[GUI Plugin] EpubMerge

[JimmXinu]

That's the Edit book > Tools > Upgrade book internals.

Polish book > Upgrade book internals doesn't offer to keep the NCX file for me.

And I'm not sure how that helps with EpubMerge?

[slimcat]

Yeah, just caught that.

Re: EpubMerge - I may have misunderstood what you were saying earlier during the discussion about epub3 support. It sounded like one of the blockers was lack of backwards compatibility with upgrading internals, and that if there was that capability EpubMerge could use that rather than the conversion tool. I don't even care so much about epub2 vs 3, but perked up at the possibility of avoiding using Calibre's conversion so html/css isn't rewritten during the merge. But it sounds like I misunderstood what you were saying.

[JimmXinu]

My point was that I want EM to operate on either epub2 or epub3, not both.

When I last asked, there were more people wanting/using epub2 than wanting/using epub3.

I assume that newer readers will be able to use epub2 and not require epub3 conversion. But the opposite cannot be said of older readers.

[Goku90504]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Nobody's complained so far, so it must be working.

Not a complaint but a feature request that I would think easiest to add to this plug in
I've got epubs that are partial downloads of the same story might might be chapters 100-110 another might be 105-115
how hard would it be to have an option to recognize such chapter overlaps and merge the two into a single epub while no duplicating the overlapping chapters?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Goku90504

Not a complaint but a feature request that I would think easiest to add to this plug in
I've got epubs that are partial downloads of the same story might might be chapters 100-110 another might be 105-115
how hard would it be to have an option to recognize such chapter overlaps and merge the two into a single epub while no duplicating the overlapping chapters?

This seems like a very niche use case. I don't know that enough people would want it to be worthwhile. And I suspect it's more difficult than you think.

For one thing, EpubMerge doesn't really look at the contents of the input epubs, just the metadata files.

And there's the issue of defining when two input sub-files count as 'the same' -- 'chapter' and 'file inside the epub' are not synonymous for all epubs.

Does anyone else think this would be useful on a regular basis?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

This seems like a very niche use case. I don't know that enough people would want it to be worthwhile. And I suspect it's more difficult than you think.

For one thing, EpubMerge doesn't really look at the contents of the input epubs, just the metadata files.

And there's the issue of defining when two input sub-files count as 'the same' -- 'chapter' and 'file inside the epub' are not synonymous for all epubs.

Does anyone else think this would be useful on a regular basis?

I think it would not be used other the by the person making the request.

[Mandabar]

Ah. Well I've used this myself for the same use case. I have to manually go in and delete the overlapping chapters when I make an anthology like that.

[Jennifer Stevens]

This sounds like "I went to GoogleBooks and downloaded as much as they would show me, and then I did it again to get the bits they wouldn't show me before."

Not judging, but yanno authors are pretty shirty about having Google steal all their books and give them away in dribs and drabs. I wouldn't tell the world I was doing this if I were you.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version

2026-07-15
- Add a button to "Add Epubs from PC" when merging. Right edge, under the up/remove/down buttons.

2025-01-02
- Add <spine page-progression-direction attr to output iff all input epubs have the same value. #24

Change contributed by wangodanny.

Also allows you to start merge with only one book since you can add more from disk.

And it looks like I never released the previous test version.

[Tharos]

Thanks for the merge feature. It makes adding new chapters so much easier for me.

As an additional feature, would it be possible to simply have a 1:1 copy of the source data (for example, from the first book) in the new database entry alongside the new (merged) ePub file?

Currently, I can import the series from the first book, but otherwise I can “only” set the user-defined columns individually for each entry.

Similar to the series feature, it would be “nice to have” if there were an option to select all entries at once.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by Tharos

Thanks for the merge feature. It makes adding new chapters so much easier for me.

As an additional feature, would it be possible to simply have a 1:1 copy of the source data (for example, from the first book) in the new database entry alongside the new (merged) ePub file?

Currently, I can import the series from the first book, but otherwise I can “only” set the user-defined columns individually for each entry.

Go look at EpubMerge Config, there's a Columns tab. You can configure to take custom columns for new book from the first book.

Originally Posted by Tharos

Similar to the series feature, it would be “nice to have” if there were an option to select all entries at once.

I don't know what you mean.