Sorry about the bump. But in my defense, it got you to post!
Even after I do all that editing (which really adds up, since I have hundreds of pdf newsletters), Calibre still doesn't really act the way I'd like it to act with them. For instance: it doesn't keep them in order unless I arrange my ENTIRE Calibre collection by PUBLISHED or SERIES... hardly ideal.
Maybe for a future release, Calibre could have some way to separate books from non-RSS periodicals, with a set of tools tailored more for periodical metadata-editing? Just a thought.