Firmware 4.20.14601 has been released

[rosalita]

I love the new series feature except for one thing: Apparently Kobo has been wildly inconsistent in how they label books from the same series over the years. For example, I have a series of books written by Charles Todd that feature a Scotland Yard detective, Ian Rutledge. Kobo shows me some of these books in a series called "Inspector Ian Rutledge" and others in a series called "Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries." There are other series that are the same way, which is very frustrating.

Is there any sort of communication path with Kobo to send them corrections? Or a way to correct these myself? I am a Calibre user but because I have an old Mac that can't run anything past OS Sierra, I can't use the latest version of it. And I have not imported my Kobo books into Calibre in the past.

[Quoth]

It may be the publishers, not Kobo.

I certainly have been editing series data for books off Gutenberg and also our own books. It's been working to order by series in a collection even of different authors on the Kobo since for ages.

I think every source gets series metadata mixed up. I've seen it on Amazon and paper books in the book shop. The Chronicles of Narnia on paper now has the wrong order vs C.S. Lewis order and the order in the late 1960s. The Magician's Nephew is certainly the "Genesis" of Narnia, but it absolutely was NOT meant to be read first.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by rosalita

I love the new series feature except for one thing: Apparently Kobo has been wildly inconsistent in how they label books from the same series over the years. For example, I have a series of books written by Charles Todd that feature a Scotland Yard detective, Ian Rutledge. Kobo shows me some of these books in a series called "Inspector Ian Rutledge" and others in a series called "Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries." There are other series that are the same way, which is very frustrating.

Is there any sort of communication path with Kobo to send them corrections? Or a way to correct these myself? I am a Calibre user but because I have an old Mac that can't run anything past OS Sierra, I can't use the latest version of it. And I have not imported my Kobo books into Calibre in the past.

The inconsistencies in series names has always bugged me. Every time I get a new book, I immediately add it to Calibre, and correct the series title to whatever it is I'm using (and anything else that may be off or missing), and then send it to my reader.

Sorting by series on the Kobo readers has been a part of Calibre for as long as I can remember. So you should be fine using whatever the last supported version of Calibre will run on your OS so you can rename your series easily. It doesn't need to be the most current. The KoboUtilities plugin will handle the new series sorting perfectly, many of us have already made use of it before Calibre has added the feature in probably today's update.

[slkissinger]

I tried to read up in this thread, but I don't think this has been mentioned yet that the latest Calibre update (as I type this, it's version 4.12) has been updated to handle Series w/4.20

Super easy.
1) update Calibre to 4.12
2) plug in kobo (in my case, Libra HD, which has been updated to 4.20.14601
3) let it think about life for a few seconds.
4) Eject device via Calibre (Device, eject this device)
5) Go look at the Kobo itself, My Books, Series.

Everything is tidy, just like I've always wanted, and never knew it until now.

Note that 99% of my books are sideloaded.

[rosalita]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It may be the publishers, not Kobo.

I certainly have been editing series data for books off Gutenberg and also our own books. It's been working to order by series in a collection even of different authors on the Kobo since for ages.

I think every source gets series metadata mixed up. I've seen it on Amazon and paper books in the book shop. The Chronicles of Narnia on paper now has the wrong order vs C.S. Lewis order and the order in the late 1960s. The Magician's Nephew is certainly the "Genesis" of Narnia, but it absolutely was NOT meant to be read first.

I should check and see if Amazon also lists the same books in the same way. Good idea!

[rosalita]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

The inconsistencies in series names has always bugged me. Every time I get a new book, I immediately add it to Calibre, and correct the series title to whatever it is I'm using (and anything else that may be off or missing), and then send it to my reader.

Sorting by series on the Kobo readers has been a part of Calibre for as long as I can remember. So you should be fine using whatever the last supported version of Calibre will run on your OS so you can rename your series easily. It doesn't need to be the most current. The KoboUtilities plugin will handle the new series sorting perfectly, many of us have already made use of it before Calibre has added the feature in probably today's update.

Thanks for that information I have always added series data in Calibre for my side-loaded books, though I don't recall it having any effect when the books were sent to the e-reader (probably because Kobo did not yet have the series sorting feature?) So I guess I just need to fire up my elderly MacBook Pro (2010 model) and import my Kobo series books into Calibre so everything is in one place.

[Ripplinger]

You do need to make a change in the driver to be sure it sends the series info into Collections on the Kobo readers.

In Preferences under Advanced, Plugins, Device Interface Plugins, select whichever Kobo driver you use. KoboTouch will be for epubs, KoboTouchExtended will be if you prefer kepubs sent to your reader. Select Customize the plugin, and on the Collections tab, check "Collections" and add series into the Collections columns so it reads: series, tags

And of course you need an added column within Calibre named Series.

Also make sure you have Calibre set to Automatic Management (Preferences, Import/Export, Sending books to devices, select it under Metadata Management at the top).

After that Calibre will always set your series for you on the reader automatically.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rosalita

hough I don't recall it having any effect when the books were sent to the e-reader (probably because Kobo did not yet have the series sorting feature?)

No, I've not yet updated either Kobos, Calibre or Plugins and in a collection on the Kobo, (Touch, H2O Original and Libra with last few FW versions), it DID sort by series. You did have to eject, reconnect and eject for the order to show up.

Also perversely I do use the Extended Driver but with the "on the fly" kepub conversion turned off.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

You do need to make a change in the driver to be sure it sends the series info into Collections on the Kobo readers.

In Preferences under Advanced, Plugins, Device Interface Plugins, select whichever Kobo driver you use. KoboTouch will be for epubs, KoboTouchExtended will be if you prefer kepubs sent to your reader. Select Customize the plugin, and on the Collections tab, check "Collections" and add series into the Collections columns so it reads: series, tags

And of course you need an added column within Calibre named Series.

Also make sure you have Calibre set to Automatic Management (Preferences, Import/Export, Sending books to devices, select it under Metadata Management at the top).

After that Calibre will always set your series for you on the reader automatically.

Unless you want to create collections for series, you do not need to customize the plugin as you suggest. Kobo's new firmware offers a series option between authors and collections which can be sorted by recent, series title and number of books in the series.

I'm not sure why anyone would want the collections from tags option since that tends to lead to a massive number of collections. The only collection I use on my Kobo's is Finished (name says it all). If I used series and tags to create collections, I would have over 1200 collections on my Forma (121 for series, the rest for tags).

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Unless you want to create collections for series, you do not need to customize the plugin as you suggest. Kobo's new firmware offers a series option between authors and collections which can be sorted by recent, series title and number of books in the series.

I'm not sure why anyone would want the collections from tags option since that tends to lead to a massive number of collections. The only collection I use on my Kobo's is Finished (name says it all). If I used series and tags to create collections, I would have over 1200 collections on my Forma (121 for series, the rest for tags).

The only reason I mentioned all that is because rosalita is stuck using an older version of Calibre because of her old MAC OS, so she won't be able to use the newest version of Calibre to handle the new series setup. She'll be stuck doing it the old way. And since she mentioned she never noticed a change, I thought there's a good chance all the settings weren't correct to get it done.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

And of course you need an added column within Calibre named Series.

There is already a column named Series.There's no need to add it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also perversely I do use the Extended Driver but with the "on the fly" kepub conversion turned off.

I do as well. There's no need to keep switching drivers as the extended driver will do ePub or KePub depending on the order of the the file formats to send to your Kobo.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm not sure why anyone would want the collections from tags option since that tends to lead to a massive number of collections.

Maybe to make ex Sony users at home?
My Sony PRS350 insanely creates collections from Tags. Automagically.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm not sure why anyone would want the collections from tags option since that tends to lead to a massive number of collections. The only collection I use on my Kobo's is Finished (name says it all). If I used series and tags to create collections, I would have over 1200 collections on my Forma (121 for series, the rest for tags).

I have a library where all my eBooks go. I do clean up the tags column when eBooks added put junk in there. I have another library where the books I'm reading or want to read go. I do use the tags column for collections because I've cleaned up the garbage and all I have there is what I've put in. It's really very simple and I don't have to create another column. I've been doing it that way since the days of the my Sony Readers because that driver uses tags and series for collections. It's not as much of an issue as it looks. I don't go loading that many eBooks at one go to the master library so cleaning tags is trivial.

[retro]

Originally Posted by retro

I have series info in my calibre data and that was working before the update. I only load a dozen or so books on my Clara and I noticed, after the update, that one book is showing in the series NOVEL and it is number 11 of that series.
I don't have a calibre series called NOVEL so it must be getting it from somewhere else.

I ran Modify epub with remove non dc checked and it removed the series from that book when I reloaded it.

Is there a way for me to identify the other books that show in that series without having to load everything on my Clara?

Am I asking in the wrong forum? Maybe this is a calibre question. I read a post a while back about the Kobo database that related to 'hidden' metadata, but I can't find that post now.