Quote:
Originally Posted by Daria9000
So do I have to download a book from the Content Server to the Fire for the Companion to see it? In other words, do I have to have two copies of the book, one for Amazon and one for the Companion?
|
Yes and no.
First, the fundamentals behind the "yes". CC does not store metadata for books that are not on the device, where "on the device" means downloaded by CC. When connected to the content server, CC shows information in calibre's library. When disconnected, CC shows information in the copy of the calibre library that has been downloaded to CC. So yes, CC must download something from calibre to the device for CC to "see" it when not connected. CC cannot see books on the device that it didn't download, such as books you downloaded using Amazon's library manager.
The "no" is there because Amazon's reader app can see CC's copy. It does not require a second copy.
Quote:
So this is how I thought the Companion would act or how I would like it to act.
1. Periodically connect to content server to get/update all the data (not download the physical books but download the catalog, the metadata).
2. Disconnect from content server.
3. Go into Companion, ask it to show me, say, all the books I've tagged as history books and sort by author within that group.
4. Select one of the history books.
5. Have it tell me that that book is either on my Fire or is not on my Fire.
6. Read book.
|
CC cannot do step 1, download a catalog but not the books, which means it cannot do step 5. Either the book is in CC's copy of calibre's library in which case you can see and read the book, or the book is not in CC's copy in which case you can't do any of the steps 3-6.
I see two solutions:
1) The best solution is the one I mentioned earlier and one used by many CC users: put your entire calibre library on your Fire(s). From time to time you would connect your Fire to calibre as a wireless device to update metadata for existing books and get copies of new books (steps 1 and 2). By default the Amazon version of CC stores the books in the folder Amazon's reader uses (IIRC /Books) so the Amazon reader can see them and possibly sync reading positions, annotations, etc., without requiring a second copy. You would not use Amazon's library manager, nor would you use Amazon's cloud except for anything the reader app does with it. The upside of this solution is that CC has visibility to the real library and maintenance is easily done by connecting as a wireless device from time to time. The downside is that you must have enough space on the fire to store all the books. This solution takes care of all the steps above, except that the "not on the fire" part of step 5 never happens.
2) You could use CC as a catalog, manually integrating it with Amazon's library manager. Another user had a similar use case. Her library consisted mostly of physical books. She wanted the metadata in CC, IIRC to check if she already had a book to avoid buying another copy. We solved her problem by creating an empty txt format for every book in her calibre library, setting up CC to only download txt formats, then downloading every book from calibre to CC (just as in solution 1 above). In this way she ended up with CC fully populated with her books but with minimal space used. From time to time she connects to calibre as a wireless device to update metadata and get new books. Here is
the thread discussing this solution. Here is
another thread discussing something similar.
Under this second scheme you would need to note the title and author of the desired book then go to Amazon's library manager to see if the book is on the device. If it is not then you would fetch it from Amazon's cloud. This is the manual integration part. CC takes care of steps 1 through 3 and part of 4, with the note that the periodic connection is best done using the wireless device so that metadata in CC is updated for books already there. CC cannot handle steps 5 and 6 because the actual books are not in CC and CC cannot see books downloaded from Amazon's cloud.