Help with some things that have stumped me?

[adolwyn]

Hello everyone!

After a fun three month journey taming my wildly disorganized Calibre library, I'm back. Now that my Calibre is organized with correct identifiers, goodreads ids, titles, authors, series, metadata, covers, etc, etc, etc, I'm looking to do some next steps things.

I've added a TL;DR (too long; didn't read) section at the end of this for folks who don't want to read my thought process.

I promise, I've read everything I could find on reddit and this forum, but my search skills when I'm digging through a 117 page plugin thread aren't awesome (I'm looking at you, Goodreads Sync plugin thread).

Here's the situation:
I have my Calibre set up with good metadata, but my Goodreads shelves definitely don't match what's in Calibre. I'd like to sync my Calibre unread books to a Goodreads "tbr" shelf. I downloaded the Goodreads Sync plugin but the instructions and I are not getting along. I don't understand the difference between "Shelf Add..." and "Sync" I guess?

As I was trying to get that working, I realized that I probably needed to get tags for reading status set up in Calibre, because I feel like that's probably how Goodreads Sync wants to work? Or at the very least, using tags to create some virtual libraries so I could easily filter books I wanted to send to goodreads might be smart?

But then I wondered how I would know what books hadn't been sent to Goodreads yet for newly added books if I had them set to the same status as my books that have already been sent to goodreads? It seems to be discouraged to just keep bulk sending things like to-be-read through the plugin if they've already been sent, right?

Then, my remarkably ADHD brain wandered off to thinking about if there was a way I could create a custom column that would automatically set statuses based on other columns. For example:
I have a #kobo_percent_read column where 100% means it's finished, and 1-99% means it's currently being read, and 0% (or more realistically just a blank box) means it's still to be read. I found a thread at this link that tells me how to do it for read/reading/unread, but I also have statuses like Abandoned/Paused/etc.

Is there a way to kind of... have one master column based on the kobo_percent_read but *also* on another column that has the other statuses? Or is that silly?

So the TL;DR questions:
1. Can someone walk me through their Goodreads Sync workflow so I can better picture if it's something that will work for my library (and please don't tell me to read the plugin instructions because I've read them 1000 times and they don't make sense to my brain)?

2. How does one know which books have and have not been synced to GoodReads using the plugin to save constantly resyncing them?

3. If I add books to my Goodreads TBR shelf that aren't in Calibre, will it generate a new entry if I sync from Goodreads to Calibre?

4. How do people suggest tracking reading status in Calibre? Is it better to have a manual list to select from? Is it better to use the automated three-status way from the thread I linked (100% read, 1-99% read, not read)?

5. Is it possible to build a custom column that can take information from the kobo_read_percent column AND a custom status column to keep all that information together and not in two separate columns (read/reading/tbr in one column and abandoned/paused/try later/etc in a second column)?

Thanks for any help, advice, or suggestions you all have!

[fidvo]

I don't use Goodreads myself, so I can't answer most of your questions, but for #4, you should ask yourself what you really need to keep track of. Because I looked at the thread with the template you mentioned, and it seems like overkill 99% of cases.

Start with the idea of a custom column with fixed values, something like:

To Read
Reading
Finished
Paused
Abandoned
Try Later

Then update this column manually whenever the status of a book changes, e.g. you finish reading a book or start a new one.

This is probably the simplest solution to implement. Do you need anything more than this, and if so, why?

I can understand needing some kind of automation if you're currently reading 500 books, but manually updating the column shouldn't be too much effort even if you're juggling 20 books. And if that's the case, I suspect most of them aren't actually current and therefore should be reclassified as "Paused" or "Abandoned" instead, which you would have to update manually anyway.

But that's not something I can answer for you. It's really up to you to decide how complex of a solution you actually need.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by adolwyn

5. Is it possible to build a custom column that can take information from the kobo_read_percent column AND a custom status column to keep all that information together and not in two separate columns (read/reading/tbr in one column and abandoned/paused/try later/etc in a second column)?

Yes. You can have a column built from other columns (you can specify this in Column Type when you create a custom column).

I don't use Goodreads either, so can't answer any of the questions about that.

[JSWolf]

Ask about the Goodreads plugin in the Goodreads plugin thread.