Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I buy an ebook when I'm ready to begin reading it. Then I read it. The end.  |
This is
exactly what I do.
...or it will be as soon as I get through my pesky TBR.
Seriously, here's what I do:
After acquiring a new book I will import it into Calibre but not into my main library. This is purely to let the tools do the DeDRM thing.
I then go find the file and run a script that does an import into my real Calibre library. It also adds some values for the custom columns I have. It also backs up the file to a directory of "original files".
I will now go into Calibre itself and run through a few steps
- convert to whichever of epub/azw the file is not.
- run the word count plugin against it and populate the columns for that
- run the Goodreads sync plugin so it gets added to my "to read" shelf
- I may download the metadata if there's no description with the original file and if the cover is better.
- fix any issues with the main metadata (usually this is just fixing the title - why do publishers love to add a strapline or series name as part of the title?)
Then I'll quit Calibre. My main library is in Nextcloud (think self-hosted Dropbox) and so I'll let it sync the changes. I know the caveats about running Calibre on a network sync'd folder but I do it because it's so convenient and I'm careful to only run one Calibre client at a time. Plus I have my backups so I can re-import it if I need to.
At this stage I may log in to my Raspberry PI that runs a COPS instance. This usually syncs once every 24 hours but I can run a script to force it. As well as update the folder with the Calibre library it updates a custom column that gives me a read time based on the word count (yes I tried to do it with a formula, had lots of issues, this turned out to be a better way to do it)
In terms of organization my Calibre library has columns for no of times read, last and first read time, series, genre, word count, read time and a couple of others. I have various virtual libraries which display as tabs. So I can quickly switch to unread books, or books I read this year, books of a certain length etc.
I also add records (but not files) for library books with a due date so I can hopefully remember to read them before I need to return them. I have a "library books due" virtual library.
The COPS site on my PI is always on which means I should always have access to my books where ever I am from whatever device. Technically I could do this from Nextcloud by navigating to the correct folder and downloading the file, but not all devices will do that and COPS is just nicer.
This may sound like a lot of work but it's not. At least not now that I've got it up and running, scripts written etc. It's an extra 5 mins when I initially buy the book. (or the first time I'm at my PC after buying the book). It's taken me longer to describe than it does to do.
One thing I definitely
don't do is edit the book. To justify spending time editing the formatting needs to be sufficiently awful
and I have to feel I will re-read it. Otherwise life's too short.