Is all this possible with a Kobo reader?

[AnneT]

I'm considering switching from my Boox T68 that has some hardware problems to a Kobo (Aura H20), but still have some questions...

1) Most of my books are epubs, and in a review on a Dutch site I just read that you have to convert them all to kepub before you can read them on a Kobo reader.
I'm wondering if this is correct? I have already purchased several books from Kobo, and none of them was a kepub. So I'm wondering if you purchase books from within the device, they are downloaded as kepub?
And maybe there is a desktop app from Kobo that can only sideload kepub?
All my are in Calibre, and I would be really surprised if I had to convert them all to kepub before I could upload them to my ereader.


2) With my Boox, it's very easy to have my books show up with there genre and sub-genres and sub-subgenres, as I have assigned those to my books within Calibre (thanks to the android app Calibre Companion). (Like `Historical Fiction/16th Century/Europe/England', or 'Non-fiction/Biology/Genetics')

I know Kobo has 'shelves', but as far as I know, there aren't 'nested' shelves. So I can't have a top-shelve 'non-fiction', containing several sub-shelves, that in their turn have still further divisions?

3) Even if the answer for 2 is negative, I would consider this device... unless it wouldn't be possible to have a book on more than 1 'shelve'. So: can a book have more than one tag, genre, collection, whatever? (A book that's both on 'shelve 'England', and on shelve 'historical fiction')

4) Is it possible to sort my books in different ways?
Sometimes I want to read a book in a certain genre, another day I want to read a book in this or that language, sometimes I just want to read a book that's situated in a particular country... (My Boox with Calibre Companion let me group my books by author, by genre, by language, by series, by (other) tags...) Is this possible with the Kobo software?

[frostschutz]

1) Kobo supports both EPUB and KEPUB. If you download them from Kobo directly you're more likely to get KEPUBs.

2) There are not nested shelves but nothing stopping you to do prefixes, so you can have a Fiction/Europe/England/ shelf and a Fiction/Europe/France shelf if you so desire. It's not nesting but a flat-view of a nested structure so to speak.

3) It's possible to have same book in multiple shelves.

4) The sorting options are kind of broken in the firmware, several of them just do not work the way they're supposed to no device is perfect

Of course that's not considering alternative reading software [koreader, coolreader] you can install which comes with its own ways of organizing books.

[barryem]

I read epub books on my Kobo all the time. I have tried converting to kepub to make a couple of the features work better and they did but they weren't important features and I haven't bothered doing it since. That was just an experiment. Epub works just fine.

Barry

[Ken Maltby]

KOReader works with calibre in a number of ways. The file structure that calibre will place on the device, if you send books from calibre to your device, can be defined in calibre. I will assume that you have that setup as you want it already.

KOReader can search the calibre files, on your device, by Title, Author, series and tags.

There are also Wireless features that allow you to interact with calibre running on your PC, and move files from the calibre library, to your device.

Normally I would suggest that you could try KOReader on Android, but I am not sure it is working correctly on the Boox devices yet. The Kobo and Kindle versions seem to be working much more consistently than the Android version. There are a lot of differences in the Android devices and the Kobos & Kindles are more predictable.

An install guide. You should use Version 8 of the Kobo Start Menu, if you will be using the stock Kobo software to read books as well.

Luck;
Ken

[AnneT]

Thanks to all of you...
@Ken Maltby: KOReader doesn't seem to work so well on Boox indeed. E.g. I haven't found out how to change the font size, which should be a rather obvious possibility I suppose.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by AnneT

Thanks to all of you...
@Ken Maltby: KOReader doesn't seem to work so well on Boox indeed. E.g. I haven't found out how to change the font size, which should be a rather obvious possibility I suppose.

When you have a book open, if you tap the top of the screen, you should see a dropdown menu and a popup menu at the bottom. The bottom menus include one to change the font size. Keeping in mind that some books have embedded settings that can interfere with the reader's formatting efforts. Another of the bottom menus will let you turn use of the embedded style sheets on or off.

You might want to take a look at post #3 of the thread I referenced.

Luck;
Ken

[eschwartz]

Pretty much nothing does nested collections, AFAIK. (I am speaking of builtin firmware for dedicated ereaders.)

Kobos don't, Nooks don't, Kindles don't, Sonys don't...

Though, actually, you can put a collection inside another collection on the Kindle, if you have an older device that runs a pre-Cloud Collections firmware, AND you are jailbroken and use the Collections Manager hack.
My old Kindle Touch handles all that just fine.

Honestly, I don't usually bother even though I *can* do it. I just dump all the collections in the main view. They're all uniquely named anyway.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Pretty much nothing does nested collections, AFAIK.

Kobos don't, Nooks don't, Kindles don't, Sonys don't...

Though, actually, you can put a collection inside another collection on the Kindle, if you have an older device that runs a pre-Cloud Collections firmware, AND you are jailbroken and use the Collections Manager hack.
My old Kindle Touch handles all that just fine.

Don't brag so much A Sony 350/650 with PRS+ can easily do it too

[AnneT]

And my Boox with Calibre Companion has not the slightest problems with nested collections... even 5 to 6 levels deep...