[DavidTC]

Well, my last idea didn't fly, but since then, I've discovered something very interesting: CC reads existing book in its directory when it connects to Calibre, and pulls the metadata from Calibre about those books. This almost lets me do what I want, in that I can point CC's 'Default folder' at a cloud-synced copy of the Calibre database directory, and then initiate a Calibre connection, and tada, it magically finds all the books and gives them records in CC. Eventually. After a really long time.

But this is only for a Calibre connection, and not a local cloud connection.

This shouldn't be too hard for a cloud connection. Please note I'm not asking to update all metadata, which you seem to have concerns about, just *adding* records when the book file is there without a record, exactly like the Calibre wireless device connection.

And obviously add covers the normal way that the Cloud connection adds covers, by grabbing cover.jpg. (Which is why I said this is for *local* cloud connections. Remote connections probably need a prompt, because that is additional data and could be costly.)

Of course, the question is, would anyone but me use this? I think, yes. A good deal of people wish to keep all their books on their device already, and while it might not have occurred to them, the amount of sync tools on Android are pretty large, with all sorts of configuration. No more worries about updating.

Additionally, reading the wishlist, there appear to be a lot of people who want CC to read existing books in its directory, and the solution is always 'connect to Calibre'. I suspect at least a few of those people are using the old 'Set up a folder device inside dropbox, dump all the books in it' trick to get books out (Which is what a lot of people did pre-CC.), at which point they'd benefit to switching to what I described above.

In fact, that is actually where I am coming from. I had a rooted Nook Simple Touch, I had a Dropbox folder as my Device, I had a syncing tool that kept it in sync on my Nook, and all my stuff was magically there whenever I picked up the device. If for some reason it hadn't synced, like I had left it unplugged so the wifi was off, I could find any wifi or even tether it to my phone and quickly sync it.

Now I have a Boox with Android 4 which can run CC, which is *massively* better at sorting and organizing the books (You wouldn't believe the plugboards and crazy templates I had set up for my Nook.) but the fact I have to remember to a) have my computer on and Calibre started, b) get my Boox, c) Fire up CC and connect, d) wait for it to finish, before I can walk out the door with new stuff, is incredibly annoying. (Or my current hack of syncing to a local folder and a local cloud connection to 'Download all', which results in two copies of everything! Heck, I even considering just living with that and making a script to hardlink the files, but then remembered sd cards are FAT32.)

I don't *need* a way to get my library to my device, I've had that covered for almost a decade...I need a program that understands all the Calibre metadata and organizes everything. And CC is the best program to do that by *several orders of magnitude* (Seriously, there is nothing even close. There is basically one other program that can even *conceptually* do this, eLibrary Manager, and it requires building specific queries in advance.), with the only annoyance of having to use non-ideal ways to get books *into* the program. Which I sorta understand, you want the Calibre metadata instead of scanning it from the epub...but I have the Calibre metadata *right there*! You even are already reading it!