Touch Viewing summaries for sideloaded books?

[p400d]

I've sideloaded a bunch of books through Calibre into the extra memory card in my Nook STR. When I double tap the books to see book details all it shows me is file size, author, where the file is located, and when it was modified. It doesn't show the summaries that I know are present in Calibre.

Is there a way to view this on the Nook STR?

[SCION]

Originally Posted by p400d

..
Is there a way to view this on the Nook STR?

No, you can't view any metadata.

[ryanpl]

Originally Posted by p400d

I've sideloaded a bunch of books through Calibre into the extra memory card in my Nook STR. When I double tap the books to see book details all it shows me is file size, author, where the file is located, and when it was modified. It doesn't show the summaries that I know are present in Calibre.

Is there a way to view this on the Nook STR?

There is not a way to view this information on the Nook STR, but there is a workaround I use. Using Calibre I make a catalog of my sideloaded books and load that onto my Nook. The catalog does not link to the book in my library but it seems like a happy compromise to me. I don't think B&N will ever allow us to view information on sideloaded books because they need something to entice us to buy from them.

[bluila]

My problem is the following: I've downloaded files from the web (mainly pdf, but epub too), but they have unrecognisable names.

Is it possibile to change their name using Calibe? Maybe organizing a library to put on the microSd that will not disappear from the Nook when I pull it out?

Thank you!

[ameryan]

Do you use the Metadata feature in Calibre - you can change the name of the file to the actual book title, etc. It should show up as that on your Nook (even off the card) as well.

The books on your sd card will be gone when the card is pulled out and the Nook Touch itself doesn't have much room for a very extensive side-loaded collection. Maybe just leave the card there? Or use the catalog idea and put that on the Nook's drive, but then you will know what is on the SD card ....

Ryanpl,good idea about making the catalog, and loading that onto the Nook as a book.

[megrose0222]

Originally Posted by bluila

My problem is the following: I've downloaded files from the web (mainly pdf, but epub too), but they have unrecognisable names.

Is it possibile to change their name using Calibe? Maybe organizing a library to put on the microSd that will not disappear from the Nook when I pull it out?

Thank you!

Someone may have answered you already but I will put my two cents in.

When wanting to change the info of the book, highlight the book you want then go up to upper left corner next to add books and click edit metadata

This will bring up title author and you can change how they are sorted by clicking the blue arrow after the author and title. You can also put in series info and find covers or descriptions for the book you want. But to find the cover and descriptions it has to be spelled right or it will say it couldnt find any.

Oh by the way since you have calibre you should really use it to convert to epub. Its way easier to read and use on the nook to change to night mode or have it save your bookmark. Just incase you were not using that feature.
meg

[thrawn_aj]

Another thing I've settled on after getting frustrated by such transparent ploys on the part of the marketing hacks at B&N (no self-respecting programmer would write code like this on his/her own ) -

Strip all sideloaded books of DRM. In Calibre, do an epub to epub conversion (this can be done in bulk - just PLEASE keep a backup of your entire library in case things go wrong). Be sure that no changes are dialed in to the conversion settings (all changes should be deselected, let me know if you need details - I'll try to post screengrabs of what I mean). The only change you want is the "insert metadata page". This puts the book summary and other info that you want as the first page of the book so that tapping any book will open it and show you this metadata.

Again, I'm happy to help if needed. I tried it with a few books, and once I got the hang of it, bulk converted all my books overnight (it takes a while). Absolutely necessary for me, especially for a bunch of public domain short stories I got from manybooks.

[megrose0222]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

Another thing I've settled on after getting frustrated by such transparent ploys on the part of the marketing hacks at B&N (no self-respecting programmer would write code like this on his/her own ) -

Strip all sideloaded books of DRM. In Calibre, do an epub to epub conversion (this can be done in bulk - just PLEASE keep a backup of your entire library in case things go wrong). Be sure that no changes are dialed in to the conversion settings (all changes should be deselected, let me know if you need details - I'll try to post screengrabs of what I mean). The only change you want is the "insert metadata page". This puts the book summary and other info that you want as the first page of the book so that tapping any book will open it and show you this metadata.

Again, I'm happy to help if needed. I tried it with a few books, and once I got the hang of it, bulk converted all my books overnight (it takes a while). Absolutely necessary for me, especially for a bunch of public domain short stories I got from manybooks.

Thank you so much. This obviously doesnt fix getting the summary by tapping it but I still love this. All I have to do is open it. I was alittle confused at first but after thinking about it my brain must have clicked on and I figured it out.
Thanks Again
Meg

[ryanpl]

Another option for the Nook Touch, if rooted, is to use an alternative e-reader program like Moon+ reader. I'm trying to find one that I like.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

Another thing I've settled on after getting frustrated by such transparent ploys on the part of the marketing hacks at B&N (no self-respecting programmer would write code like this on his/her own ) -

I don't remember - do B&N's ePubs have metadata in the OPFs? As a self-respecting programmer, if the only sample files I had to work from had no summary, I wouldn't bother to add support for an optional field that is worthless for my needs.

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by megrose0222

Thank you so much. This obviously doesnt fix getting the summary by tapping it but I still love this. All I have to do is open it. I was alittle confused at first but after thinking about it my brain must have clicked on and I figured it out.
Thanks Again
Meg

You're quite welcome . Glad you got it to work for you.

Originally Posted by ryanpl

Another option for the Nook Touch, if rooted, is to use an alternative e-reader program like Moon+ reader. I'm trying to find one that I like.

Interesting! Is the softroot pretty bug-free at this point? Or is it still just for experts? Guess I'm trying to figure out my potential risk here

Originally Posted by ATimson

I don't remember - do B&N's ePubs have metadata in the OPFs? As a self-respecting programmer, if the only sample files I had to work from had no summary, I wouldn't bother to add support for an optional field that is worthless for my needs.

Good question. I think they have the basic metadata: title, author, publisher, date. Probably not the summary. They are good about always having the cover, which is nice. In Calibre, I usually try it first anyway. So, my usual routine is:

1. Add the downloaded book to Calibre.
2. In the edit metadata dialog, near where the book filetype is shown, I click the cover and metadata buttons to transfer the existing metadata to the Calibre record. In most cases, title, author and cover are recovered. Once you have that, the Calibre auto-downloads take care of the rest. Really quite painless . B&N should be paying the Calibre team for making a deliberately crippled firmware useable to so many users.

I should mention that the SAME epub files copied from the B&N folder to the my docs folder will show the same sort of limited metadata people have been reporting in this thread. The point is not that the book files themselves are missing metadata. It's that if the book had not been downloaded directly over the air from B&N (and therefore blessed by the Pope himself), the book reader will refuse to parse the extra metadata (i.e. anything but title, author and cover).

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by thrawn_aj

I should mention that the SAME epub files copied from the B&N folder to the my docs folder will show the same sort of limited metadata people have been reporting in this thread. The point is not that the book files themselves are missing metadata. It's that if the book had not been downloaded directly over the air from B&N (and therefore blessed by the Pope himself), the book reader will refuse to parse the extra metadata (i.e. anything but title, author and cover).

Except it's not that the file has been "blessed", per se, because they're showing data that's not actually in the ePub! So it's a case of "we're drawing this data from somewhere else", not "we're only showing this data if it's in our files not yours".

[Mellobob]

Does any of this help in displaying the covers of sideloaded books?

I've got a bunch of books on my card. The titles appear under the book icons, but the icons are blank. The books do have covers in calibre ... am I missing an option to send the cover as well.

If I understand this correctly, an epub is a zip file containing the xhtml files and the images needed. So, the cover page image is most likely being sent to the nook (must be, it displays when I open the book!).

Do I need to copy the metadata file and cover.jpg which appears in the directory as well?

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by ATimson

Except it's not that the file has been "blessed", per se, because they're showing data that's not actually in the ePub! So it's a case of "we're drawing this data from somewhere else", not "we're only showing this data if it's in our files not yours".

Well, that's the part I wasn't sure about (and I didn't write that very clearly ). In my (highly flawed to be sure) recollection, some books had the summary in the metadata and some didn't. But now that you mention it, I think you're right about the B&N books. By the way, this would seem to be a publisher thing (having summaries or not) so if you find a savvy self-publisher on PubIT, I wouldn't be surprised if those files do have the summary saved.

So it's a case of "we're drawing this data from somewhere else", not "we're only showing this data if it's in our files not yours"

It's both, since even metadata you save in Calibre doesn't show up on the nook. It simply doesn't read any of the fields.

B&N must be downloading the summaries separately to the hidden system partition instead of (as any sane person would do) including them in the file's metadata fields. As I said - highly transparent ploy to make people buy books directly from the device where it's essentially a one-click purchase. Makes me sad to think of the hobbled features that are so painstakingly coded in to make simple things complex.

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by Mellobob

Does any of this help in displaying the covers of sideloaded books?

I've got a bunch of books on my card. The titles appear under the book icons, but the icons are blank. The books do have covers in calibre ... am I missing an option to send the cover as well.

If I understand this correctly, an epub is a zip file containing the xhtml files and the images needed. So, the cover page image is most likely being sent to the nook (must be, it displays when I open the book!).

Do I need to copy the metadata file and cover.jpg which appears in the directory as well?

As far as I know, the covers have never been a problem on any of the E-ink nooks. This is only for epubs mind you. No other format has good cover support. There are two covers in question here. One is the embedded cover that displays AFTER you open the book. This is simply an embedded image and the nook (usually) doesn't pay it any heed (that's the limit of my knowledge, you can look up the epub specs and so on). The other one is (as you said) the image in the same folder.

In short, yes. You need the entire book folder containing the 3 files (epub, opf, jpg). Try to just "send book to device" using Calibre instead of copying them manually. I just don't know if there are links that are updated when it does that or if all links are relative. You can send books to "devices" other than actual devices. For instance, in the nook2, I'm using an SD card since B&N reserves a rather large fraction of the built-in memory for (what it mistakenly thinks is going to be a large set of) its own books. You can "connect to folder" and send stuff the usual way. Also, if you're using any plugboards or filesave naming formats, you can use "folderdevice" as the device id. Hope that helps.