Series Titles and Numbers

[jgoulden]

Although it has taken some time to wrap my mind around the way Calibre likes to do some things (file/folder re-structuring mainly), I do like the program.

One thing that irks me though is the way it handles series. Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong and my procedures/mindset are incorrect, but it frustrates me to no end that Calibre doesn't append a series number to the end of a book title when it copies it to a device. Heck, maybe I'm doing it wrong.

A little background . . .
Before I started to populate Calibre with my ebook collection, I had all of my titles setup in this kind of structure - "Book Title - Series - Series #". All of the books were placed neatly into a folder structure such as - "Author\Series". This made it easy to find a particular book, and I could tell at a glance which book I was looking for. Handling multiple versions of the same title (i.e. ePub, FB2, etc) was a bit of a pain in this fashion, so I started using Calibre.

Of course Calibre restructures things in it's own fashion, so I've had to come to grips with not being able to easily browse the folder structure on my PC to find a book. Which, in the end, is fine as Calibre should be used for it's intended purpose - cataloging books. I can still gripe about it though.

Once I started to enter books into Calibre, I noticed the option for assigning series' title and number. This seemed like an elegant way to handle the naming scheme, without cluttering up the book name in the listing, so I renamed all of my books and setup the series/numbers to coincide.

Now, when I send a book to my device it doesn't in any way signify what series or number in a series a book is. It just shows the plain book name. Why is that? Unless I'm missing something (entirely possible), it seems like a major fault in the way books are handled on the device.

Yes, I could do a work-around and setup the 'Save to Disk" feature to handle the book titles, series information and folder structure the way I want, but shouldn't those same kind of options also be available for when you are sending a book to a device?

I don't want to rename all of my books all over again to put the series name and number back in the title. Especially since that seems superfluous given Calibre's ability to track that information separately. I also don't want to use the "Send to Disk" option, when there is a perfectly viable (if flawed) method for sending books directly to a device.

Please, if I'm doing something wrong, tell me.

[theducks]

Peek at this thread.
Save to Disk rather than Save to device gives you options when your reader does not have a "Browse by Meta-Data" feature.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...40&postcount=9

[itimpi]

I believe that the option to generate a custom output file names (as is possible on the Save to Disk function) is on the TODO list. In the "Save to Device" option might well want it to be stored in the title sent over in the metadata as many reader devices ignore the actual filename when displaying their book lists.

The big problem here tends to be the fact that the readers themselves often have no onept of a series. On the Sony Devices they do at least have the concept of a collection to which series is mapped, but other readers do not seem to have even this much.

As I enderstand it even the ePub standard which is what is becoming the new default standard format for ebooks does not specify a standard way to store series information in the metadata. If it did I am sure that more reader devices would start to support Series as a concept.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by itimpi

I believe that the option to generate a custom output file names (as is possible on the Save to Disk function) is on the TODO list. In the "Save to Device" option might well want it to be stored in the title sent over in the metadata as many reader devices ignore the actual filename when displaying their book lists.

The big problem here tends to be the fact that the readers themselves often have no onept of a series. On the Sony Devices they do at least have the concept of a collection to which series is mapped, but other readers do not seem to have even this much.

As I enderstand it even the ePub standard which is what is becoming the new default standard format for ebooks does not specify a standard way to store series information in the metadata. If it did I am sure that more reader devices would start to support Series as a concept.

You have to set the Save to Disk pattern in Preferences. It works if your reader allows saving to disk.

[mores]

That would be awesome. I use Calibre to send files to my iPhone via Stanza, and Stanza does not appreciate the series metadata. So if calibre could work around this flaw, I would be one even happier camper!

[jgoulden]

Originally Posted by itimpi

In the "Save to Device" option might well want it to be stored in the title sent over in the metadata as many reader devices ignore the actual filename when displaying their book lists.

I think you're dead on with the need to store it in the metadata when doing the transfer. Although I really feel like the "Save to Disk" option is a bit of a kludge, I tried it anyway and got the exact results you describe. The reader ignored the file name and went with that was saved in the metadata for that title.

So, "Save to Disk" isn't even going to work as a stop-gap measure. *sigh*

[theducks]

Originally Posted by jgoulden

I think you're dead on with the need to store it in the metadata when doing the transfer. Although I really feel like the "Save to Disk" option is a bit of a kludge, I tried it anyway and got the exact results you describe. The reader ignored the file name and went with that was saved in the metadata for that title.

So, "Save to Disk" isn't even going to work as a stop-gap measure. *sigh*

Ah, your device uses Meta data (mine does not, so I came up with the other way).
Set your Meta data.
Then Convert again, with the convert set to Include the Metadata.

If you change the Meta data, you need to convert again (EPUB->EPUB seems to pick up the new Metadata )

[kovidgoyal]

You simply have to wait for devices to support series metadata. Until they do, there's really not much that can be done about it

[Terisa de morgan]

One question: If I have a book which belongs to two different series, each of them with a different number, can I register both series/number in the metadata?

[kovidgoyal]

Not using the series field bu you could add the second series to the comments/tags