Multiple stories, one book

[JoopvB]

Hi,

I am new to this forum and have been using the Great Calibre for some time now. The program is very versatile but I'am running into some problems that I don't see how to solve.

1) I have a lot of (e)books with multiple stories (and some of them with different writers). It seems the data-model of Calibre doesn't support this? And if not, could it be added?

2) I have a number of stories (sometimes as part of a book, sometimes as a book) in different languages. Is it (in the future) possible to link this information so that e.g. I have an original story and different "(e)prints" of it?

3) Translated stories of course have a translator (or more) as an attribute. Is it (in the future) possible to "upgrade" Author to say Person and have multiple relations between Books/Stories and Person (such as Author, Translator, Cover artist etc.)?

I hope these questions/suggestions are not complete nonsense, but I would appreciate any help in solving my "library management". From my point of view this would make the program triple A plus (to put it in modern economic terms ).

[Soireb]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and I can only really help you with your first question as I'm also sort of new to Calibre myself. But I have a few anthologies and if I add the & between each author's name the sort option separates them correctly.

Example:
The Mammoth Book Of Special Ops Romance has 20 contributing authors. I added them in the 'Author(s):' field like this:

Shannon K. Butcher & Sydney Croft & Laura Griffin & Cheyenne McCray & Marliss Melton & Charlene Teglia & Michele Albert & Gina Robinson & Shilo Walker & Jordan Summers & E.C. Sheedy & Caitlyn Nicholas & Liz Muir & Nicola March & Gennita Low & Debra Webb & Penny McCall & Rinda Elliot & Charllotte Mede & Rachel Caine

And they automatically sort like this:

Butcher, Shannon K. & Croft, Sydney & Griffin, Laura & McCray, Cheyenne & Melton, Marliss & Teglia, Charlene & Albert, Michele & Robinson, Gina & Walker, Shilo & Summers, Jordan & Sheedy, E.C. & Nicholas, Caitlyn & Muir, Liz & March, Nicola & Low, Gennita & Webb, Debra & McCall, Penny & Elliot, Rinda & Mede, Charllotte & Caine, Rachel

I hope this helps you.

[JoopvB]

Hi, Yes this is a possibility but... how do we now which author did what book and/or whether it was indeed an author (might have been a translator, cover artist etc.). And, how do we find the separate titles of the books (they may be the same as some single story books etc.).

Another solution for calibre might be to give the user access to a "book link". By this I mean a link (e.g. by name of the book) to a book containing multiple stories. That book could be indicated to be a "compilation" and the parts of the book (the stories) could be entered as is, just referencing them as part of that "compilation" book. When another compilation comes along with the same story, just ad that to the compilation reference(s) with the link to that book as well.

Seems to me that this only needs:
1) Creating one extra field accessible for the user that links to a book record in the database (preferable seen by the user as the title of the book). This field should be able to hold multiple entries.
2) Create a switch per book indicating whether the book is a book (one story, as far as the user is concerned) or a compilation (default = book).

To me this seems an elegant solution that doesn't touch the current user interface (the defaults are: no compilation, no reference) and it allows the user to expand his/her possibilities in a huge way.

Sense or...?

[nkd431]

I have found if you list the titles of all the stories in the summary, and also all the series of which said stories are a member, that when you sort by series name for instance you get a list of the entire series, including the stories in anthologies. Not necessarily in order though. I do not know of any other way to designate multiple series for a book, an anthology for instance.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by JoopvB

Hi, Yes this is a possibility but... how do we now which author did what book and/or whether it was indeed an author (might have been a translator, cover artist etc.). And, how do we find the separate titles of the books (they may be the same as some single story books etc.).

Another solution for calibre might be to give the user access to a "book link". By this I mean a link (e.g. by name of the book) to a book containing multiple stories. That book could be indicated to be a "compilation" and the parts of the book (the stories) could be entered as is, just referencing them as part of that "compilation" book. When another compilation comes along with the same story, just ad that to the compilation reference(s) with the link to that book as well.

Seems to me that this only needs:
1) Creating one extra field accessible for the user that links to a book record in the database (preferable seen by the user as the title of the book). This field should be able to hold multiple entries.
2) Create a switch per book indicating whether the book is a book (one story, as far as the user is concerned) or a compilation (default = book).

To me this seems an elegant solution that doesn't touch the current user interface (the defaults are: no compilation, no reference) and it allows the user to expand his/her possibilities in a huge way.

Sense or...?

Or you could use the epubsplit plugin to seperate anthologies to individual books I mostly use that as in many anthologies the individual stories are from different series that way I can sort them accordingly
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=178799

[JoopvB]

Yes, there are ways to get something like what we want. But it is messy and incomplete. My point is: here we have a great program, very versatile and only 1 link field and a switch could/would solve a very broad range of generic situations. My question: sense (if so, how do we propose it as a request?) or nonsense (if so, why?).

Of course I am very open to any other generic solution.

[kovidgoyal]

There is not going to be any support in calibre for cross record links. IMO the increase in complexity is not worth it. Simply use a custom column or a tag and set it to the same value for all the books you want to link. You can have n tags to express n relationships. You can even have the books in an relationship ordered in a particular order by using a custom series column for this.

Similarly, adding support for author metadata, i.e. describing the role of every author of every book is more complication than it is worth. You can add a note tothe comments field about the role of the individual, but there is not going to be database level support for it.

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Or you could use the epubsplit plugin to seperate anthologies to individual books I mostly use that as in many anthologies the individual stories are from different series that way I can sort them accordingly
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=178799

Thanks! That's another useful and relatively new plugin that I missed. I need to pay more attention to what's new in plugins...

[JoopvB]

Hi Kovid,

Thanks for your reply and believe me, I (beeing a long time developer) concurr with your opinion. Nevertheless... I was not suggesting cross record links. What I am suggesting is database support for:
1) a system colum to denote the type of book (like in tracks on a music album) to make a distinction between a (real) book (album) and a storie (track). User interface: something like a switch or a menu.
2) user access to the books already in the database by whatever link you like. User interface: a) a field like the tag or author field that allows one to type the name(s) of the "compilation" book(s); usually one, might be more; b) a lookup facility (can be added as a plugin I assume) that shows the compilation books on the left an by clicking one the books/stories (tracks) that are in that compilation book in the normal book list (as with authors, tags, publishers etc.).

So, IMO no real support for cross links (it's all up to the user), but only system support to distinguish between the type of books and making books already in the database available to the user on field level. No worries about maintaining integrity etc. since it will just give the name (or internal refrence if you will) on the moment of linking. A plugin can at display time do the lookup; if it can't find the compilation or books/stories within it, no problem, display only the one(s) it can find.

I hope I explained a bit better now and again I completely agree on keeping thing simple. But that also goes for the user and calbre is to great a program to be hindered by the lack of generic support for someting so generic as this (again compare music organization).

[kovidgoyal]

You can already do what you are asking for (and a lot more)

1) Create a custom series type column. Set the series field for the book you want grouped.
2) This column will show up in the tag browser giving you access to the books belonging to each value by clicking on the series name.

[JoopvB]

I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

[travger]

I'm not completely happy with my setup, but that's what I have so far:

Tags to mark the type (novel, short, omnibus, collection, anthology): easily accessed from tag browser or searching tags-omnibus
You can assign a color to any column, so for example tag 'short' makes the title blue, tag 'novel' makes it teal...

ToC in the Comments field: so if I type name of the story into search, I'll get the book with the story - doesn't work well, for 'Who Goes There' I get 42 books, even novels. Still better than thousands. I'm sure some search wizard could get it pinned.

Custom column In: For a short story, I can list all collections and anthologies there (Or omnibus name, if I have a novel in there too). I thought about splitting Epubs but it's too much work, empty book is easier. But one collection can give birth to 20 empty books...no thanks. My library is growing fast enough without artificial help.
So mostly that column=Title, but sometimes there's two titles. Don't know how to search for the novels/stories that appear in several books. For example I have 2 collections by E.R. Burroughs and I want the search for 'Chessmen of Mars' to find them both.

I don't think I have lots of books with duplicated stories, but I have no idea how to find them either. For all I know some story could be in every second anthology.

[JoopvB]

Thanks for your support (at least that's how I recognize it ). It's a lot of work and computers were invented for one and only one purpose: to move that work from people to them.

In essence any datamodel about books that represents reality more or less has to take into consideration that there are numerous books (omnibus, collection etc.) that are reprints of collections of other (single story) books. Each of the originals has it's own data (exactly like the one story book). The collection, omnibus or whatever is just another book (with it's own data) but also referencing the part-books. Thus in terms of the datamodel, a simple book is a book containing one book (the story). This beeing the default seems to solve things (from a datamodel point of view).

Nevertheless I agree with Kovid that implementing this datamodel is not a simple matter; most certainly not in an existing program.

[jecilop]

Uggh..feeling kind of stupid. I just realized I typed all of the below for a 2012 post..I was thinking it was 2014...Definitely an old one. Sorry if it bumped to your email updates because of me.

@travger, I have some good experience with this type of management. Here is what I've found and done. These are big "Been there done that" things where I learned how powerful Calibre really is and takes some of the work out of it for me that I was putting into it needlessly before I realized how some features work.
1) Enter all author names in the author field separated by "&". This creates a reference database for every author so that when you search the author name in any way, it will list this bundle/anthology/collection as part of their books.

2) Collections like this are few compared to individual listings so it isn't often worth knowing exactly what the story is inside from the database. You can open the book and likely see a TOC to have it. HOWEVER, it may be preferable. The trick I use that solves a minimum of 75% of these is downloading the metadata. Often, at least one listing with list all stories and the associated author in the book. It then import this into the comments whether by OK'ing or copy/paste depending on if the imported authors are correct and it you want to override what is already in the author(s) field.
For myself, I update the book jacket to.
When you search the author in any way, this book will show up. When you search the title of a book that may only be in the comments, it will show up if you search parameters include comments (there's some easy customization for that).

3) In reference to step 2, if the downloaded metadata doesn't give a listing of every book contained and the author, you can usually view the book and copy/paste the TOC into the comments under Edit Metadata. Formatting is also easily removed from the pasted info. I've done this a number of times. It is relatively fast and easy.

These methods allow me to simply search in a non-field specific way or field specific.

Ex: I have specific Jane Austen listings. Say I have a collection/bundle/anthology of Female British Lit writers. I would list the names of the authors from the collection in the author field. It's also easy to copy/paste them into the top of the comments for references or vice versa (comments to author). I then have a listing of all the books and associated authors in the comments section whether from metadata download or TOC copy/paste.
SEARCH
Jane Austen
This will return all books according to the default search fields I set up. HOWEVER, by searching the comments, if other book comment metadata references that name (like a similar author or voice or as a commenter), then that book will be returned also.
This is only one example of what can be typed in the search field. There are other ways to constrain the search.

This rather easy setup has taken the work out of it for me. What it takes a lot of words to describe above is actually really short and easy.

I hope this helps.

[cvlowe]

Old thread, but some good info, I'm still trying to get my metadata updated and the short story collections are always a challenge. I figured out how to do the multiple authors, now I think I'll go back and add story lists to the comments.

The issue I still have is getting the books to sort correctly. For example, my Bolo book collection- it started as a series by Keith Laumer, and includes short stories and novels by various other authors. If I set Calibre to sort by "series" then all my series are all sorted out of the 'authors' at the bottom of the book list. If I sort by author, then the Bolo series gets scattered all over the place. If I add Laumer, Keith as the first name in the author sort column, the Bolo series sorts together, under Laumer, Keith- but in a non-sequential order. This problem also applies to a lesser extent to other series with multiple authors (like Rama)

FWIW, I read the dates while reading this and thought you resurrected a month old thread instead of 2 years!