MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - What is your workflow to get books organized?

latepaul · 02-23-2013, 01:26 PM

I recently automated some of my work-flow as I was getting annoyed with repetitive manual bits.

However I suspect my needs are simpler

So the process is:

Download the purchased file. Generally I buy from either Amazon or Kobo. If Kobo then I'll download the Adobe ePub (though I will let my Kobo devices download the kepub files).
Depending on the source I strip the DRM. I don't use the Calibre plugins because I don't want to have to import, delete, re-import. Without going into detail (which would be bad) I do the Amazon files on a Windows PC but the epubs on my Linux desktop. Each has an output directory with the DRM-free files. If on Windows I copy it to the Linux PC for the next stage.
This is the bit I automated. Well semi-automated. I run a shell script I wrote against each file. This imports into Calibre and lets me set the custom metadata fields I use. It also lets me set series and series index. It checks against the calibre database and gives me a little menu of existing series, though I can add new ones. Oh and it also lets me correct Author name as this is often in the form "Surname, Forename" but Calibre has Author_Sort for that so I change it if needed. As a final step it copies the file to an archive directory - this is my repository of orginal files. If I later edit them or re-import then into Calibre I'll do so from here.
Run them through a few plugins - Count Pages, Goodreads sync and Reading List. The later means they'll automatically get added to my devices during next sync.
Run my backup script which will back up my original files, the repository and the Calibre directory (which is also on Dropbox).

And that's it. I don't as a matter of course edit my ebooks unless there's somethine particularly egregrious there. I also don't update the metadata of the files except by default because I'll usually end up doing either mobi/AZW3->epub conversion or vice-versa. I have bought a few anthologies and collections and I have split those up into separate books with Sigil.

So you can see what I mean about simpler needs.

02-23-2013, 01:26 PM	#8
latepaul Wizard Posts: 1,270 Karma: 10468300 Join Date: Dec 2011 Device: a variety (mostly kindles and kobos)	I recently automated some of my work-flow as I was getting annoyed with repetitive manual bits. However I suspect my needs are simpler So the process is: Download the purchased file. Generally I buy from either Amazon or Kobo. If Kobo then I'll download the Adobe ePub (though I will let my Kobo devices download the kepub files). Depending on the source I strip the DRM. I don't use the Calibre plugins because I don't want to have to import, delete, re-import. Without going into detail (which would be bad) I do the Amazon files on a Windows PC but the epubs on my Linux desktop. Each has an output directory with the DRM-free files. If on Windows I copy it to the Linux PC for the next stage. This is the bit I automated. Well semi-automated. I run a shell script I wrote against each file. This imports into Calibre and lets me set the custom metadata fields I use. It also lets me set series and series index. It checks against the calibre database and gives me a little menu of existing series, though I can add new ones. Oh and it also lets me correct Author name as this is often in the form "Surname, Forename" but Calibre has Author_Sort for that so I change it if needed. As a final step it copies the file to an archive directory - this is my repository of orginal files. If I later edit them or re-import then into Calibre I'll do so from here. Run them through a few plugins - Count Pages, Goodreads sync and Reading List. The later means they'll automatically get added to my devices during next sync. Run my backup script which will back up my original files, the repository and the Calibre directory (which is also on Dropbox). And that's it. I don't as a matter of course edit my ebooks unless there's somethine particularly egregrious there. I also don't update the metadata of the files except by default because I'll usually end up doing either mobi/AZW3->epub conversion or vice-versa. I have bought a few anthologies and collections and I have split those up into separate books with Sigil. So you can see what I mean about simpler needs.