adding magazines to Calibre Library

[dhdurgee]

I just received a notice from Amazon of a change in behavior regarding magazines in my Kindle Unlimited subscription. In particular it says:

Magazines will count towards your 20-borrow limit: Magazines will share the 20-borrow limit with all other Kindle Unlimited content.

Magazines borrowed before 4/22/2026 will be removed from your Kindle Library on 7/22/2026: The new borrow experience described above goes into effect on 4/22/2026. Any magazine in your Library at the time of the cutover will enter a grace period from 4/22/2026 until 7/22/2026, and then will be removed. If you want to keep any of these issues, you can borrow them individually with the new experience after 4/22/2026, as long as they are still available in the Kindle Unlimited catalog. Anything borrowed with the new experience will remain in your Library.

Needless to say I am unhappy with this change. I plan to start adding my magazines to my Calibre library, but I am finding that I get messages about identical names. This is no surprise as the magazine name is constant, but the issue date should be added to address this.

Can this be added to Calibre? Is there a way to handle this already that I simply need to enable or configure?

Dave

[theducks]

UNLIMITED is really a loan, not a purchase. You are not supposed to keep those, so I do not expect the MR staff will approve of posts defeating the loan terms.

[dhdurgee]

I HAD subscriptions to these magazines on Amazon, but THEY CANCELLED THEM in September, 2023 leaving Kindle Unlimited as the only option to obtain magazines for the Kindle. Given it is "the only game in town" I would argue it qualifies for backing up.

Dave

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by dhdurgee

I HAD subscriptions to these magazines on Amazon, but THEY CANCELLED THEM in September, 2023 leaving Kindle Unlimited as the only option to obtain magazines for the Kindle. Given it is "the only game in town" I would argue it qualifies for backing up.

Dave

And you would be wrong.

[Karellen]

Can't you modify the magazine name for each edition?
Magazine - Issue 1
Magazine - 2025/08

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Can't you modify the magazine name for each edition?
Magazine - Issue 1
Magazine - 2025/08

There is no option to do so during the "Add books" dialog. It does appear that I can do so after the fact using Edit metadata. It would be better if I could do so during the "Add books" dialog, or if it were automated there by detecting the fact that this is a magazine and that the issue date included in the .mobi file should be added to the title.

Dave

[Karellen]

What if you go to Preferences►Adding Books.
In the first tab, is there anything there you can setup to add the issue number?
I am not at my PC, so can't test anything.

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by Karellen

What if you go to Preferences►Adding Books.
In the first tab, is there anything there you can setup to add the issue number?
I am not at my PC, so can't test anything.

I have "read metadata from file contents rather than filename" checked, which is appropriate. The date of the issue is included in the content, but that particular metadata does not appear to be retrieved and included in Calibre from the .mobi file.

There may be a way to tweak the Adding books to work, but it is unclear to me how to accomplish it.

Dave

[BetterRed]

I keep magazines in a separate library which uses the file name to populate the Author and Title columns (e.g. Granta - Issue 170) when Adding. And I 'rebadge' the Author and Title columns with composite columns — "Publication/#pubname" {author) and "Issue/#issue" {title}.

I don't buy my magazines (or anything else) from Amazon.

PS And I use the JobSpy plugin per library tweaks.

BR

[dhdurgee]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I keep magazines in a separate library which uses the file name to populate the Author and Title columns (e.g. Granta - Issue 170) when Adding. And I 'rebadge' the Author and Title columns with composite columns "Publication/#pubname" {author) and "Issue/#issue" {title}.

I don't buy my magazines (or anything else) from Amazon.

BR

Unfortunately Amazon is not so accommodating in naming their files, for example I see:

'Analog Science Fiction and Fact_B0D5MGBGGH.pobi'

So it is the magazine name with an ASIN like suffix and the "m" of mobi changed to a "p" instead. The issue date is included in the mobi metadata, but apparently that element is not imported into Calibre.

Dave

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by dhdurgee

Unfortunately Amazon is not so accommodating in naming their files, for example I see:

'Analog Science Fiction and Fact_B0D5MGBGGH.pobi'

So it is the magazine name with an ASIN like suffix and the "m" of mobi changed to a "p" instead. The issue date is included in the mobi metadata, but apparently that element is not imported into Calibre.

Dave

That encapsulates why I don't have anything to with Amazon.

BR