of these problems are solved in nookLibrary when I rooted."

I do searches for both titles and authors on my sideloaded books all the time. The "search" option is in the same place in both the "B & N " books and the "my documents" folder .

[wxgeek96]

Chas0039-
Previous poster has a NookColor, I believe. The Nook Color does allow you to add titles to shelves "in bulk" -- when you add/edit shelves, you scroll through the list of books/files and click on the ones you want to add. I gather this is a marked change from the other Nooks, but I have no experience with those readers.

[megthered]

I have about 800 books in my calibre library on my pc. I load 20 books onto my nook. When I am done with one I delete it and add another. It's not that difficult and I don't have to page through all those books. I love my nook, I haven't rooted it and I don't expect it to do everything for me. It does what I want it to do and that is hold the books I'm reading at the moment.

[G J Lau]

As a newbie to these forums I am always hesitant to put in my 2 cents worth, but I have to agree with those who say sideloading is no big deal, at least on a Nook classic, especially with Calibre. True, I would never have hundreds of books on my reader at any given time, but that's just me. Once I finish reading a book or magazines I dump them and add more. Unless it is a real personal favorite I am "one and done." Fortunately, removing is as simple as adding, at least in the My Documents section.

G J Lau
Check out my book on Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36482
Visit my blog at http://www.windroot.blogspost.com/

[chas0039]

Well, once again, Classic and Color are getting mixed up, both in features as well as bugs.

It is getting really annoying, but I guess I will have to preface every single post with the question: IS THIS ABOUT COLOR OR CLASSIC ???

Thanks for clearing up the mess.

[Xenophon]

I have about 1500 side-loaded books on my nook (classic). My library on my desktop is organized using calibre. I use a program called calibre2opds to move both the books themselves and also a catalog from my desktop to the microSD card in the nook. From there, I use a program called trook to access the catalog. This gives me great navigation through the library. View by author, by title, by series, by date added, etc. All with a multi-level hierarchy that is easy to understand (think card catalog or phone-book metaphor for each of the various views).

rooted nook classic + calibre + calibre2opds = reader's nirvana!

[Elric]

I use Calibre to manage side loaded books (I was a Calibre user before the nook, so I already have everything setup). It's been fantastic, no issues.

[iandix]

I have on my rooted nook (classic) 3500 books without any problem ..thanks to calibre + calibre2opds.. I would say using that set-up you would have the best cataloguing system for any ebook reader out there


as for my Nookcolor I have 200 books again without any problem, I could load a lot more but there is no need...

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by chas0039

Lastly, and worst, there is no searching within sideloaded books. So if I want to look at a book title starting with the word "The". I get to hit the right page turn button, Oh... about 125 times to get to those titles. ALL of these problems are solved in nookLibrary when I rooted.

I agree that the unrooted classic nook is annoying on many fronts but there are two new "My documents" features in the 1.5 update. There is author sort in addition to 'sort by recent'. More importantly, there IS a search feature in My Documents now that makes it eminently usable. I don't even bother with sort (unless I'm browsing) - the search works just fine (search by author or title or just a word or two - no problem at all).

In fact, I would say that there are only two annoyances left in the classic nook now - (1) no export of annotations/highlights and (2) no metadata beyond author/title/publisher (I would really like book descriptions to be read and displayed while browsing 'my docs').

Oh, and also, they broke the epub reader in 1.5 . Used to be able to parse multi-level TOCs (which I painstakingly put in several books). Now, it doesn't. That's B&N for you - two steps forward and one backward.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

...
In fact, I would say that there are only two annoyances left in the classic nook now - (1) no export of annotations/highlights and (2) no metadata beyond author/title/publisher (I would really like book descriptions to be read and displayed while browsing 'my docs')...

Seems they brought the same mindset to the NOOKcolor. Disappointing. With regard to metadata...it's as if they have no clue about library management and how people make use of metadata (tags, series, book summary, etc). Or they just don't care.