Software to auto sort Ebooks into folders?

[Vortex]

My ebook collection is organized in the format: C:\Ebooks\Genre\AuthorFirstname Lastname\
also in each Genre folder are many thousands of unsorted ebooks with the naming format: Authorsfirstname Lastname-booktitle.ext
Is there any software that I could use to automatically sort these ebooks into the Author folders? I've tried doing it manually and after several hours I hadn't made much progress,
Thanks.

[eschwartz]

calibre can catalog all your books, import them with the metadata and export however you like. It is also very good at handling your whole interaction with your ebooks... just search for the genre tags from within calibre...

It can be set to read metadata from the filename rather than from the metadata fields within the book.

[eschwartz]

Also, there is this:

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

You are probably accustomed to storing your metadata in your computer's filesystem. That is, you are using the names of the folders to keep track of information about your books. That's how we all started. Calibre is why we stopped.

For example, you might have a folder called /ebooks, and under that you have /ebooks/nonfiction, /ebooks/fiction, etc. One of those, in turn, might have /ebooks/fiction/fantasy, and under that /ebooks/fiction/fantasy/lackey. The name of the folder gives you the type, genre, and author. So far, so good ... if you want all your Mercedes Lackey fantasy novels, you can find them right there. And you've probably got a folder called /ebooks/fiction/fantasy/flint where Eric Flint's books are stored.

But where do you put Shadow of the Lion? Under /lackey, /flint, or /freer? How about a book that has both fantasy and SF short stories? Where does a SF mystery, a historical fantasy, or a near-future thriller go? And that's just fiction. Non-fiction gets even hairier. Filesystems are actually a pretty crappy way to store metadata.

That's where calibre comes in. Calibre stores metadata as metadata, as much of it as you want. You can tag Shadow of the Lion as fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and to-be-read, if you like, and it will come up in the list when you select any or all of those. It can be listed simultaneously under Lackey, Flint, and Freer. You can also note that you got it from Baen. And none of this has anything to do with the filesystem.

Calibre organizes books. Calibre is not a file organization program. Calibre is a book organization program. It's more than just the card catalog to your library -- it's the librarian who goes back to the stacks and brings you the book you're looking for.

The reason calibre copies all those ebooks over into its own set of folders is so that it can have exclusive access to them, and so it can know exactly what they are, where they are, and what they're named. Think of it as a black box, one with a big warning label stating "NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE!" Or maybe a storage room with a locked door with a sign on it saying "PRIVATE - Calibre Only".

You don't need to find those files with your computer's file manager. Calibre is there to do that for you -- or, rather, calibre is there to find your books for you. It will display your books, put them on your ebook reader, whatever you need, without you having to care about the actual computer files, only the books. If you actually do need one or more files -- perhaps you want to pack up all of the Harvard Classics to give to a friend -- calibre can collect them from its black box and put them wherever you want them -- and in whatever format you need to have them in.

The transition can be a bit hard. You're used to thinking of your ebooks as files and your filesystem as their metadata. Using calibre means thinking of them as books, abstracted from their computer representation, and with much more comprehensive metadata. It's a different way of looking at them, yes. But once you've made the jump, you won't want to go back.

You see, I started out the same way you did. I had all my neat hierarchical folders, my metadata in the filesystem, and I liked it that way. Then I found calibre. It took me a while to get my head around the whole idea of dealing with books instead of files, but once I did, I've never gone back. And now I'm explaining it to people who are where I was a few months ago. Give calibre a try, and you may end up doing the same!

[Vortex]

Thanks, I've tried Calibre many times over the years and I love it's ability to convert all formats but I dont like the rest. The majority of my books are old and not in modern ebook formats and dont have complete meta data so Calibre just makes a mess of it. I have found the folder system works best for me and I use the 'Everything' search software to find whatever books I want from within it.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Vortex

Thanks, I've tried Calibre many times over the years and I love it's ability to convert all formats but I dont like the rest. The majority of my books are old and not in modern ebook formats and dont have complete meta data so Calibre just makes a mess of it. I have found the folder system works best for me and I use the 'Everything' search software to find whatever books I want from within it.

If you have valid title and author metadata in the filename, then just set calibre to use the filename for metadata when Adding Books. It will totally ignore all metadata within the book. You can then download metadata from the internet based on the available metadata (to get the best match) or just use the filename metadata, as you already are, but with the advantage of tagging etc.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

It can be set to read metadata from the filename rather than from the metadata fields within the book.

[Adoby]

Also, with some scripting it is possible to rename the ebooks/texts so that information that was stored in the path is moved to the filenam, with suitable delimiters. That way it is possible to import files into calibre with metadata from the path.

I usually just do a recursive file listing and redirect the output to a file. This file I edit in a spreadsheat program to create a series of mv (rename) commands. Finally I save the spreadsheat to a text file, and run it as a script.

You can use the same method to quickly create a script to move the files in the genre folders into the correct folder.

[Terisa de morgan]

You can make a bat file (or shell script if you've installed some Unix-like environment) to rename them, but I'm afraid it should be your own creation.

[eschwartz]

Or manually set certain tags to be added in each import batch separately, if scripting is too much.

Preferences ==> Import/export ==> Adding books. In the "The Add Process" tab, "Tags to apply when adding a book"

[Marcs1102]

Theres a handy little program called "Booksorter.rar" that scans books, normalizes names, and sorts (and then copies them into) output "buckets" file (primary output is by author, secondary is you can set the genre by author name to slip it into the correct Genre basket)

ps, if you can't find it online, i have it in my library, but don't know how to attach it to the messaging thing here, feel free to send me email Marc@marcalan.info and i can reply with an attachment

[Marcs1102]

for several of the q's earlier about "parsing" existing file names, theres another really cool (free) utility called Regexrenamer.... rename the files with regexrenamer, import (uncheck the box in adding books preferences about "read metadata from file contents rather than file name" (don't forget to change it back when done)

ps i have a library named "New adds" for experimenting/adding stuff to)

[Marcs1102]

ps regexrenamer download at http://regexrenamer.sourceforge.net/

RegexRenamer is a powerful but simple user-friendly graphical tool used to batch rename files using regular expressions. A regular expression (or regex) is simply text that contains special characters that together defines a pattern that can be used to match text, in this case filenames. Using the power of regexes it becomes easy to apply complex transformations to large groups of files that otherwise would not be possible with plain match & replace.

[Marcs1102]

ps, more on Booksorter (old mobilereds thread from 2007
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11044

May 23, 2007 - 2 posts - ‎2 authors
BookSorter v4.0 sort ebooks by folders/Authors/genre etc Reading and ... Search inside rar/zip archives in order to determine the book type(s).

[Adminer]

The problem is, when we have a lot of ebooks files from many others sources.
In Downdload folder there are many files with the names:
Author - Title - Something.ext
Title - Author - Something.ext
Something - Title - Author.ext
etc...

without tags, metatags etc... in many times.

Why nobody wants a simple program to book sorting, before import them into Calibre?

This program should import full folder with downloaded files, and ask us - one by one file - to sort the file name as we want - and save it.

In PHP I saw jquery module, that the filename can be truncated by selected separators: space, -, _, dot, etc...

Every part of the filename I can drag and drop into my "virtual place for a new name", so I can drag and drop Author into the author field, Title into the title field, etc...

Another blade of this software should be connecting to the google images f.e., and should give us a proposition of the cover, simillar to the title of our ebook. Click - and we have it.

The program may ask us, to save this new ebook file with a new string for a new created filename, into A.B.C... folders, or convert into zip file with the cover - one by one.

I think - it's a good idea to book sorting before import them into Calibre or any ebook readers.

If you are programmer and reader - think about it - for us ;-)

Regards

[Adoby]

As long as the files are ebooks that has a ISBN-number, it is easier to ignore all metadata already present. Just add the book(s), scan for the ISBN using the ISBN-plugin and download metadata and cover.

If ISBN is missing, then do it manually.

If it is other publications, then it is hard to write a general program. Easier to write an ad-hoc script to make the metadata accessible to calibre.

[Vortex]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I found a great site where people write batch code for the asking, took a few goes to get it right but was great to watch thousands of files sort themselves all into folders.

Now I'm looking for some way to automatically remove the many duplicates, ISBN plugin sounds like it might be a good way to identify them, I'll give it a try. Also is there a way to auto sort and remove other formats in a set order. For instance if you have an epub version remove all others, if no epub exists and there is a mobi remove all others, etc, etc?