Goodreads, asw3, ASIN, integration help

[timbr00]

hi, ive spent days reading this forum and thinking I have found the answer but no luck so here I am hoping someone can help me.

I have about 2000 books loaded onto my Kindle in ASW3 format. the metadata and covers are all downloaded.

I have been trying to get my kindle to interact with Goodreads so I can mark a book as currently reading from my kindle and for it to update onto my Goodreads account.

it works for some of my books but not all and I can't see what the problem is.

in calibre under identifiers in the metadata I have various ids isbn, Goodreads, Amazon, mobi-asin. but not all of these for each book.

my Goodreads account does not have every book selected as a kindle version BUT I have used the Goodreads plugin and linked my calibre book to a book within Goodreads.

my thinking was that if calibre showed the Goodreads, amazon and asin identifiers, when sent to kindle it would work but has not been the case.

I have tried removing the book from the kindle, using the embed metadata option and copying it back, this didn't work

I have also tried the polish option which treats and duplicate file called original asw3 which will not open.

its almost like when I delete the file some part is remaining and not being over written when I add it back in.

please help!!!

[Penny_Dreadful]

You need the ASIN for each book, so that might be under IDs as amazon, asin, mobi-asin etc or you might need to look up the book on Amazon and add the ID yourself. This is what goodreads and your kindle use to track what book you are reading. I found it helped to pick an ID and stick with it, all my ASINs are "amazon:" You can use the bulk edit function to copy the ids from the other types asin etc. to amazon, if you ask in the Plugboard, template, and custom composite column recipes thread someone who is better than I am with search and repace regex can help you with that.

You also need to embed that ID into the ebook not just in have the ID in the Calibre metadata, you can use the Quality Check Plugin to do that.

Quality Check > Fix > Fix ASIN for Kindle Fire

or you can convert to KFX, the plugin for that will also embed the ASIN in the ebook, but this is more complicated.

Hope this helped!

[timbr00]

Thanks for your reply, should I only have asin or Amazon and remove Goodreads or isbn id’s?
I have used quality check but a lot of my books identifiers do not start bo*****

My files are showing as asw3 but the logo of the file type says kfx.

If the id’s are correct would you say the data has not embedded for some reason? I must admit that if I click embed for 1 book I don’t see anything happen.

[Penny_Dreadful]

You can keep your other IDs just make sure you only have one ID that's an asin and you need one for every book.

I'm not sure about your icons, if the file extension is azw3 they are probably azw files, the icon probably comes from the kindle app.

I never had any problems with the data not embedding when I use to do it this way, how are you checking if it worked? You wont notice anything obvious it's just adding a line to the books internal metadata.

A couple of ideas, make sure you remove the books from your device and add the books again after you have embedded the asin, the metadata dosen't get copied over to books already on your device. You could also try doing a azw to azw conversion after you have embedded the asin, it might help?

[timbr00]

hopefully I have attached an image, on the edit metadata page I have 1 amazon asin, marked as amazon:B0B51SQV1V,

in the top right the file thumbnail is AZW3 but in the image it says KF8 above the amazon A smile.



I'm clicking the embed metadata into files of a specific format from selected books followed by the ASW3 file (its the only file there) the pop up disappears and I don't see anything happen or appear in the jobs list.

so frustrating as I think i'ver done everything correctly.

[theducks]

A number of things:

Embed does not work the way you think it does.
Embed put (most of) the contents of the Current Calibre record into the book.
It NEVER rereads the Books Metadata AUTOMATICALLY. (bring it into Calibre:current record)

Your custom column #ASIN is showing a UUID style, not ASIN
(eg mobi-asin:B00JN8QAU4 ) (I will assume , your template parses {identifiers} for the value? )

[timbr00]

Originally Posted by theducks

A number of things:

Embed does not work the way you think it does.
Embed put (most of) the contents of the Current Calibre record into the book.
It NEVER rereads the Books Metadata AUTOMATICALLY. (bring it into Calibre:current record)

Your custom column #ASIN is showing a UUID style, not ASIN
(eg mobi-asin:B00JN8QAU4 ) (I will assume , your template parses {identifiers} for the value? )

thanks, im aware of issues with my custom basin column. I have the amazon B0 numbers for about 80 books, the rest for some reason are uuid style however that's my next problem to fix! you are correct it parses the identifier, {identifiers:select(amazon)}

im just trying to get one book doing as I want before working on the rest. any ideas what I need to do?

[Penny_Dreadful]

Using "Embed Metadata" won't embed the ASIN, you need to use the Quality Check Plugin to do that. If you have a valid ASIN and use the Quality Check to embed the ASIN (You won't see a difference it changes a internal metatdata value inside the book file) and load that book on to your kindle, what happens? Can you set it to currently reading and have it show up on your goodreads account?

The icon isn't important, my icons are a bit different because I'm on windows but my azw3 icons have kf8 on them, it's something to do with the Kindle App, not Calibre.

[timbr00]

Originally Posted by Penny_Dreadful

Using "Embed Metadata" won't embed the ASIN, you need to use the Quality Check Plugin to do that. If you have a valid ASIN and use the Quality Check to embed the ASIN (You won't see a difference it changes a internal metatdata value inside the book file) and load that book on to your kindle, what happens? Can you set it to currently reading and have it show up on your goodreads account?

The icon isn't important, my icons are a bit different because I'm on windows but my azw3 icons have kf8 on them, it's something to do with the Kindle App, not Calibre.

Ok so you're a genius!!!!! I'd put the ASIN in but not used quality check plugin.
deleted book then re-added the updated book. marked it as currently reading and it successfully showed in Goodreads!

it would be great if I could find a way of doing it without having to remove the kindle book. think I may have to ensure each book in my library has the ASIN, wipe the kindle and reload them all.