How far do you go in organizing your e-book library?

[murg]

I used to completely reformat every ebook.

Now I just load them, and don't bother with any formatting unless the formatting is really bad (for instance, one ebook (on my Kobo) displayed six lines per page, three at the top and three at the bottom (I have no idea how they engineered the css to do this))

[doubleshuffle]

I fix them all. I'm not too big on Calibre though - I use Sigil. Metadata must be correct but basic: Author and title, and if it's part of a series I put an abbreviated Series title and # before the title. That's all.

[pwalker8]

My normal thing is to import them into calibre, then do a download metadata and covers. I'll fix something that obviously wrong, especially if it's going to mess up my ability to browse by series, title or author. Usually, everything is fine when I download, but sometimes I have to fix the author and almost always I have to add the series data. I also then put it in the Calibre category and I'l good.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I'll fix something that obviously wrong...

Some time ago, I actually tried to make the layout of each book exactly the same, especially if they were part of a series. Think of setting the indent to 1em, using the same scene breaks, and so on.

Buying 250 Forgotten Realms books cured me of that particular version of OCD, because most of them were formatted perfectly, all be it differently. After doing two or three series, and still having like 240 books to go, I though: "Njaaah, what the heck..."

Now I only check and fix the following:
- Series must have matching covers.
- No whitespace between paragraphs.
- Indents must not be huge, and not be tiny. (1em-2em)
- Text must be justified.
- No errors reported in the Calibre editor (fixes are mostly automatic).

As the years go by (only 4, in my case) I am fixing less and less. The one thing I almost always have to fix is the matching covers. Sometimes I need to fix text justification, the editor fixes some errors automatically, but the rest is often good to go nowadays.

[icallaci]

I fix everything: metadata, validation errors, and obvious formatting problems. I prefer books in a series to have consistent covers and formatting, but if the publisher decides to do something radically different, I'll leave it. I've gotten better at fixing as the years go by, so the early books aren't done as well as the later books. I was driving myself crazy by trying to go back and refix everything, so I decided to fix only the books by the author I am currently reading or about to read. It's a pain for authors with 50+ books, but it's better than trying to refix the entire library all at once.

[Cinisajoy]

Hey Katsunami,
I don't think 39 people out of how many on this forum is good statistical data.
Your numbers are lower than I expected. I figured it would be mostly the re-doers that answered your question.
Though and I am getting semantic here. You technically did not ask about organizing, you asked about "correcting" books.
Organizing is how you sort your books.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Though and I am getting semantic here. You technically did not ask about organizing, you asked about "correcting" books.
Organizing is how you sort your books.

In essence, you're right. You could organize your e-books by never editing anything and just putting them in folders by author name.

For me, however, organizing e-books (and music as well) is a part of making everything as perfect as possible, so I won't have to do it again somewhere down the line (hopefully), apart from maybe converting to another format.

[theducks]

I make sure Basic Metadata is complete, and uniform. (Author name is always the same, not a variant. Robert A. Heinlein not any of the other ways it comes in

I remove fluff comments (raves, reviews that deviate from a synopsis)

I redact tags to a base standard. (The computer can do the search) . General??? I don't read Mil History. Fiction-Science Fiction. Duh! It would be Science Fact if it was not Fiction

If I have the dead tree version, I match covers to that, Including locating and plopping my copy onto the Scanner if that is needed.

The Poll did not include the choice pair cleanup metadata (#3), and touchup the edit. I usually do a small touchup to better fit my primary device (and remove excessive/unnecessary codes) (Many Baen titles now gain another Div every chapter. I clean many naked spans, and reduce all images over 800x600: my screen size)

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by icallaci

I fix everything: metadata, validation errors, and obvious formatting problems. I prefer books in a series to have consistent covers and formatting, but if the publisher decides to do something radically different, I'll leave it. I've gotten better at fixing as the years go by, so the early books aren't done as well as the later books. I was driving myself crazy by trying to go back and refix everything, so I decided to fix only the books by the author I am currently reading or about to read. It's a pain for authors with 50+ books, but it's better than trying to refix the entire library all at once.

Same here. I have restarted a library fix a few months ago, and do a few books at a time. I'm not buying or adding anything new. If everything is fixed to the best of my abilities, I'll leave it at that and won't go back again. The Calibre Editor might get support to detect errors it couldn't detect before, but it's undoable to keep refixing a library that is now close to 850 books.

[Barty]

I dump it all into calibre. I don't organize, I search. Usually with much futility. That's okay, I'll just find something new to read.

[Ripplinger]

I make sure author, title, series info is correct and a decent description and cover (and like theducks, an author name is always the same, never variants of it). I use one genre tag only for each book and delete the dozens that can sometimes be downloaded. I don't really care if the ISBN is missing or the publisher or the date.

If I notice that formatting is absolutely horrid in the book where it would really diminish my enjoyment while reading, then yes, I'll edit it to fix it, but usually in Sigil. But that's not something I do to every book, only where needed.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Barty

I dump it all into calibre. I don't organize, I search. Usually with much futility. That's okay, I'll just find something new to read.

Hehe... that's why organizing and editing are the same to me, in the digital realm. If you don't edit the book/metadata, you won't ever be able to find it again.

[Tarana]

I'm one of those in the middle. I rarely add custom information, but I only edit books that I've scanned. The commercial books are having far fewer mistakes than in the past and not worth my time 'fixing.' Does anybody remember when LOTR first came out in ebook? Amazon gave me my money back, it was SO BAD!

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I'm one of those in the middle. I rarely add custom information, but I only edit books that I've scanned. The commercial books are having far fewer mistakes than in the past and not worth my time 'fixing.' Does anybody remember when LOTR first came out in ebook? Amazon gave me my money back, it was SO BAD!

I haven't had this with Lord of the Rings, but I did with other books. A few years ago, I wanted to reread a series of books of which I had the paper version. It was available as an e-book, but not where I live; and at that time, I wasn't knowledgeable enough regarding e-books to know how to jump geo-restrictions.

Thus, I 'found' the books on the internet, only to discover that they were so terribly bad that they were nigh unreadable. They weren't even complete, missing maps and 'persona dramatis' lists that were in the paper version. I threw them away, assuming they were sloppily done OCR-versions, deciding to just wait for an official e-book release that I would be able to buy.

Now you can feel it coming, obviously. Some time later, the books became available at Feedbooks.com and Kobo; neither had the complete series, but between them, they had all the books. So, I bought all six (!) of them for full retail price (€7,99 a piece), all at once.

After un-DRM-ing and importing them into Calibre, I found they were exactly the same as the crap ones I 'found' earlier.

You can imagine my reaction. It was something like this:

Spoiler:

It took me six days to fix those books, using maps and parts from the paper versions I still had.

Fortunately, I've never encountered books THAT bad since.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Ravensknight

I make sure the title, author and series is correct, then look for the cover I like best. in hd.

^This.