Populating new reader

[AlexBell]

The background to this long post:
- I've let my ebook library grow higgledy-piggledy over the years, without much effort to keep it tidy or sorted except by author
- My Sony T2 has died and Sony is going to replace it - I hope within a few days; for the time being I'm reading off my T1
- I intend over the next couple of days to go through my calibre library and get it sorted out - a standard range of tags for every book, some books in collections etc ect. I don't need or want to use any non-standard fields.
- Then I want to populate my new ereader when it comes and have the library sorted and arranged on the reader the same as in my calibre library.
- And I'd like to be able to select the books I want to go on on the reader, and then transfer them in one setting - rather than one by one.
- When I've got the library on the reader I want to be able to install new books on the reader and have the new book appear on the list in order by author, and in alphabetical order by book name or in a collection by where it belongs in the collection.

I'm sure that the information is available already on the forum, and in the calibre manual, but I've found it impossible to put it all together and make it work.

Let me give a specific example - using my Lois McMaster Bujold ebooks. Of course I want all her books to appear together, at the very least in alphabetical order by title. But she has three major series (Vorkosigan, Sharing Knife, and Challion) and has other book not in a series. So I'd like in the library and on my reader to have all her books in one block. Within that block I'd like all her non series books first, in alphabetical order by title, then her Challion books together sorted by order they were written, then her Sharing Knife books together sorted by order they were written, then her Vorkosigan books together sorted by order they were written. There is still one Vorkosigan book I haven't got yet, and when it arrives in Australia I want to buy that book and have it appear last within that collection.

Can anyone show me where to find out how to do this? Preferably in one or two syllable words?

[itimpi]

You might want to look at the Reading List plugin as a way of maintaining a list of books to be synced the next time a particular device is connected.

[JimmXinu]

Check out custom composite columns, metadata plugboards and the View Manager plugin.

Personally, I used a plugboard to fill book titles with this when sent to my devices:

{series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|[|] - }{title}{#wordcount:| (|)}{tags:| [|]}

I use both custom composite columns and View Manager for my everyday library management in calibre. I have my favorite two views in View Manager hotkeyed to <space> and <ctrl-space>.

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you both; I'll check those recommendations out.

Edit: I have installed the Reading List and View Manager plugins, but I'm afraid my eyes glaze over when I open them. I have no idea what to do next. Are there simple 'For Dummies' instructions anywhere?

I fiddled around with the Reading List plugin, but stopped in terror when the list of books in the library disappeared. Fortunately they were back when I restarted calibre.