Only keep epub of each book

[blaenk]

I have my library full of epub books and a kindle device. I configured calibre to auto-convert to azw3 when I send to the kindle, but I only want to keep the epub versions. Is there a way for calibre to delete the converted format once it's been sent to the device, so that only the original copy is kept in the library?

The reason is that I keep my library synced to a backup service, but I have very slow internet and it kills me to have to upload each book essentially twice, especially when I only want my kindle device to have the azw3 as there's no reason for me to keep it around. A lot of my books are pretty big for epubs too, in the 30-80MBs in range (textbooks for example), which is very bad for my very slow connection.

I could manually go in and delete each azw3 right after I send the book, but that's a pain to do manually especially because the service I use watches my calibre library and immediately begins synchronizing the books as soon as they appear, so I'd have to be quick, which would be even more inconvenient for bulk sends.

So I'm wondering if this is possible with calibre: only keeping one format around, so that conversions due to sending to device are removed once sent.

[Adoby]

No. Sorry. I don't think so.

There might be some settings for your sync software to ignore some filetypes. That could perhaps be used to avoid having some specific book formats copied?

Also it may be dangerous to have other programs working on the calibre library while calibre is running. If something serious should happen to the library, the synced copy of the library may not be fully/immediately usable and a restore becomes unnecessarily difficult. I recommend that you shut down the sync software while you have calibre running.

[eschwartz]

Correct -- there is no way.

You can always leave the AZW3 in and once it is synced once, it shouldn't need to be synced again.

[blaenk]

Do you guys know where I can suggest this as a feature, to gauge how receptive the developers may be in accepting a patch for it if I implemented it myself?

There might be some settings for your sync software to ignore some filetypes. That could perhaps be used to avoid having some specific book formats copied?

Also it may be dangerous to have other programs working on the calibre library while calibre is running. If something serious should happen to the library, the synced copy of the library may not be fully/immediately usable and a restore becomes unnecessarily difficult. I recommend that you shut down the sync software while you have calibre running.

Thanks for the response. I'm using dropbox which unfortunately doesn't have any such feature as far as I'm aware. Thanks for the heads up, but I don't think I have to worry about it corrupting anything thankfully. If that ever did happen I could just revert to the previously saved version. That said, it's not bad to keep in mind, thanks.

You can always leave the AZW3 in and once it is synced once, it shouldn't need to be synced again.

Thanks but that's actually what I'm trying to avoid. Like I said, I have a very slow upload speed and many of my books are megabytes in size. Not only does it take a prohibitively long time, but my entire connection slows to a crawl; it's a mess.

[eschwartz]

What some people do anyway if they will be using Dropbox with calibre, is mirror their calibre library with a one-way sync, using something like linux's rsync or Windows programs like FreeFileSync or DeltaCopy. This prevents Dropbox changes from accidentally clobbering your library, since the master folder never gets touched.

A benefit here is that you can exclude *.azw3 from the mirror.

[BookJunkieLI]

Originally Posted by adoby

Also it may be dangerous to have other programs working on the calibre library while calibre is running. If something serious should happen to the library, the synced copy of the library may not be fully/immediately usable and a restore becomes unnecessarily difficult. I recommend that you shut down the sync software while you have calibre running.

Originally Posted by blaenk

Thanks for the response. I'm using dropbox which unfortunately doesn't have any such feature as far as I'm aware. Thanks for the heads up, but I don't think I have to worry about it corrupting anything thankfully. If that ever did happen I could just revert to the previously saved version. That said, it's not bad to keep in mind, thanks.

You can pause Dropbox syncing and I highly recommend that you do while working in Calibre. To pause Dropbox simply click on the little icon in your system tray, then click the gear at the top right of the menu that appears. One of the options is to pause syncing. Follow the same steps to resume syncing.

I've been using Dropbox with Calibre for several years and while I've never had a problem if I'm just browsing or exporting to my reader I always pause syncing if I'm editing metadata or doing imports. Not doing so will invariably lead to 'lost' files. Thankfully I've never had any major corruption issues the few times I've forgotten to pause syncing. And I do run the Check Library every few weeks to be sure.

If you're just using Dropbox as a backup, and not because you need/want to access Calibre from multiple locations, then I recommend a setup like @eschwartz suggested. If you do need to access from multiple locations something similar could probably be setup, I just haven't gotten around to figuring out the logistics of it myself.

[blaenk]

What some people do anyway if they will be using Dropbox with calibre, is mirror their calibre library with a one-way sync, using something like linux's rsync or Windows programs like FreeFileSync or DeltaCopy. This prevents Dropbox changes from accidentally clobbering your library, since the master folder never gets touched.

A benefit here is that you can exclude *.azw3 from the mirror.

Thanks, this actually sounds like a good idea. It'd just be nice if it were built-in, since those azw3s will still be taking up space. Sure this can go around forever: use some script or external tool to remove the azw3 files, and so on. I'm still interested in looking into implementing this but I'd rather not do it if it's not something that would be welcome into Calibre. I guess I'll post to the bug tracker about it.

You can pause Dropbox syncing and I highly recommend that you do while working in Calibre. To pause Dropbox simply click on the little icon in your system tray, then click the gear at the top right of the menu that appears. One of the options is to pause syncing. Follow the same steps to resume syncing.

I'm well aware that you can pause dropbox' syncing. I was referring to a feature for specifying a filter/patterns to exclude from the syncing, which dropbox doesn't have as far as I know.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by blaenk

I'm well aware that you can pause dropbox' syncing. I was referring to a feature for specifying a filter/patterns to exclude from the syncing, which dropbox doesn't have as far as I know.

No, AFAIK the only thing Dropbox lets you do is exclude whole folders. I think there were a couple of scripts floating around github a few years ago that allowed exclusion of specified file types, but don't know if they're still around or how reliable they were.


I'm glad you posted this thread. I was just thinking about slimming my library down by keeping just the ePub's. Figured if I needed to transfer a book to a Kindle I could have it convert on the fly when transferring, but I wasn't aware it added a copy of that conversion to the library. I figured it worked like it does with my Kobo where I have it setup to convert books to kePub when transferring, but it doesn't keep a copy in the library.

[goldilocks]

I haven't used it ... you could select a group of books you don't want to keep the azw3 format, go to "Remove books" then select "Remove files of a specific format from selected books." A new widow opens up and you select the format you want to remove.

[eschwartz]

The nice thing about only syncing a mirror is that it only consumes disk space, which is pretty easy to get -- usually. After all, my current laptop is 10 yrs. old and has 37GB. (It's an experiment, so that's all right. I renovated it with linux for fun. ) But most new computers have much more than you need.

Regarding a change to calibre -- IIRC Kovid did this deliberately, on the grounds that it takes too long to keep recreating a new format, and tossing the copy would mke it difficult to debug problems. But he may be amenable to a change, assuming it is a setting. It would help a lot in edge cases like this. That would seem optimal to me, as any user advanced enough to set this should be aware of the compromise.

If not, I am sure you could create a plugin hook to do this.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The nice thing about only syncing a mirror is that it only consumes disk space

And network bandwidth - the OP mentioned slow internet speed at least twice.

If the device is set to auto-create a format on sending it a book, what's the point of keeping in the library - apart from sentimentality

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

And network bandwidth - the OP mentioned slow internet speed at least twice.

If the device is set to auto-create a format on sending it a book, what's the point of keeping it - apart from sentimentality

BR

There is no network usage when mirroring directly to you own hard drive. Syncing a subset mirror is less network usage than syncing the whole thing. Hence my advice.

Why keep the autoconverted copy -- you mean aside for the part where it takes a long time to convert the next time, particularly if there are dozens or hundreds?

I guess because Kovid says so. He explained it to me once but I forget where.

[BetterRed]

@eschwartz - perhaps you never had to use a 256Kbs satellite link. Not only slow but usually unreliable, particularly when its raining and even worse when there's a storm. And expensive to boot, and that's a recurrent expense, not capex. Every kilobit matters in that scenario no matter how you synch.

to your suggestion to use a file synch product to filter out the unwanted file types. But, that's a cure...

When a format that's already in the library is sent to a device calibre updates the metadata in the file that's sent to the device, but it does not update the metadata in the library copy.

So when a format is created specifically as part of sending a book to a device why should it be saved, surely that's inconsistent? Not saying the possibility to save shouldn't be there, or that it shouldn't be the default, just saying that to be consistent there should be an option to not save it.

BR

[eschwartz]

I think we basically agree here, but with slightly different words.

and no I haven't ever had the misfortune of using a satellite link.... My sympathies.

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

What some people do anyway if they will be using Dropbox with calibre, is mirror their calibre library with a one-way sync, using something like linux's rsync or Windows programs like FreeFileSync or DeltaCopy. This prevents Dropbox changes from accidentally clobbering your library, since the master folder never gets touched.

I currently just use Dropbox for my books and point Calibre there, but its really just a back-up, so this sounds like it might be a "safer" way of maintaining my Calibre library as well as making the most of my limited dropbox space by limiting it to one format.

How exactly would you go about doing this? Sorry, my mind seems to go to mush when it comes to cloud storage and syncing! Would I just copy my Calibre library back to my HDD, point Calibre to it and then use something like FreeFileSync to do a one-way sync to dropbox?