[GUI Plugin] Extract EPUB Metadata

[ovillo]

Recover fanfic metadata from EPUBs you already have

If FanFicFare can't reach a story anymore: AO3's down, the fic got deleted, or you got the epub someplace else (browser extension, a friend, an old backup), you can end up with a Calibre entry that's just "Title" by Author, none of the fandom/tags/rating/etc. This plugin tries to fix that by reading the metadata straight out of the EPUB itself.

You choose how it writes the data back: straight into Calibre's standard fields, into your own custom columns, or as raw data ready for FanFicFare's own metadata pipeline to process normally.

It also has a separate action for anthology EPUBs (multiple fics bundled together) that recovers each individual story's own completion status, since the bundle's own status usually just tells you if the whole collection is finished or not.

Built mainly around my own workflows: mostly AO3, with support for fanfiction.net (via fichub.net and WebToEpub).

Early beta, mostly vibe-coded, so caveat emptor.

Feedback and suggestions very welcome.

Full documentation:
https://github.com/wordsandpics/Extract-epub-metadata

[ovillo]

Updated with a few bugfixes and tweaks. Feedback welcome!

Extract epub metadata 0.2.1 beta

[ShoeQueen]

I'm very excited to see this being developed! This is my exact scenario, I have many downloaded fics that I need only metadata for, but fanficfare now struggles with AO3s cloudflare so much that I rarely get it to work.

I'm a Windows 11 user, and not a programmer, but I did give it a try. I couldn't get the plugin to load. It gave an invalid error:

calibre.customize.InvalidPlugin: The plugin in 'C:\\Users\\XXXXX\\Downloads\\Extract-epub-metadata-0.2.1-beta.zip' is invalid. It does not contain a top-level __init__.py file

Not sure if this feedback really "helps", but I figured I'd send it on anyway.

Thank you and all the developers for working on this!

[ovillo]

Thanks for trying it!

That error is actually my fault. I did not attach the plugin file to the latest release, and that file is GitHub's automatic source download, not the plugin zip.

I've fixed it: on the release page, download the zip under Assets named extract_epub_metadata-v0.2.1-beta.zip (not "Source code"), then Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file.

I've attached the file here too.

Sorry for the trouble!

[ovillo]

V. 0.3.0 Beta

New:
- AO3 works recovered from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, saved with either WebToEpub or the Save as eBook browser extension. The story URL is set to the real AO3 link, and the Wayback snapshot URL is kept as a new "Wayback Machine URL" field.
- AO3 PDF downloads converted to EPUB (e.g. in Calibre): tags, series, stats, title, author and summary are read from AO3's preface page.
- Series is now recovered from AO3 downloads, work pages and PDFs, and can be written to Calibre's Series field or a custom column.

Fixed
- Old `download.archiveofourown.org` story links are recognized.
- Calibre's "Unknown" placeholder author is no longer treated as a real name.
- "Update standard Calibre metadata" read the wrong series value.
- A finished work could be marked In-Progress when AO3's stats had no spaces between them.
- For Wayback copies, FanFicFare now gets the real AO3 URL (as a `url` identifier) instead of the Wayback one.

[ShoeQueen]

This plugin is fantastic, and so quick! I gone through about 2,000 epubs, and it's been working great!

I originally setup Calibre by using Easy Fanfic Library https://codeberg.org/the_bi_ballerin...Fanfic-Library because coding is like black magic to me... completely mystifying.

The only issues I have a note on I haven't been able to get the Collections to properly fill in. This could totally be user error, as I have only played around with it for a little while. If you haven't included it yet, then pay me no mind. I completely thrilled with what you have done!

But even with that little bit not working on my end, I have to say that this is AMAZING! I'm not any kind of coder, so if I was able to figure out how to use it, then you already have a pretty great plugin.

You have saved me hundreds of hours of getting frustrated with AO3 and Cloudflare. My Calibre is now actually searchable so I don't have to rifle through thousands of stories to find a fic.

Keep up the good work! When you do an official release it's going to absolutely blow everyone's mind!

Thank you! And if you ever need someone to test something specific, lemme know. I got a lot more fics to get through, so there's always fresh epubs to work on.