How Do You Organize

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

We all have different needs and willingness to organize our books. Here is my "low maintenance" version. I've tried Calibre but I'm always changing my computers around and Calibre is a casualty.

Calibre will do most of what you want. Changing computers is NOT a problem. I have three different computers that I use. The thing is I keep Calibre on all of them. My libraries are networked on two of the computers. I can switch computers easily and have Calibre access my libraries.

Calibre I can easily keep track of what I've bought & read. It just works very well. It also keeps my books in an orderly fashion and I can easily find what I want and see if I already have something and if I've read it or not.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Calibre will do most of what you want.

I suspect that a big part of realizing how useful it is is when you investigate configuring the toolbar. There are a lot of useful things that are "hidden" there in that configuration list on the left.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haertig

My biggest problem is finding out when one of the authors that I have read and liked releases (or announces) a new book in the series. I don't have a good method of handling this.

If you are reading a series and want to know when a book is coming out in that series, try FictFact. It works pretty well.

If you are not on Goodreads, you should be. I do get email sometimes telling me of books coming out by author's in my list.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

I suspect that a big part of realizing how useful it is is when you investigate configuring the toolbar. There are a lot of useful things that are "hidden" there in that configuration list on the left.

Custom columns as well.

[Ripplinger]

I'm another one that relies on Calibre. Whenever I get a new book, I add it to Calibre to remove the DRM and convert to epub if it came from Amazon (I've been buying quite a bit from Amazon lately). My Calibre library is backed up nightly (with other important files, photos, etc.) onto another drive, and periodically backed up to 2 other drives. Some of the books are in Dropbox in case I have to reset my reader while away from home (never happened yet, probably because I'm prepared for it).

I used to go back and edit each book with corrections after reading them, but it was getting too time-consuming, time I decided at my age that I'd rather spend reading a new book. I will still do it for some of my favorite books though.

As for my favorite authors and being aware of their new books, most all of them have a website you can sign up at to get notified of new releases, that works out very well for me. A lot I find just browsing books, but the email notices mean I don't miss anything I've been waiting for without spending time searching.

Edit: One other big thing I do is to add an extra column in Calibre for the date I finished a book. Just clicking in the box enters the day's date. That lets me keep track of which books I've read, and if I sort the books by that column, it's easy enough to see how many books I've read in any given year.

[ilovejedd]

Maybe a holdover from my library borrowing habits (borrow, read, rinse and repeat), I just buy and then download directly on the device I want to read on. Granted, I tend not to buy books unless it's something I wish to re-read or it's cheap (under $5).

I do download to PC and dump my ebooks into Calibre for DRM-free archival but I'm not religious when it comes to updating metadata nor do I use it to keep track of read/unread. I'd usually have metadata corrected prior to any conversions, though.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I buy an ebook when I'm ready to begin reading it. Then I read it. The end.

I don't think I've done that since 3 weeks after I got my first job (age 15).

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you are reading a series and want to know when a book is coming out in that series, try FictFact. It works pretty well.

FictFact closed already. I use FantasticFiction to notify me when a new book comes out. It is limited to 100 authors at this time (I've got 99).

As to OP's question, I use Calibre so have nothing else to suggest. When I buy a book, I immediately download and load into Calibre. If I already own the book, I am alerted about the duplicate. I then research where the book came from. This actually happened about a week ago - bought all the Mark Edwards books on special at Amazon and found out that I had 2 from B&N. Returned those to Amazon.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

After reading all of the stuff that you do do I'm a bit surprised that you don't also edit the formatting.

This is actually a fair point. There are two responses I guess.

First is that I've never really got my head around regexes. I can do them but it always takes me way more trial and error than I'd like. Anyway what that means is that whereas I've scripted a lot of tasks, I have no toolkit of "standard edits" that I can apply. So editing is a manual task that takes a while. So it has to be egregious for me to break out Sigil to fix.

Second, I think that a lot of people edit to change formatting to their preferred style rather than fix "errors". I have preferences but I can live with someone else's so long as the text is legible and not distracting. The kind of thing I consider an error and would want to fix is where a close tag is missing and a whole block of text shows up as bold underlined instead of a single word. Or messed up tables.

I also think, and I could be wrong, that the things that are easiest to fix are the formatting preferences, whereas the instances of what I call "errors" tend to be individual and so not susceptible to standard edits.

Oh and if it requires my actual attention rather than simply a few standard global replaces, then I'd much rather do it after I've read the book and can't be spoiled. But once I've read it it only makes sense to edit if I plan to re-read.

[pdurrant]

calibre. With the addition of a column for whether I've read the book, and one for the date I finished reading it, and another for the subseries.

calibre just makes it all possible.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I don't think I've done that since 3 weeks after I got my first job (age 15).

So getting a job gave you ebook OCD? How odd.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Anabana

My biggest gripe with Goodreads is their series names often do not match the series name on author websites and/or series name on publisher websites.

Overdrive library books in the same series sometimes get tagged slightly differently, so if you click on the tag for "A John Smith mystery" hoping to see the rest of the series, you won't see the books that are tagged "John Smith Mysteries". Also, some series books are numbered while others are not so if you want to know the order you have to look elsewhere.

For mysteries, I like http://stopyourekillingme.com/ This site does not keep track of your books but does provide simple lists. Once you pull up the page for an author it shows their books listed by series. There are footnotes to indicate if the book is connected to another series by the same author.

[Paperbackstash]

I use Goodreads to shelve everything. When browsing used bookstores especially, I have to sometimes double-check to see if I don't already own a book. Scanning the book ISBN or manually typing it brings it up (or not) on my shelves, and has saved me from duplicate purchases. I have custom top shelves on there sorting everything from Kindle Unlimited, TBR (by genre), read, wishlist (by genre), Audible wishlist, Library-audio, etc. Once something is read, it goes to the read shelf, and a non-exclusive shelf dictates what format it's in.

I also use a large book spreadsheet to track reading and reading cycles (in progress) for my own amusement and back-up. Still much work to be done, I'm trying to go back to at least 2011.

I use Calibre for PC with digital e-books as well, wish there was an easier way to sort and store Audiobooks with the program also. I don't have a huge Audiobook collection, but it's something I'd like to sort and make notes with, so right now I've been using my spreadsheet with quick notes (kind-of). Browsing from Audible's library feature is tedious, and of course only shows books you've obtained through them. I like to sort a bit with Calibre but I don't find it useful on the run since I don't

With reviews I do Goodreads and my website, but it seems like I'm 6 months behind on reviews anymore and not into it as much. If something happens to my review at one site, it helps to back it up from the other. I have a LibraryThing account - I like that website for groups and profile features, but I find it too tedious for book cataloging.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by Tarana

FictFact closed already. I use FantasticFiction to notify me when a new book comes out. It is limited to 100 authors at this time (I've got 99).
.

I just signed up for this and added several. Do you know how to add new authors? Two of my favorites aren't on there and I've searched every possible way.

Edit - Now four of mine aren't there, so this may not be a reliable way for me to track new releases as a back-up. I use Goodreads now but it's not foolproof.

[MarjaE]

Calibre.

I need to keep track of sources for research and for game design. I want to keep track of fiction I've read and enjoyed. Or not enjoyed, to avoid it.

I also need to keep track of which sources address important topics, I need to keep track of which pdfs have been pre-processed using which tools and whether they crash my Kindle, etc.

I also need some way to simplify the export and organization of the more important and/or interesting works. Kindle Collections Plugin does that for the Kindle.

[ShortNet]

When authoralerts closed someone here recommended fictfact, fantasticfiction, and tracknewbook.com Sadly fictfact has now also imploded. However, tracknewbook is still going. They don't keep track of series, but they will let you know when an author's new book comes out somewhat reliably (they are better for some authors than others).