MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - "Unknown Author" and can't open when transferring to Nook

unclelobsterman · 02-06-2011, 01:23 AM

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.

02-06-2011, 01:23 AM	#1
unclelobsterman Member Posts: 10 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2011 Device: Nook	"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.