Some epubs don't have synopsis / description

[Eliminatrix]

Hi All,

First time using Calibre. I have a Kobo Clara 2E with the latest firmware. I've just put a whole bunch of ebooks on it, with a mix of epub and mobi file formats. With a lot of the books I've copied, I don't get anything when I go to the synopsis / description section.
I've attached a couple of photos to show what I'm referring to.

How do I use Calibre to pull or add the synopsis to the ebooks?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks all!

[Sirtel]

Do you have the synopsis in Calibre, in the comments?

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Eliminatrix

How do I use Calibre to pull or add the synopsis to the ebooks?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Edit Metadata -> Download Metadata and Covers -> Configure Download -> Tick 'Comments' (and any other metadata you want to download) and download metadata for that book or books.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Eliminatrix

Hi All,

First time using Calibre. I have a Kobo Clara 2E with the latest firmware. I've just put a whole bunch of ebooks on it, with a mix of epub and mobi file formats. With a lot of the books I've copied, I don't get anything when I go to the synopsis / description section.
I've attached a couple of photos to show what I'm referring to.

How do I use Calibre to pull or add the synopsis to the ebooks?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks all!

Open Edit Metadata, find the following, its location will vary according to which MDE layout you use, select a format and click the bottom left icon:



Observe the tooltip - almost everything in calibre has one

BR

[theducks]

Post #3 takes you to the basic over all setting
AND for even finer control, you can do by source. This allows you to cherry pick.


Same steps as post #3, but, select the source on the left: then click Configure selected source


Also note: not ever source offers a full set of metadata. If you narrow the available sources, your success rate drops. Calibre merges from what it gets.

Another cause for failed metadata fetches: is the wrong IDs {identifiers} are set.

[JSWolf]

And if you configure things correctly, you can use the count pages plugin to get an ADE page count that will show in Details.

[DNSB]

And I would recommend converting any .mobi files to epub and cleaning up the metadata before sending them to your Clara 2E. .mobi is a lousy format by today's standards. The mobi viewer code in the Kobo firmware was written for the original .prc/.mobi format from Mobipocket and will have issues with the modifications done by Amazon after they purchased Mobipocket.

[Quoth]

I've never seen any non-Amazon ereader render Amazon mobi properly. I agree with DBSB, never ever use mobi just because an ereader with epub claims it can. Always convert and edit the epub. Replace nested blockquotes with a single suitable CSS p or blockquote. Remove mobi pagebreaks and if chapters start in a page, make sure all chapters start with h1 or h2, then reconvert the epub and each chapter will be a file. A new file is always a new page in any format.

There are a lot of badly formatted mobi on Amazon converted from badly formatted MS Word file uploads (and some older books were mobi uploads) rather than recommended epub for KDP uploads.

I convert mobi from PD websites too, to epub. Sometimes the conversion is fine and sometimes needs an edit. Preferable to customising KOreader.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I've never seen any non-Amazon ereader render Amazon mobi properly. I agree with DBSB, never ever use mobi just because an ereader with epub claims it can. Always convert and edit the epub. Replace nested blockquotes with a single suitable CSS p or blockquote. Remove mobi pagebreaks and if chapters start in a page, make sure all chapters start with h1 or h2, then reconvert the epub and each chapter will be a file. A new file is always a new page in any format.

There are a lot of badly formatted mobi on Amazon converted from badly formatted MS Word file uploads (and some older books were mobi uploads) rather than recommended epub for KDP uploads.

I convert mobi from PD websites too, to epub. Sometimes the conversion is fine and sometimes needs an edit. Preferable to customising KOreader.

And then we have KF8. I've seen the code of too many KF8 where it's just awful and needs a lot of work just to fix it. I've even seen some KF8 where the CSS was nothing but Kindle media queries.

[ownedbycats]

I've lost track of how many times I've converted a book MOBI/AZW3 > ePub, sent it to my Kobo, began reading, then went back to my computer to fix up the ePub and re-send it.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And then we have KF8. I've seen the code of too many KF8 where it's just awful and needs a lot of work just to fix it. I've even seen some KF8 where the CSS was nothing but Kindle media queries.

Not to mention the number of epubs where the formatting is crap, a single html file is used for all the chapters, inline styles are used instead of a stylesheet, html ToCs that do not have links to the chapters and any other mistakes that could be committed in creating an epub were committed.

[Sirtel]

Crappy formatting is not dependent on any single format. I've fixed plenty of crappy epubs and have seen pretty well-formatted mobis. And vice versa, of course.

But I wouldn't read a mobi on a Kobo. Mobi support on a Kobo is pretty primitive.