No books, no collections

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Even if each author used in reality 6 directory entries that's over 10,000 authors.

I doubt I'll be able to read books from 10,000 authors within the span of my entire life, let alone the span of my e-reader's service life.

[JSWolf]

IMHO, it's better to use something like the following if it can be done. I don't know if it can be automated for author last name.

Books/A-E
Books/E-I
Books/J-N
Books/O-S
Books/T-W
Books/X-Z

[DNSB]

It's not the 10,000 author names, it's 10,000 book filenames in the root directory. Since most people include the title and author in that filename, they tend to be longer than would fit in an 8.3 filename. Add in series which seems to be the most popular addition for non-Kobo owners so the filename would become (using a book on one friend's device) "Amaranthe: Machine [03] - The Stars Like Gods - G. S. Jennsen.epub" which would chew up 6 directory entries. One of the other books on their device is an anthology for which they included all the authors in the filename so it clocked in at 214 characters which chewed up 18 directory entries—and that was after calibre truncated the filename. With 8,200 books in the root directory, they ran out of available directory entries. Moving their library into a directory off the root directory, adding the author sort as a subdirectory in the library directory and trimming both the author sort and author to the first name in the list corrected their issue. Basically, change the driver's save template to "Books/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)}". We then restored the metadata and bookmarks saved in calibre before the move and they are a happy camper now.

Trying to convince them that they did not need to put the series in the filename since that was how they did it on their old ereader was whole other can of worms. Just send the books, wait for the books to import, reconnect to your computer and let calibre send the metadata for the books.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It's not the 10,000 author names, it's 10,000 book filenames in the root directory. Since most people include the title and author in that filename, they tend to be longer than would fit in an 8.3 filename. Add in series which seems to be the most popular addition for non-Kobo owners so the filename would become (using a book on one friend's device) "Amaranthe: Machine [03] - The Stars Like Gods - G. S. Jennsen.epub" which would chew up 6 directory entries. One of the other books on their device is an anthology for which they included all the authors in the filename so it clocked in at 214 characters which chewed up 18 directory entries—and that was after calibre truncated the filename. With 8,200 books in the root directory, they ran out of available directory entries. Moving their library into a directory off the root directory, adding the author sort as a subdirectory in the library directory and trimming both the author sort and author to the first name in the list corrected their issue. Basically, change the driver's save template to "Books/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)}". We then restored the metadata and bookmarks saved in calibre before the move and they are a happy camper now.

Trying to convince them that they did not need to put the series in the filename since that was how they did it on their old ereader was whole other can of worms. Just send the books, wait for the books to import, reconnect to your computer and let calibre send the metadata for the books.

I only have author folders in my root directory, because that's how Calibre sends them by default. No book titles in the root. As I have no anthologies with multiple authors, I don't expect to get anywhere near the entry limit during the time I use the device.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Add in series which seems to be the most popular addition for non-Kobo owners so the filename would become (using a book on one friend's device) "Amaranthe: Machine [03] - The Stars Like Gods - G. S. Jennsen.epub" which would chew up 6 directory entries.

Yikes. Those are some unwieldy filenames. I'll stick to one folder per author, so I don't need the author as part of the filename.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It's not the 10,000 author names, it's 10,000 book filenames in the root directory. Since most people include the title and author in that filename,

Yes, a filename starting with title, appended author per book in the root is going to fail, and no Author directories. That's my point, if you let Calibre use default on Kobo their is no problem. Author, collections, series etc is metadata.
If it's NOT a Kobo, then you maybe want a fancy filename created and absolutely a top level folder (All kindles and Android). I think the Sony ereaders work with sufficient metadata that author folders/directories work.
Of course KOReader currently is a bit awkward with author folders if you want to browse by title. I don't like filemanager type browsers for rereaders. I much prefer the native Sony / Kindle / Kobo eInk metadata based browsing.

[JSWolf]

Is there any way to automatically remove empty author directories using calibre?

That's the problem using author names. Eventually, you'll have a lot of empty directories.