Books I'm Reading problem after sync - Page 2

taming · 01-07-2011, 06:30 AM

Kobo has several partners, each of whom have their own websites for selling books that are variations of the kobobooks.com website. Each site has separate "I'm Reading" and "Purchased" records tied to the user, and, if you remember, you had to sign up for each site separately.

The sync operation will work with any of these sites, but will ONLY sync properly with the books you have purchased from one site. People who wish to buy books from Kobobooks.com and Borders, or Borders and Whitecoulis, for example, have to decide which site they want to use for syncing and which site they will buy books from in ePUB format and then sideload through ADE or Calibre.

Fortunately, you didn't lose any of the books permanently. Decide which of the bookstores you will be using to sync with. Then go into the "Purchased" list on that site and bookmark the books you wish to download and manage through sync. Update your desktop and sync away.

Then go to the 2nd site (the one you will NOT be syncing with) and download ePUB versions of your purchased books from that website. Transfer them to your Kobo using ADE, Calibre, etc.

almagary · 01-07-2011, 05:49 PM

My problem is that my Kobo WiFi has recently been putting all ebooks (sideloaded via Calibre) onto the end of the I'm Reading list and leaving them there. Therefore most of those books are essentially inacessible, all are unfindable and unalphabetizable. I'm Reading now has 337 titles while Books has 442.

For fear of "losing" books on I'm Reading, I'm stopped all sideloading and hesitate before doing anything with SDHC card when it arrives.

My Kobo WiFi has firmware 1.7.4; desktop app is 1.8; Calibre is 0.7.36.

I saw "Taming"'s post of 1/4/11 (#10) saying that if you don't open a book on the I'm Reading it will migrate to Books. That isn't my experience; I'm Reading just gets longer.

A column on the Calibre list indicates which books are on I'm Reading but doesn't give me any tool to undesignate them or move all those titles into the Books list.

(A separate but maybe related problem: After I used the Kobo desktop app to buy a couple books and pick up some freebies and sync with the Kobo, Calibre went into a tizzy. First it spent 19 minutes rebuilding the gadget's db, then has been spending 13 minutes uploading the metadata for even a single book! But Calibre doesn't control placement on I'm Reading and offers no toos for me to use.)

My feeling now is that to fix the Books/I'm Reading problem I must get direct access to the Kobo's db. I'm a newbie on dealing with SQL, so need some introductory lesson (or warning not to proceed). Any other possible solutions for this overloaded I'm Reading list?

taming · 01-07-2011, 06:14 PM

Is there some history to all of this that we don't know about? For example, some time back there were a couple of Calibre versions for which the Kobo driver pooched the Db. Tim Legge, who does the Calibre development for such things, caught it fairly quickly, but folks found that they had to do a factory reset. Is that a possibility? For me, that was, btw, the only time sideloaded books went to the back of the I'M Reading section and didn't behave themselves.

One of the best parts about the WiFi version of the reader, from my POV, is that no books are stored in the Db. Much easier to keep the Db spiffy that way.

Also, when you show the books in the main memory of the device on Calibre, you should be able to change the status to "read" for any book on the device.

almagary · 01-07-2011, 07:23 PM

Taming said: Also, when you show the books in the main memory of the device on Calibre, you should be able to chage the status to "read" for any book on the device.

Thanks for the quick reply. No Status column in Calibre but Collections shows "Read" and "I'm Reading." But where's the tool to change collection or delete?

taming · 01-07-2011, 07:37 PM

@almagary: I don't understand what you are asking--blame it on a long week at work. Can you try explaining it some other way for my flaky brain?

On the menu bar, there is something that looks like green arrows chasing themselves labeled "Remove Books". The drop down menu gives the option to remove book from device.

If you click on the device icon, you can choose to show books in the main memory, or show the sd card (if you have one). Double click in the collections field and type in "Im_Reading" or "Read". It will process this change when you restart the reader.

You do have to have an uncorrupted Db, so it might be worth doing a factory reset, and starting over if you feel that somehow the Db itself became corrupted.

almagary · 01-07-2011, 09:51 PM

Thanks, Taming, sorry to tax your Main Memory on a Friday evening. But in Calibre when I either highlight or don't highlight "I'm Reading" titles in the Kobo memory, Calibre's Remove option only allows complete removal from the device; the other options are grayed-out, unavailable tools. Double-left-clicking the top of the Collections column doesn't do anything; double-right-clicking only brings up a menu for sorting the column etc.

In short, I still find no workable way to redesignate the 337 I'm Reading titles so that they get restored to the Books library.

It occurs to me that perhaps we are using Kobos and Calibre versions in an alternative universe, where things work for you but not for me. (Oh, and "42" doesn't work either.)

So, shall I (a) dare screw around with the Kobo db, or (b) do a factory reset and reload--gasp--447 ebooks? "b" would probably clean up Calibre's version of the Kobo db as it would start fresh.

One lesson I can relay to fellow newbies: Pick a library management tool and don't do sideloading/syncing with a second one. Calibre's Add Books function seems fairly capable of transferring stuff you purchase or acquire via another app like Kobo or Borders or Kindle or Adobe/ADE.

Another lesson: Don't have your Kobo plugged into your desktop via USB when you boot one of the secondary ebook apps as it may set up a sync you don't want.

taming · 01-07-2011, 10:11 PM

When my book collection began to grow, I made the decision to store my books on an SD card, rather than on the device. Part of this was because as a member of the beta group, I knew I would be playing with the firmware and loading the device up again would be annoying.

I wouldn't be totally surprised to find that an unscheduled and unwanted sync with odd apps could wreak havoc on a well behaving device. I use Calibre for all my books, and other than the time when Calibre was screwed up, I have had no problems at all. My husband never uses anything but Kobo sync over WiFi. He has not had any problems with that either.

almagary · 01-08-2011, 04:04 AM

So I decided to resolve my problem of the seemingly endless I'm Reading list, where all my sideloaded books were automatically going, in two ways: (1) took Taming's advice and decided to keep most of my library in future on 32GB SDHC card, arriving by snailmail any day now; and (2) doing a factory reset and modest amount of reloading.

The reset was not as painful as I thought. It took only a couple of minutes to get back to an essentially blank Kobo, though the 100 freebies came back in the Books list.

Then, totally avoiding the Kobo desktop app, relying instead on Calibre to do library management, I reloaded 10 books (elapsed time 31 seconds) with metadata (4 seconds). Calibre does things fast but I think the secret is not to confuse it with using any other app for management tasks.

Not surprisingly, most of the reloaded books went directly onto the I'm Reading list. Must be a Kobo bug and I hope it will be fixed.

Thanks, Taming, for advice on and off this forum.

taming · 01-08-2011, 07:17 AM

I don't think it is a bug that they go into "I'm Reading". On my machine--and all of the ones I have personal contact with (6)--books go into I'm Reading when I put them on the reader. If I don't open them (the book remains "unread"), and once again go to a "manage library" and process cycle (not sure what to call that), they go into "Books". Try it.

A 32 GB card is huge. The reader is supposed to hold 1000 books (it may not--depends on file size) in 1 GB.

I only use an SD card because as part of beta testing, I end up flashing various firmware versions over and over again so it is a lot handier than reloading my library. A 4GB card would probably hold more books than I expect to read before I die.

ltr · 01-08-2011, 09:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by almagary

..... It took only a couple of minutes to get back to an essentially blank Kobo, though the 100 freebies came back in the Books list.
....

You do realize that you can hide these 100 books with a Menu Setting....

ltr

almagary · 01-08-2011, 02:50 PM

I went for the 32GB SDHC card as a tech hedge: I'm sure it will be handy in some future gadget, possibly the upcoming Kobo LXXIX model :-)

But consider anyway that with ebooks on b&w readers we have gone back to the good old days when 64K was big. Look how many of the public domain freebies are way under 1MB, with even wireless transfer times a blink of the eye. Now consider how wasteful modern programs and data files are and how our little eInk devices will probably go bigger with color, touchscreen, etc. and the publishers will meet the demand with a color, interactive Pride & Prejudice that takes up 8MB...

kimberhill · 01-09-2011, 12:16 AM

Thank you everyone for your posts.

As further info to some of the questions asked:-

* When I refer to losing my bookmark I am talking about books I was partially through - not something which was just in the list as it had been recently downloaded.

* I have an application called Borders Desktop which is on the PC. I only purchased books from Borders US and used the "update library" function in the Borders desktop app, then Synced to my Kobo.

* After reading through this forum I attempted to use Calibre. The problem still existed. I attempted to add a book which I downloaded through the Adobe software then loaded into Calibre then added to my Kobo from there. Again it took a book I had partially read out of my "I'm Reading" List.

* I can't use Wifi sync - we do not have a wifi connection and here in Australia there are limited public wifi hotspots available ( I don't know why my partner bought a wifi device

)

I am going to try the reset when I get time and see what comes of it.

taming · 01-09-2011, 12:53 AM

I am not sure what edition of the desktop Borders AU is using, but the 1.8 that was released in Canada for Kobo has taken care of the sync /bookmarking problems that were once so common. You may have to wait this out, if you are not yet able to get the current desktop.

Does anyone else share your Borders account? Having two people syncing can confuse things, for sure, as the sync mechanism doesn't know that person A is on page 87 and person B has finished the book.

01-07-2011, 06:14 PM	#18
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	Is there some history to all of this that we don't know about? For example, some time back there were a couple of Calibre versions for which the Kobo driver pooched the Db. Tim Legge, who does the Calibre development for such things, caught it fairly quickly, but folks found that they had to do a factory reset. Is that a possibility? For me, that was, btw, the only time sideloaded books went to the back of the I'M Reading section and didn't behave themselves. One of the best parts about the WiFi version of the reader, from my POV, is that no books are stored in the Db. Much easier to keep the Db spiffy that way. Also, when you show the books in the main memory of the device on Calibre, you should be able to change the status to "read" for any book on the device. Last edited by taming; 01-07-2011 at 07:01 PM.

01-07-2011, 09:51 PM	#21
almagary Wears funny hat (cloth) Posts: 28 Karma: 26 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Limbo Device: Kobo WiFi, Kobo Touch	Still struggling with reducing the humongous I'm Reading list Thanks, Taming, sorry to tax your Main Memory on a Friday evening. But in Calibre when I either highlight or don't highlight "I'm Reading" titles in the Kobo memory, Calibre's Remove option only allows complete removal from the device; the other options are grayed-out, unavailable tools. Double-left-clicking the top of the Collections column doesn't do anything; double-right-clicking only brings up a menu for sorting the column etc. In short, I still find no workable way to redesignate the 337 I'm Reading titles so that they get restored to the Books library. It occurs to me that perhaps we are using Kobos and Calibre versions in an alternative universe, where things work for you but not for me. (Oh, and "42" doesn't work either.) So, shall I (a) dare screw around with the Kobo db, or (b) do a factory reset and reload--gasp--447 ebooks? "b" would probably clean up Calibre's version of the Kobo db as it would start fresh. One lesson I can relay to fellow newbies: Pick a library management tool and don't do sideloading/syncing with a second one. Calibre's Add Books function seems fairly capable of transferring stuff you purchase or acquire via another app like Kobo or Borders or Kindle or Adobe/ADE. Another lesson: Don't have your Kobo plugged into your desktop via USB when you boot one of the secondary ebook apps as it may set up a sync you don't want.

01-08-2011, 07:17 AM	#24
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	I don't think it is a bug that they go into "I'm Reading". On my machine--and all of the ones I have personal contact with (6)--books go into I'm Reading when I put them on the reader. If I don't open them (the book remains "unread"), and once again go to a "manage library" and process cycle (not sure what to call that), they go into "Books". Try it. A 32 GB card is huge. The reader is supposed to hold 1000 books (it may not--depends on file size) in 1 GB. I only use an SD card because as part of beta testing, I end up flashing various firmware versions over and over again so it is a lot handier than reloading my library. A 4GB card would probably hold more books than I expect to read before I die. Last edited by taming; 01-08-2011 at 07:42 AM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Troubleshooting Kindle Android Sync problem	greyparrot	Amazon Kindle	11	08-27-2011 01:52 AM
Google Books client - How does "reading positions sync" work?	hakan42	Android Devices	0	12-15-2010 01:12 PM
Sync Problem with Ebooklibrary software	mkerian	Sony Reader	0	01-21-2009 03:23 PM
Reading library books problem	Gibbo	Lounge	6	10-05-2008 02:25 PM
Sync Problem with eNews	gvtexas	Reading and Management	7	12-21-2003 03:43 PM

01-07-2011, 06:30 AM	#16
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	Kobo has several partners, each of whom have their own websites for selling books that are variations of the kobobooks.com website. Each site has separate "I'm Reading" and "Purchased" records tied to the user, and, if you remember, you had to sign up for each site separately. The sync operation will work with any of these sites, but will ONLY sync properly with the books you have purchased from one site. People who wish to buy books from Kobobooks.com and Borders, or Borders and Whitecoulis, for example, have to decide which site they want to use for syncing and which site they will buy books from in ePUB format and then sideload through ADE or Calibre. Fortunately, you didn't lose any of the books permanently. Decide which of the bookstores you will be using to sync with. Then go into the "Purchased" list on that site and bookmark the books you wish to download and manage through sync. Update your desktop and sync away. Then go to the 2nd site (the one you will NOT be syncing with) and download ePUB versions of your purchased books from that website. Transfer them to your Kobo using ADE, Calibre, etc.

01-07-2011, 05:49 PM	#17
almagary Wears funny hat (cloth) Posts: 28 Karma: 26 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Limbo Device: Kobo WiFi, Kobo Touch	My problem is that my Kobo WiFi has recently been putting all ebooks (sideloaded via Calibre) onto the end of the I'm Reading list and leaving them there. Therefore most of those books are essentially inacessible, all are unfindable and unalphabetizable. I'm Reading now has 337 titles while Books has 442. For fear of "losing" books on I'm Reading, I'm stopped all sideloading and hesitate before doing anything with SDHC card when it arrives. My Kobo WiFi has firmware 1.7.4; desktop app is 1.8; Calibre is 0.7.36. I saw "Taming"'s post of 1/4/11 (#10) saying that if you don't open a book on the I'm Reading it will migrate to Books. That isn't my experience; I'm Reading just gets longer. A column on the Calibre list indicates which books are on I'm Reading but doesn't give me any tool to undesignate them or move all those titles into the Books list. (A separate but maybe related problem: After I used the Kobo desktop app to buy a couple books and pick up some freebies and sync with the Kobo, Calibre went into a tizzy. First it spent 19 minutes rebuilding the gadget's db, then has been spending 13 minutes uploading the metadata for even a single book! But Calibre doesn't control placement on I'm Reading and offers no toos for me to use.) My feeling now is that to fix the Books/I'm Reading problem I must get direct access to the Kobo's db. I'm a newbie on dealing with SQL, so need some introductory lesson (or warning not to proceed). Any other possible solutions for this overloaded I'm Reading list?

01-07-2011, 07:23 PM	#19
almagary Wears funny hat (cloth) Posts: 28 Karma: 26 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Limbo Device: Kobo WiFi, Kobo Touch	Taming said: Also, when you show the books in the main memory of the device on Calibre, you should be able to chage the status to "read" for any book on the device. Thanks for the quick reply. No Status column in Calibre but Collections shows "Read" and "I'm Reading." But where's the tool to change collection or delete?

01-07-2011, 07:37 PM	#20
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	@almagary: I don't understand what you are asking--blame it on a long week at work. Can you try explaining it some other way for my flaky brain? On the menu bar, there is something that looks like green arrows chasing themselves labeled "Remove Books". The drop down menu gives the option to remove book from device. If you click on the device icon, you can choose to show books in the main memory, or show the sd card (if you have one). Double click in the collections field and type in "Im_Reading" or "Read". It will process this change when you restart the reader. You do have to have an uncorrupted Db, so it might be worth doing a factory reset, and starting over if you feel that somehow the Db itself became corrupted.

01-07-2011, 10:11 PM	#22
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	When my book collection began to grow, I made the decision to store my books on an SD card, rather than on the device. Part of this was because as a member of the beta group, I knew I would be playing with the firmware and loading the device up again would be annoying. I wouldn't be totally surprised to find that an unscheduled and unwanted sync with odd apps could wreak havoc on a well behaving device. I use Calibre for all my books, and other than the time when Calibre was screwed up, I have had no problems at all. My husband never uses anything but Kobo sync over WiFi. He has not had any problems with that either.

01-08-2011, 04:04 AM	#23
almagary Wears funny hat (cloth) Posts: 28 Karma: 26 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Limbo Device: Kobo WiFi, Kobo Touch	So I decided to resolve my problem of the seemingly endless I'm Reading list, where all my sideloaded books were automatically going, in two ways: (1) took Taming's advice and decided to keep most of my library in future on 32GB SDHC card, arriving by snailmail any day now; and (2) doing a factory reset and modest amount of reloading. The reset was not as painful as I thought. It took only a couple of minutes to get back to an essentially blank Kobo, though the 100 freebies came back in the Books list. Then, totally avoiding the Kobo desktop app, relying instead on Calibre to do library management, I reloaded 10 books (elapsed time 31 seconds) with metadata (4 seconds). Calibre does things fast but I think the secret is not to confuse it with using any other app for management tasks. Not surprisingly, most of the reloaded books went directly onto the I'm Reading list. Must be a Kobo bug and I hope it will be fixed. Thanks, Taming, for advice on and off this forum.

01-08-2011, 02:50 PM	#26
almagary Wears funny hat (cloth) Posts: 28 Karma: 26 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Limbo Device: Kobo WiFi, Kobo Touch	I went for the 32GB SDHC card as a tech hedge: I'm sure it will be handy in some future gadget, possibly the upcoming Kobo LXXIX model :-) But consider anyway that with ebooks on b&w readers we have gone back to the good old days when 64K was big. Look how many of the public domain freebies are way under 1MB, with even wireless transfer times a blink of the eye. Now consider how wasteful modern programs and data files are and how our little eInk devices will probably go bigger with color, touchscreen, etc. and the publishers will meet the demand with a color, interactive Pride & Prejudice that takes up 8MB...

01-09-2011, 12:16 AM	#27
kimberhill Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kobo	Thank you everyone for your posts. As further info to some of the questions asked:- * When I refer to losing my bookmark I am talking about books I was partially through - not something which was just in the list as it had been recently downloaded. * I have an application called Borders Desktop which is on the PC. I only purchased books from Borders US and used the "update library" function in the Borders desktop app, then Synced to my Kobo. * After reading through this forum I attempted to use Calibre. The problem still existed. I attempted to add a book which I downloaded through the Adobe software then loaded into Calibre then added to my Kobo from there. Again it took a book I had partially read out of my "I'm Reading" List. * I can't use Wifi sync - we do not have a wifi connection and here in Australia there are limited public wifi hotspots available ( I don't know why my partner bought a wifi device ) I am going to try the reset when I get time and see what comes of it.

01-09-2011, 12:53 AM	#28
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	I am not sure what edition of the desktop Borders AU is using, but the 1.8 that was released in Canada for Kobo has taken care of the sync /bookmarking problems that were once so common. You may have to wait this out, if you are not yet able to get the current desktop. Does anyone else share your Borders account? Having two people syncing can confuse things, for sure, as the sync mechanism doesn't know that person A is on page 87 and person B has finished the book.