Collection kludge

[jgray]

Not wanting to deal with using Calibre to make Collections, I came up with a way to do it on the ereader, without manually going through thousands of books to add to a collection.

My method only makes sense if you have very few collections, and they don't overlap. I just wanted Fiction and Nonfiction collections. The major drawback to this method is that you lose the reading status of your books. Since I was starting with a new ereader, it wasn't a concern.

What I did was to put all of the nonfiction books in a folder called Nonfiction. I then created a new collection called Nonfiction, adding all the books.

The next step was to copy all of the fiction to the reader, in a different folder (the folders are for my convenience, not the ereader's). Now, when I created a collection for the fiction, I sorted by Recent, which put the fiction at the top of the list. Since I had only 54 nonfiction books, I selected All, then unselected the last 54. If you do these two steps on different days, you could sort by Date Added.

This is by no means an elegant solution, but in my case, it did the job, without having to use additional software.

If Kobo would allow us to create collections by folder and subfolder, it would make this process much easier. Perhaps they will add this in a future firmware (are you listening, Kobo?).

BTW, I assume that the list of which book is in a given collection is stored in the SQL database. From what I read online, epub 3 has metadata fields for this, but epub 2 does not. Epub 2 does have series, however.

[Cootey]

This is the solution I use as well when setting up a new device. By sideloading one folder at a time, I can easily add books to collections on my Kobo by filtering with "recent". The problem we have here is that Kobo supports sideloading, but doesn't sync sideloading. This means that if you have to set up your device again, none of your Kobo collections will retain which sideloaded books go where. You'll have to start over from scratch.

Some people suggest this is why letting Calibre handle collections is the best solution, but I find the setup with Calibre a bit too convoluted. I tried it out a few years back, but ultimately decided the solution you and I use the best suited for my needs.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[compurandom]

I thought someone wrote an add-on that would add books in a folder to a collection or something like that.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Some people suggest this is why letting Calibre handle collections is the best solution, but I find the setup with Calibre a bit too convoluted.

How so? Adding entries to a column manually?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Cootey

but I find the setup with Calibre a bit too convoluted.

Really?

It's a big reason why I prefer Kobo to Kindle. Also a once off edit made the Sony ereaders use the same Collection column instead of tags, though some people prefer tags.

I usually have to edit title, often have to edit author and/or series (sometimes from ALL CAPS to Title Case) and I mark if PD or bought when I add a book. Picking the collection from drop down list at the same time isn't onerous. Sometimes I fix the publication date to original publication instead of Gutenberg or Amazon release date. I might edit tags.

I couldn't go back to using ereaders without Collections (Kobo & Sony) & Series (Kobo) managed in Calibre.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cootey

This is the solution I use as well when setting up a new device. By sideloading one folder at a time, I can easily add books to collections on my Kobo by filtering with "recent". The problem we have here is that Kobo supports sideloading, but doesn't sync sideloading. This means that if you have to set up your device again, none of your Kobo collections will retain which sideloaded books go where. You'll have to start over from scratch.

Some people suggest this is why letting Calibre handle collections is the best solution, but I find the setup with Calibre a bit too convoluted. I tried it out a few years back, but ultimately decided the solution you and I use the best suited for my needs.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

But if you had done it with Calibre, you'd be done and if you ever get a new Kobo, you'd be good to go. Once sorted, that's it and adding new books would be trivial to sort out.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Really?

It's a big reason why I prefer Kobo to Kindle. Also a once off edit made the Sony ereaders use the same Collection column instead of tags, though some people prefer tags.

I usually have to edit title, often have to edit author and/or series (sometimes from ALL CAPS to Title Case) and I mark if PD or bought when I add a book. Picking the collection from drop down list at the same time isn't onerous. Sometimes I fix the publication date to original publication instead of Gutenberg or Amazon release date. I might edit tags.

I couldn't go back to using ereaders without Collections (Kobo & Sony) & Series (Kobo) managed in Calibre.

Well said!