Problem w/author adding iBook collection

captpete · 12-29-2011, 04:47 PM

I am trying to add an iBook (about a 1000 non-DRM EPUB) collection to Calibre. There are a couple of problems.

1) When I add the books using metadata I get the author as "ln, fn" in the author field (author is listed correctly as "ln, fn" in the author_sort field). I want "fn ln" in the author field. I can't add using the filename as a lot of them are truncated.

2) The series and series number are added as the first part of the title field, separated from the title by "- " (mostly, I can handle the odd ones manually). I want the series and series number to populate the series field correctly.

Here's an example of a filename:
"A Series of Unfortunate Events 1- The Ba - Snicket_ Lemony.epub"

and here's what it looks like in Calibre:
Title | Author | ... |Series
A Series of Unfortunate Events 1- The Bad Beginning | Snicket, Lemony | ... |{empty}|

Any possibilities of correctly adding these books? I am really not looking forward to editing 1000 books by hand [Grin]. I could deal with the series stuff as not all are part of a series but there are several hundreds of authors.

lairdb · 01-08-2012, 12:15 PM

All these can be solved using the edit metadata/in bulk/search and replace, and some careful work with regular expressions.

For example, "Lname, Fname" in the author field can be reversed with
search field: authors
search for: (.*), (.*)
replace with: \2 \1

Watch out for those occasional authors whose names genuinely contain commas, e.g. "Alexandre Dumas, pere".

A similar (but more complex) recipe can move the correct chunks out of the title into the series field, and then a second pass to fixup the title.

12-29-2011, 04:47 PM	#1
captpete Member Posts: 18 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Florida Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8" (2017)	Problem w/author adding iBook collection I am trying to add an iBook (about a 1000 non-DRM EPUB) collection to Calibre. There are a couple of problems. 1) When I add the books using metadata I get the author as "ln, fn" in the author field (author is listed correctly as "ln, fn" in the author_sort field). I want "fn ln" in the author field. I can't add using the filename as a lot of them are truncated. 2) The series and series number are added as the first part of the title field, separated from the title by "- " (mostly, I can handle the odd ones manually). I want the series and series number to populate the series field correctly. Here's an example of a filename: "A Series of Unfortunate Events 1- The Ba - Snicket_ Lemony.epub" and here's what it looks like in Calibre: Title \| Author \| ... \|Series A Series of Unfortunate Events 1- The Bad Beginning \| Snicket, Lemony \| ... \|{empty}\| Any possibilities of correctly adding these books? I am really not looking forward to editing 1000 books by hand [Grin]. I could deal with the series stuff as not all are part of a series but there are several hundreds of authors.

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01-08-2012, 12:15 PM	#2
lairdb dog ear Posts: 53 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: lots	All these can be solved using the edit metadata/in bulk/search and replace, and some careful work with regular expressions. For example, "Lname, Fname" in the author field can be reversed with search field: authors search for: (.), (.) replace with: \2 \1 Watch out for those occasional authors whose names genuinely contain commas, e.g. "Alexandre Dumas, pere". A similar (but more complex) recipe can move the correct chunks out of the title into the series field, and then a second pass to fixup the title.

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