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ACGAuthor · 09-18-2019, 08:14 PM

For background, I'm using a Mac, and I listen to my books on my iPhone.

I'm currently working on curating my audiobook collection, tidying up the metadata and getting everything so that they SHOULD be cleanly catalogued.

But what I've noticed there's a rather severe dearth of options for managing series of books. Now, this might not matter so much for a trilogy or even a straightforward where everything is in order. Changing the metadata for the album name in iTunes results in things falling in order, if you name it like this:

Confederation #1: Valor's Choice
Confederation #2: The Better Part of Valor
Confederation #3: The Heart of Valor

and so forth.

But if you have a series with a lot of shorts (frex, The Dresden Files) and/or offshoot series that tie back into the plot of the main series (frex, David Webers Honor Harrington series and its offshoots) things get really problematic.

The "series name/index in the title" thing works okay for shorts interspersed with the regular novels, as long as you're really precise with how you number. Book #5 in a series has to be titled with a series index of #5.0 if you want it listed before a short story with a series index of #5.5, at least in some apps.

But in the case of the Honor Harrington novels, you have a situation where optimally, you would read the books as follows:

Honor Harrington #6: Honor Among Enemies
"A Whiff of Grapeshot" (short story in More than Honor, Worlds of Honor Anthology #1)
"Changer of Worlds" (short story in Changer of Worlds, Worlds of Honor Anthology #3)
Honor Harrington #7: In Enemy Hands
Honor Harrington #8: Echoes of Honor
Honor Harrington #9: Ashes of Victory
"From the Highlands" (Short story in Changer of Worlds)
"Nightfall" (Short story in Changer of Worlds)
"Fanatic" (Short story in The Service of the Sword, Worlds of Honor Anthology #4)
Honor Harrington #10: War of Honor
Wages of Sin #1: Crown of Slaves (for which "From the Highlands" and "Fanatic" provide necessary background)
Saganami Island #1: The Shadow of Saganami
Honor Harrington #11: At All Costs
Saganami Island #2: Storm from the Shadows
Wages of Sin #2: Torch of Freedom
Honor Harrington #12: Mission of Honor
Honor Harrington #13: A Rising Thunder
Saganami Island #3: Shadow of Freedom
Wages of Sin #3: Cauldron of Ghosts
Saganami Island #4: Shadow of Victory
Honor Harrington #14: Uncompromising Honor

Obviously you can't sort these by title. Unless you want to change the series names all to something like "Honorverse" and the series indices to be sequential, but the stickler for accuracy in my balks at doing it that way. I want them to have the proper series names and indices but still fall in order, darn it!

To be fair, this isn't just a problem with audiobooks; For my ebooks of this series, I actually created a metadata field in Calibre called "Universe" separate from the series field and gave the stories their own indices there so that they would sort properly.

I COULD catalogue these in Calibre that way, since I listen to .m4b files it's "one file/one book" and would work out okay. How to catalogue them on the Mac isn't a huge problem.

The problem is how to export them to my iThing with series organization metadata. I spend a lot of time in the car and listen to audiobooks probably 20-30 hours a week and I don't want to be scrolling through the file list on my phone trying to find the next book while I'm driving.

The problem seems to be that most software to handle audiobooks is built around the framework for handling audio files, rather than BOOKs. the metadata options you have for tagging your audiobooks is music metadata. You have to create your own genre tags usually; they don't exist otherwise. Itunes will recognize certain tags if you add them using an external metadata editor, but won't give you the option to add it yourself.

I've tried to create playlists with everything in the proper order. But iTunes syncs your audiobooks with the Books app on the iThing, and the Books app doesn't import those playlists. (Maybe they go into the music app on the phone? I didn't check.) The Books app has "collections" but while you can organize your audiobooks on the phone in series order there, there's no way to simply sync a series between phone and device.

I've tried Bound, which I loved for the option of streaming from the cloud, but it doesn't support playlists, and for some reason kicked back an error on a lot of my audiobooks when I tried to transfer them to the iThing.

I've tried CloudBeats, but it doesn't recognize chapter metadata, and often wouldn't recognize the covers for my books, whether embedded or from a folder.jpg.

Using external metadata editors, I can fill in the "grouping" field, which iTunes will recognize, but there's no index associated with it. I can also fill in the "TV Show/Episode #" fields, which is about as close to series metadata as you can get, and iTunes will let you add those columns and sort by them, but you can't edit them in iTunes, and I don't know if they transfer when you sync with your iThing. (haven't tried yet.)

I've considered trying to handle the audiobooks as podcasts. Podcast management in iTunes allows you to insert a "Movement" name plus index, which could be a form of series management, but I don't know it would work when synced with the iThing. Would I lose my chapter breaks? I assume they'd sync with the podcasts app...I'll have to experiment more.

So...long story short...has anyone found a satisfactory solution for series management on iOS devices? Particularly from MacOS?

09-18-2019, 08:14 PM	#1
ACGAuthor Enthusiast Posts: 44 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2013 Device: Kindle PW	Series management for Audiobooks For background, I'm using a Mac, and I listen to my books on my iPhone. I'm currently working on curating my audiobook collection, tidying up the metadata and getting everything so that they SHOULD be cleanly catalogued. But what I've noticed there's a rather severe dearth of options for managing series of books. Now, this might not matter so much for a trilogy or even a straightforward where everything is in order. Changing the metadata for the album name in iTunes results in things falling in order, if you name it like this: Confederation #1: Valor's Choice Confederation #2: The Better Part of Valor Confederation #3: The Heart of Valor and so forth. But if you have a series with a lot of shorts (frex, The Dresden Files) and/or offshoot series that tie back into the plot of the main series (frex, David Webers Honor Harrington series and its offshoots) things get really problematic. The "series name/index in the title" thing works okay for shorts interspersed with the regular novels, as long as you're really precise with how you number. Book #5 in a series has to be titled with a series index of #5.0 if you want it listed before a short story with a series index of #5.5, at least in some apps. But in the case of the Honor Harrington novels, you have a situation where optimally, you would read the books as follows: Honor Harrington #6: Honor Among Enemies "A Whiff of Grapeshot" (short story in More than Honor, Worlds of Honor Anthology #1) "Changer of Worlds" (short story in Changer of Worlds, Worlds of Honor Anthology #3) Honor Harrington #7: In Enemy Hands Honor Harrington #8: Echoes of Honor Honor Harrington #9: Ashes of Victory "From the Highlands" (Short story in Changer of Worlds) "Nightfall" (Short story in Changer of Worlds) "Fanatic" (Short story in The Service of the Sword, Worlds of Honor Anthology #4) Honor Harrington #10: War of Honor Wages of Sin #1: Crown of Slaves (for which "From the Highlands" and "Fanatic" provide necessary background) Saganami Island #1: The Shadow of Saganami Honor Harrington #11: At All Costs Saganami Island #2: Storm from the Shadows Wages of Sin #2: Torch of Freedom Honor Harrington #12: Mission of Honor Honor Harrington #13: A Rising Thunder Saganami Island #3: Shadow of Freedom Wages of Sin #3: Cauldron of Ghosts Saganami Island #4: Shadow of Victory Honor Harrington #14: Uncompromising Honor Obviously you can't sort these by title. Unless you want to change the series names all to something like "Honorverse" and the series indices to be sequential, but the stickler for accuracy in my balks at doing it that way. I want them to have the proper series names and indices but still fall in order, darn it! To be fair, this isn't just a problem with audiobooks; For my ebooks of this series, I actually created a metadata field in Calibre called "Universe" separate from the series field and gave the stories their own indices there so that they would sort properly. I COULD catalogue these in Calibre that way, since I listen to .m4b files it's "one file/one book" and would work out okay. How to catalogue them on the Mac isn't a huge problem. The problem is how to export them to my iThing with series organization metadata. I spend a lot of time in the car and listen to audiobooks probably 20-30 hours a week and I don't want to be scrolling through the file list on my phone trying to find the next book while I'm driving. The problem seems to be that most software to handle audiobooks is built around the framework for handling audio files, rather than BOOKs. the metadata options you have for tagging your audiobooks is music metadata. You have to create your own genre tags usually; they don't exist otherwise. Itunes will recognize certain tags if you add them using an external metadata editor, but won't give you the option to add it yourself. I've tried to create playlists with everything in the proper order. But iTunes syncs your audiobooks with the Books app on the iThing, and the Books app doesn't import those playlists. (Maybe they go into the music app on the phone? I didn't check.) The Books app has "collections" but while you can organize your audiobooks on the phone in series order there, there's no way to simply sync a series between phone and device. I've tried Bound, which I loved for the option of streaming from the cloud, but it doesn't support playlists, and for some reason kicked back an error on a lot of my audiobooks when I tried to transfer them to the iThing. I've tried CloudBeats, but it doesn't recognize chapter metadata, and often wouldn't recognize the covers for my books, whether embedded or from a folder.jpg. Using external metadata editors, I can fill in the "grouping" field, which iTunes will recognize, but there's no index associated with it. I can also fill in the "TV Show/Episode #" fields, which is about as close to series metadata as you can get, and iTunes will let you add those columns and sort by them, but you can't edit them in iTunes, and I don't know if they transfer when you sync with your iThing. (haven't tried yet.) I've considered trying to handle the audiobooks as podcasts. Podcast management in iTunes allows you to insert a "Movement" name plus index, which could be a form of series management, but I don't know it would work when synced with the iThing. Would I lose my chapter breaks? I assume they'd sync with the podcasts app...I'll have to experiment more. So...long story short...has anyone found a satisfactory solution for series management on iOS devices? Particularly from MacOS?