Sort by published date on sideloaded books

[nabsltd]

I'm converting from EPUB to KFX and sideloading to a Scribe and a Paperwhite 11.

All the EPUBs have the publication date in the content.opf file, like:

<dc:date opf:event="publication">2010-10-05</dc:date>

I've also tried with:

<dc:date>2010-10-05</dc:date>

For all the books, the book record in Calibre has a matching date to the date in the content.opf file in the "Published" metadata field.

But, it does not appear that this data being picked up by the Kindle, as sorting by "Published Date" gives the same result as sorting by "Title".

Any ideas on where this might be breaking...the metadata in the Calibre database, the metadata in the EPUB, the KFX output plugin, or the Kindle itself.

[jhowell]

I am traveling now but I will look into it later in the week.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

I
But, it does not appear that this data being picked up by the Kindle, as sorting by "Published Date" gives the same result as sorting by "Title".

I don't have any "sort by published date" on my PW3.

Sort Grid or List
Recent
Title
Author
Collection

Filter Read or Unread
Books
Comics
Periodicals
Docs
Collections

I've never seen a sort by date of any kind stored in the ebook (I think Recent is based on order opened / added)

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I don't have any "sort by published date" on my PW3.

Sort Grid or List
Recent
Title
Author
Collection

What firmware version are you running?

My kindle on 5.16.2.1 firmware shows “Sort by” options for Grid and List of:
Most recent
Title
Author
Publication date

Collections is a choice in “View options” along with Grid and List, not a Sort option.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jhowell

What firmware version are you running?
…

Collections is a choice in “View options” along with Grid and List, not a Sort option.

Ah, the PW3 I looked at has no collections. The other has. But Collections is a Sort option instead of Recent, Title or Author. I just checked.

I've 5.12.4 on one and 5.13.3 on the other.

We don't read on them now, except I might test any new style used for our own stuff to see if it might work OK. Though Amazon conversion from Epub isn't quite the same.

So the they've added new sorts? We stopped upgrading FW as each new GUI often seemed poorer. Also Sync to Amazon broke Collections on the one with collections.

The K3 and DXG I have are quite different. TTS is easier to use on them than Voice View with a USB audio dongle. The only advantages really of PW1 (which is in the family) and PW2 over K3 for azw3 is the touch, front light and better DPI. The PW3 also seems to have a bug on certain methods of image sizing and get it badly wrong, but same file (azw3) on a K3 is OK.

[Quoth]

Should I keep one at 5.12.4 for test and update the other to 5.16.2.1.1 (also for test)?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...MQC26VQQMM8XSW

Kindle Paperwhite (7th Generation)

5.16.2.1.1
Download Software Update
View Release Notes

It will make no difference to Download & Transfer when buying a Kindle eBook?

[DNSB]

It'll make no difference to Download and Transfer. I keep one of my two Kindles on an older firmware version while the other is kept up to date just to see if there are any display differences on an ebook I'm editing.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It'll make no difference to Download and Transfer. I keep one of my two Kindles on an older firmware version while the other is kept up to date just to see if there are any display differences on an ebook I'm editing.

That's what I thought. Thanks.

Has there been a difference?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Has there been a difference?

Nothing that I've really noticed.

[Quoth]

I updated the 5.13.x to 5.16.2.1.1
The title sort and publication sort are different for files from Calibre (sent by USB before update and from epub converted from docx with publication dates manually added via edit Metadata).

Though there are the added features, the GUI IMO is massive step backwards compared to 5.12.x and 5.12.x. Maybe I'll add a comparision / critique later in the Kindle section of MR.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

But, it does not appear that this data being picked up by the Kindle, as sorting by "Published Date" gives the same result as sorting by "Title".

Any ideas on where this might be breaking...the metadata in the Calibre database, the metadata in the EPUB, the KFX output plugin, or the Kindle itself.

I found a bug in the KFX Output plugin that caused it to ignore the publication date when converting to KFX. That will be fixed in the next release of the plugin. In the mean time the publication date can be set in KFX using the Embed Metadata function in calibre.

---

To test this I generated several KFX books with varying publication dates. After side loading them to my Kindle they always sorted by title when publication date was selected. This matches your findings.

For a further test I put my Kindle into airplane mode and then purchased several (free) Kindle books. I downloaded them on my PC and transferred them to the Kindle via USB. I examined the metadata of the AZW3 files and all had correct publication dates. Those books also sorted by title when publication date was selected.

I then took the Kindle out of airplane mode and synced it. Doing that made the covers appear for the sideloaded purchased books and also caused them to sort properly by publication date.

Based on this testing as far as I can tell the actual publication date used for sorting appears to be downloaded separately from Amazon's servers, as is the metadata used for series grouping. It is unlikely the sorting by publication date will be possible for self-generated side loaded books.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I then took the Kindle out of airplane mode and synced it. Doing that made the covers appear for the sideloaded purchased books and also caused them to sort properly by publication date.

Based on this testing as far as I can tell the actual publication date used for sorting appears to be downloaded separately from Amazon's servers, as is the metadata used for series grouping. It is unlikely the sorting by publication date will be possible for self-generated side loaded books.

Thanks for the thorough debugging.

My primary reason for wanting the published date from the file is that often Amazon uses the eBook publishing date, which is useless for generating a meaningful sort.