"Unknown Author" and can't open when transferring to Nook
 

Hello. First of all I apologize if this has been dealt with elsewhere. I did a search and found a few similar but not identical threads. Thanks.

I have a new Nook (refurb from a Black Friday deal) and am new to Calibre. A friend gave me a small collection of books in various formats (and presumably from various sources), about 100 ebooks. When I loaded them into Calibre and formed a library I noticed the metadata all goofy, of course. I carefully went through each one and added covers, did the necessary author/title switcheroos, etc. I only converted books which I knew the Nook couldn't open. I ended up with a fairly neat and orderly list that had all three of the fields I care about -- author, title, and cover. Only after I was done did I transfer anything to the Nook.

After transferring the library most things were fine, but about six books showed "Unknown Author" on the Nook. The common elements were:

• all were .pdf
• all had the author's name appended to the end of the title (e.g., Atheist Universe - David Mills)

In addition, one of the books showing "Unknown Author" also showed the title in gibberish (it showed as "ÿþ" instead of the actual title). All six gave an error when I tried to open them (either, "Sorry, unable to open this book," or a blank screen and in the page count section at the bottom right it showed "1/0").

I went back to the Calibre library to double-check and couldn't find anything different about the listings for these six books compared to the others which were displaying properly but which were also .pdf. First I tried deleting the book from the Nook using Calibre and then transferring it again. Same problem. Then I decided to look at the contents of the Nook in Windows to see if the folders holding the books in question might have something different about them. Nope.

Since the other .pdf books I transferred seem to be fine, my guess is that I should try to convert the rogue books to epub (or whichever is the most trouble-free format for the Nook -- would like advice) and then transfer again. But I'm still curious why this is happening and if there's a fix short of converting.

Thanks to anyone with the time to respond.

I think you already have your own solution.

In my experience reading books on my iPad and Nook is I try to avoid .pdf format if at all possible (especially on my old Sony PRS505). PDF's are basically pictures of a page and are not "reflowable". Which is to say, they cannot have their type size changed or adjusted to the reader.

So, I would attempt to change ALL fiction books possible to epub's for the Nook.

Books like "Mastering Regular Expressions" (a computer tech book) have many type changes and special characters and don't take well to being converted to epub. You lose all the formatting of a "for dummies" book for instance. I leave these books as pdf's and view them on my iPad or computer. For these reasons and the limited size of the Nook's screen I haven't even attempted to read a pdf on the Nook.

The best thing about epub is you can resize or change fonts to your liking by most readers. PDF's can't do that but they work good for magazines or comic books.

You didn't say but if you have a Color Nook the pdf's would certainly look much better for magazines and such. Otherwise your profile just says Nook and the B&W of the classic Nook will not render magazines and pictures very well.

Happy Sunday
Archon

Setting metadata on PDF files does not always work.

Thank you very much, Archon. Yes, it's a B&W Nook (I thought "Nook" meant that and that to specify the color one it's "Nook Color," but whatever.

I appreciate the tips. I converted each of the books in question to epub and it seems to have done the trick, though I will surely be on the lookout for ones that don't cooperate. As a noob to readers and the various formats I'm just now learning what a PITA it can be in some instances trying to view/convert. I will try to stay away from .pdf based on your advice, but some things don't seem available in other formats.

If I have this problem again with a .pdf and converting to .epub doesn't yield good results is there another format that might work?

Yes, that's clear! Thanks.

My personal preferences in order are HTML, RTF, and TXT. All other formats are specialized to a particular reader (LIT, AZW, LRF, PDB, etc.). I avoid these unless left with no other choice.

Epub's are HTML files zipped up in a package including images and metadata, like a web site in one file.

So HTML's convert quickly to epub. RTF and TXT are also quick to convert but need some formatting as they convert but usually convert with no problems.

If you learn a little HTML coding you can reformat your book before it is added to Calibre if you wish or you can use Sigil to turn it into an epub yourself so it looks like you like for your Nook.

Happy Tuesday
Archon