Cross-referencing for anthologies

[markouellette]

Many of the books I read are part of a series, sometimes with short stories which are collected in anthologies, which may be listed under another person's name (I list anthologies under the editor's name).

I'd like to be able to have an entry indicating an individual short story and where it fits into the series (e.g series no. 7.2). I don't want to have a separate copy of the book, or to split the book into multiple files. I want to have an entry that points to the anthology directly. One anthology could have multiple entries, by multiple individual authors.

From the database side, this is a simple many-to-one relationship, but I realize it's way more complicated at the interface level.

[unboggling]

Welcome to MobileRead calibre Forum.

Did you have a question?

AFAIK there is no automatic way in calibre to do what you stated you wanted. You could in calibre add an empty book record for each piece, manually edit each empty book record and name the relevant anthology in Comments or a custom column. You could use the identifiers link to the anthology's book page at a bibliographic site — copy and paste from Identifiers field in the anthology's Edit Metadata dialog box, into the Edit Metadata dialog Identifiers field of the piece's empty book record.

[speakingtohe]

Strangely the hardest part seems to be figuring out which story goes where. Not that any of it is easy
I looked up 4 popular authors who contribute a lot of series short stories to anthologies on fantastic fiction, Wikipedia and their own web sites.

Only one had a list of short stories and the series number info was not there.

So in order to do this you have to determine which stories are part of a series, and where they fit. Not hard with one anthology but if you are talking say 50 with 10-20 stories each, too daunting for me.

calibre is unlikely to do this as it would mean parsing each book's TOC assuming there is one, and downloading metadata for each story.

As unboggling said, you could add an empty book for each story you care about, fill in the name and author and 2 times out of 3 calibre will download the series info for you. Often the metadata download will even put the anthology name in the comments field, and download a cover.

Me, I just read the anthologies when I read them as the short stories are pretty much stand alone and rarely contain spoilers.

Helen

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Strangely the hardest part seems to be figuring out which story goes where. Not that any of it is easy
I looked up 4 popular authors who contribute a lot of series short stories to anthologies on fantastic fiction, Wikipedia and their own web sites.

Only one had a list of short stories and the series number info was not there.

So in order to do this you have to determine which stories are part of a series, and where they fit. Not hard with one anthology but if you are talking say 50 with 10-20 stories each, too daunting for me.

calibre is unlikely to do this as it would mean parsing each book's TOC assuming there is one, and downloading metadata for each story.

As unboggling said, you could add an empty book for each story you care about, fill in the name and author and 2 times out of 3 calibre will download the series info for you. Often the metadata download will even put the anthology name in the comments field, and download a cover.

Me, I just read the anthologies when I read them as the short stories are pretty much stand alone and rarely contain spoilers.

Helen

Fictfact is a good resource to find which ss falls where in a series.
To the OP the best and easiest way I have found is using the epub split plugin and separate all the short stories to individual epubs. Then they can be easily ordered for each series using decimals such as 2.1 or 2.5 etc

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Fictfact is a good resource to find which ss falls where in a series.
To the OP the best and easiest way I have found is using the epub split plugin and separate all the short stories to individual epubs. Then they can be easily ordered for each series using decimals such as 2.1 or 2.5 etc

Interesting, but not that complete or accurate?
I looked up J. D. Robb, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris and Janet Evanovich, lots missing or wrongly numbered. Just goes to show it isn't an easy job.

If I was going to go to the trouble to index a fifty or a hundred anthologies. I'd probably split them too, but the OP stated that was not something they wanted.

Helen

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

... If I was going to go to the trouble to index a fifty or a hundred anthologies. I'd probably split them too, but the OP stated that was not something they wanted.

Helen

My personal solution is to avoid anthologies. With very few exceptions.

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Fictfact is a good resource to find which ss falls where in a series.
To the OP the best and easiest way I have found is using the epub split plugin and separate all the short stories to individual epubs. Then they can be easily ordered for each series using decimals such as 2.1 or 2.5 etc

And shorts too. With very few exceptions.

The shorts, collections, anthologies, and omnibuses in my library combined are less than 2 % of the total. They're too much trouble and I prefer single novel-length anyway. I do take the time to split omnibuses when necessary.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by unboggling

My personal solution is to avoid anthologies. With very few exceptions.



And shorts too. With very few exceptions.

The shorts, collections, anthologies, and omnibuses in my library combined are less than 2 % of the total. They're too much trouble and I prefer single novel-length anyway. I do take the time to split omnibuses when necessary.

I agree. I do read an occasional anthology when I am having trouble concentrating on a book. It is a good way to stumble upon new authors sometimes as well. But I don't go looking for short stories in a particular series. If I come across one accidentally, fine, but not really caring if I miss them altogether.

Helen

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I agree. I do read an occasional anthology when I am having trouble concentrating on a book. It is a good way to stumble upon new authors sometimes as well. But I don't go looking for short stories in a particular series. If I come across one accidentally, fine, but not really caring if I miss them altogether.

Helen

A few years ago I decided to see what a new-to-me genre was all about: paranormal romance. I was curious how those books differed from urban fantasy. So I started out with anthologies to get an idea of what authors in that genre were good. Anthologies were great for that. I think my first exposure to good paranormal romance was in the anthology Bite, which introduced me to Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, etc for the first time.