new to e-reading, how you guys organising calibre?

[wakkaday]

i have a kobo glo hd and want to make it efficient possible and create a good catalogue of books

i do have calibre and recently instaleld the kobo plugin, but there are so many options i was wondering what do you guys find the most useful and how do i go on about setting it up?

thank you

[ekbell]

When I obtained a kobo for my husband, I made the following changes to calibre

1) Using the metadata plugboard to add series information to the beginning of titles sent to the kobo as follows

{series:re(([^\s])[^\s]+(\s|$),\1)}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}
(This was so that he could sort by series order since that isn't an available option on his kobo)

I also created a custom column 'genre' and set the plugin to create bookshelves based on the genre and series columns and to automatically delete empty bookshelves.

Otherwise I use the default settings.

I created a custom column instead of just using tags to set up bookshelves because my husband didn't need or want bookshelves based on my tagging system (I use tablets for ereading).

[GeoffR]

My setup is probably not typical, so I don't suggest using it as a guide, but some parts might be useful.

I have all my books in Calibre in ePub format, but on my Glo I have some of them in KePub format synced from my Kobo account and others in ePub format sideloaded from Calibre. Calibre matches the kePub books on the Glo with the ePub version in Calibre, and so I can use the KoboUtilities plugin to change the covers and other metadata on the KePub books too.

I use KoboUtilities to add ISBN, publisher and date which show up in the book details page on the Glo.

I also use KoboUtilities to set the series at the same time I set the ISBN etc. rather than set it automatically, because I have some series indicies set to non-numeric values (such as 3,4,5 for an ombibus containing books 3, 4 and 5 of the series) by manually editing the device database and I don't want them to be overridden by Calibre which is unfortunately limited to numeric values.

I have the KoboTouch driver set to Upload covers for books and Keep cover aspect ratio, which generally results in much better looking cover images and thumbnails than allowing the device to generate them from the first page of the book.

In order to reduce the length of the filenames used by calibre when sending the book to the device (especially for books with multiple authors) I use this save template (e.g. the book 'Roseanna' by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö is saved as 'S/Sjowall, Roseanna'):

{author_sort[0]}/{author_sort:list_item(0,\,)}, {title}

I use this metadata plugboard to make the device show books with multiple authors properly (The device treats 'and' as a special word in author names so it sorts multiple authors correctly, e.g. 'Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö' is sorted alphabetically as if it had been written 'Sjöwall, Maj and Wahlöö, Per'.):

any format:KOBOTOUCH = ([{authors:'re(re($, '(.*) & ', '\1 and '), ' & ', ', ')'}] -> authors)

[Smartie]

Is there a way to sort books by added time(eg, the date and time I added books to Calibre?

Thanks

[davidfor]

You can sort the books on the device by "Recent". This is uses the later of when the book was added to the device, or the reading status was changed. So, if you add five books to the device, they will be the first in the list. Open a book, and it will become first. Mark a book as unread or finished and it will become first.

But, the added to calibre date is not transferred to the device in a way that the device uses. And I'm not sure if it is even in the metadata when the book is sent. You could manipulate the timestamps used for the Recent ordering, but opening a book would overwrite that date.

[sapphiresilver]

I have all of my books tagged by genre and use Calibre to turn the genres into shelves. I convert the books to KEPUB before putting them on the Kobo and only have a few on there at a time.
Regarding using Calibre's date: theoretically, you could use the metadata plugboard to add the date to the start of the title (year-month-day maybe?) and sort by title on the Kobo, but I don't think you can sort descending, so you'd end up with most recent books last? I haven't tried it, so I'm not sure how it would work, but it's an idea.

[Buhaj47]

When converting to EPUB's to KEPUB's, you could use settings I put in this thread. Just make sure to include settings rashkae suggested.