Lean library or collection

[TreborPugly]

One of the great things about ebooks is how little space they can take up. I'm working on creating a nice ebook library for my daughter to use on her XO, using FBReader as the book reader. XO's only have 1 GB of built in flash memory for both OS and storage, and a SD card reader, which I'm using for the library. I have some spare 1 GB flash cards, which is sufficient for a pretty big ebook library, if they are efficiently stored.

I have alot of old ebooks that are zipped text files, which are nicely lean, but don't have metadata. I've been adding these into calibre, and I think I'd like to convert everything to epub since FBReader likes epub and gets the metadata out fine. I think FBReader can even search for any kind of file inside a zip archive, so I could zip them up by author for storage on the SD card. However, I want to get rid of non-text stuff, like cover images, or images generated to display meta-data.

I don't have any strong preference on whether or not I should be working to keep my calibre library itself lean, or if I can just create a collection that is lean - I'm open to any and all suggestions on ways to my goal of a collection of epub files without any images, taking up as little space as possible.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm pretty new to Calibre, but I do understand that the calibre library is not to be messed with outside of the program itself, and I shouldn't concern myself with what the library looks like or how much space it takes up, since I can save to disk however I want.
However, am I correct that if I want epubs without images, I have to generate them all that way first before I do a save to disk?

Thanks in advance!
-Treb.

[speakingtohe]

epub is generally 'lean' but not always on conversion.
Doesn't matter what is on your PC as far as different formats are. You can tell calibre in preferences to only send a specific format to the device

[Manichean]

I'm not sure how many books you want to add to the library, but as a reference, on my device, I'm using a 256MB card that holds about 170 books as ePub. These take up a total of about 85 MB, making the average ePub book some 540 KB in size. Most of these books where, by the way, created by converting in Calibre. That would mean that, without doing anything special to reduce size, you could fit about 1900 books on your 1 GB card.

[user_none]

Originally Posted by TreborPugly

... I'd like to convert everything to epub since FBReader likes epub and gets the metadata out fine. I think FBReader can even search for any kind of file inside a zip archive, so I could zip them up by author for storage on the SD card.

Epub are ziped already. You won't get anything extra from this. At worst your single zip will be larger than the individual files combined.

Originally Posted by TreborPugly

However, I want to get rid of non-text stuff, like cover images, or images generated to display meta-data.

I'd recommend editing the converted files with Sigil to remove the non text content.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by TreborPugly

One of the great things about ebooks is how little space they can take up. I'm working on creating a nice ebook library for my daughter to use on her XO, using FBReader as the book reader. XO's only have 1 GB of built in flash memory for both OS and storage, and a SD card reader, which I'm using for the library. I have some spare 1 GB flash cards, which is sufficient for a pretty big ebook library, if they are efficiently stored.

I have alot of old ebooks that are zipped text files, which are nicely lean, but don't have metadata. I've been adding these into calibre, and I think I'd like to convert everything to epub since FBReader likes epub and gets the metadata out fine. I think FBReader can even search for any kind of file inside a zip archive, so I could zip them up by author for storage on the SD card. However, I want to get rid of non-text stuff, like cover images, or images generated to display meta-data.

I don't have any strong preference on whether or not I should be working to keep my calibre library itself lean, or if I can just create a collection that is lean - I'm open to any and all suggestions on ways to my goal of a collection of epub files without any images, taking up as little space as possible.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm pretty new to Calibre, but I do understand that the calibre library is not to be messed with outside of the program itself, and I shouldn't concern myself with what the library looks like or how much space it takes up, since I can save to disk however I want.
However, am I correct that if I want epubs without images, I have to generate them all that way first before I do a save to disk?

Thanks in advance!
-Treb.

I have the entire Baen free library and Much Much More with covers and internal illustrations.
1000+ (mostly EPUB, no Manga) books: = 761MB

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by user_none

Epub are ziped already. You won't get anything extra from this. At worst your single zip will be larger than the individual files combined.



I'd recommend editing the converted files with Sigil to remove the non text content.

Zipping book collections by author might seem a good idea but it will really slow down your device as well decrease battery life as it would have to do a lot of work to access a each book

[TreborPugly]

Thanks for all the advice. The key things I've gotten so far is:

1. epubs are already compressed, so zipping won't save me anything.
2. Sigil recommended to edit epubs to take out non-text.
3. 1 GB SD card should be plenty of space for even a big collection.

If I have a bunch of nice text-only epubs in my Calibre library, but have a cover file for each book (it looks like Calibre stores these as jpgs, outside of the ebook file, no matter what formats you have), and then make some changes to my metadata that I want to get into the epub files, my understanding is that I need to reconvert - ie epub to epub. When I do that reconvert, what options do I set to make sure it doesn't put that cover file into the epub file?

[itimpi]

If you have a cover file then Calibre will store the cover file in the ePub as part of the conversion process (this is why you need a conversion to update it ). Ignore the fact that it also keeps a copy of the cover file outside the epub - this is just because not all formats support storing the cover file. You will not need this free-standing cover file when reading epub books on the device as the epub file is self-contained.

[TreborPugly]

Originally Posted by itimpi

If you have a cover file then Calibre will store the cover file in the ePub as part of the conversion process (this is why you need a conversion to update it ). Ignore the fact that it also keeps a copy of the cover file outside the epub - this is just because not all formats support storing the cover file. You will not need this free-standing cover file when reading epub books on the device as the epub file is self-contained.

I know it will insert the cover into the epub. I'd like to be able to have covers in my Calibre library, but I also want to create a bunch of epubs without their covers, to put into my "lean" collection. Is there an option to omit covers when doing a bulk or individual convert?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by TreborPugly

then make some changes to my metadata that I want to get into the epub files, my understanding is that I need to reconvert

You do not need to reconvert any epub for changes to metadata. Metadata will be updated when export your books from calibre's library using the Send to device, Save to disk or Connect to folder features. Reconverting an epub is only needed to change formatting or adding a cover.