How Do You Organize

[leebase]

We all have different needs and willingness to organize our books. Here is my "low maintenance" version. I've tried Calibre but I'm always changing my computers around and Calibre is a casualty.

My needs:
1. I want to keep on top of the Author/Series I follow. Have I read all of them? Has a new book or two come out while I wasn't paying attention?

2. I don't want to rebuy a book I've already bought but haven't read. Not as much of a problem anymore since I buy most books from Amazon and it tells me. Still, I've done this MANY times before.

3. I want to know how many books I'm reading in a year.

4. I want to remember to read the books I've bought. This is MORE of a problem than my pbook days. I'm a sucker for $.99 deals and have bought a lot of books, then I forget about them.

So.....my low maintenance organization that meets my personal needs.

1. OneNote - I have a one note page dedicated to "Books to Read". It has two sections. Books to Read and Books I've read. When I buy a book, I put it somewhere in "books to read" list. Or I try to. Probably one of the areas I fail in most.

I also put my list of series and the books to read in the series in this section. When I start a series this isn't as important as you can always google the series list. But if I'm current and a new book comes out, I put a line in the series for when it's time to read a new book I know it's out.

When I finish a book, I post a new line as in:
08/08/19 The Bourne Enigma - Eric Van Lustbader (ePub)

Date, Title, Author, Source/Type (Kindle, Audible, ePub)

I'm pretty faithful in recording books I've read going back ten years.

That's pretty much it. I recently also organized my Kindle list into collections:
- Sci Fi New To Me
- Sci Fi Existing
- Thrillers New To Me
- Thrillers Ongoing
- Women's Interest (originally for my mom, but also for my wife and daughters).

I still have about 100 or so Kindle books I haven't gotten around to categorizing. But I have enough to make it easier to find the next book I want to read.

[DiapDealer]

I buy an ebook when I'm ready to begin reading it. Then I read it. The end.

EDIT: I lied. I forgot that I let the Kindle App update my Goodreads current status as well as update the date I finish it.

[murraypaul]

For pBooks, I've scanned them all into LibraryThing.
Very useful if you are browsing secondhand bookshops, as you can search online to check what you do and don't already have.
Was a godsend when moving house, as I could tag each book with what box it was stored in.
I started off doing that for eBooks too, but don't really feel the need now. I can just carry my entire library on my phone, so don't need access to just a list of books.
For eBooks I import them all into Calibre, make sure the author and titles are in the 'correct' (for me) formats, and that everything is organised by genre and series, then run them through a process that converts each series to a single book for transfer to my readers. I find it easier to browse things on a small-screen device that way.

[Sirtel]

Calibre. It's irreplaceable to me. I also switch from laptop to tablet constantly and therefore I keep my library in Dropbox, so I can use Calibre on both devices.

[4691mls]

When I find a series I like I put the next book in the series on my wishlist on Overdrive and/or the store I might buy it from. When I am ready to read a new book I go to those lists and see what's available. Occasionally I will scroll through my store wishlist to see if anything's on sale. I probably don't have more than a dozen books purchased but not read at any given time.

Since I had used Sony readers until recently, I still have the Sony Reader for PC software on my desktop and I download copies of all books onto my computer. There's a folder called Manifest which is accessible through Windows Explorer that lists all the books in alphabetical order, including books I read and returned to the library. It's handy to refer to if I need to see if I've read a book already.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I probably don't have more than a dozen books purchased but not read at any given time.

Hmm. I have exactly a dozen purchased but not read this week.

[Apache]

I use the same methods as Sirtel. I keep everything in Calibre. I use a Surface Pro to read on and Calibre is on it. I keep Calibre backed up on iDrive and five different hard drives some at my store and some at home. I use iDrive because I use it to back up all of my business files. 30+ years of back up takes up a lot of space.
Apache

[haertig]

My biggest problem is finding out when one of the authors that I have read and liked releases (or announces) a new book in the series. I don't have a good method of handling this.

What I currently do, and it sucks, is every few months I scan through my Calibre library and write down the author names that I enjoy reading. That turns into a pretty large list. Then I MANUALLY go and check their respective websites, Wiki, "Book Series in Order" website, Goodreads, and Amazon to see if they have released/announced anything new. This is a real pain for authors where I have a lot of their books already. I have to then go through my Calibre library again, and my print books, to determine if what I am looking at is a new book, or an old book that I just don't remember.

This is horribly tedious, and that explains why I rarely do it. Which just compounds this problem when I put off doing it.

Boy it would sure be nice if there was a website that listed just about every author known to man and all their books - arranged into series and then sorted into oldest to newest - with checkboxes by each title that I could click on and save. Then when they come out with something new I would notice an empty checkbox at the end of the list and immediately realize that this was a new book that I haven't read. This website would also have to have a listing of authors, arrangeable and sortable using various criteria, with checkboxes by the authors name so that my default view would only be for authors that I care about. There could be a separate section of the website that makes suggestions, "...since you like author ABC, you might also like author XYZ". The website would have to find some way to monetize their work - maybe with affiliate links to books sold on Amazon. Or, I would pay outright for an Android/iOS app that does all of the above, giving the app author(s) the payment they deserve for good work like this.

A website/app like the above would be pretty simple to construct. The big bugaboo would be acquiring the data to keep it constantly updated. There's no central repository for that kind of info AFAIK (if there was and I was made aware of it, I'd be using it!) Acquiring the update data would be where the real work would come in.

A plug-in for Calibre to do this author tracking would be wonderful!!! The existing Overdrive plug-in has some of this functionality (it searches for books by one of your authors that are in specific libraries you configure).

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

I use the same methods as Sirtel. I keep everything in Calibre. I use a Surface Pro to read on and Calibre is on it. I keep Calibre backed up on iDrive and five different hard drives some at my store and some at home. I use iDrive because I use it to back up all of my business files. 30+ years of back up takes up a lot of space.
Apache

Same as Apache and Sirtel. I use Calibre. The master copy is on my iMac, but I back it up to dropbox and my Drobo drive. I then copy it from dropbox to my laptop. I could keep the master copy in dropbox, but in general, I don't trust cloud storage for such things, plus it's nice to have the multiple back ups for that unfortunate time when the kitten goes prancing across the key board and zaps a bunch of stuff. Since Calibre simply requires you to copy the directory, it's easy to copy to a new computer. I've switch computers multiple times since I started using Calibre way back when it was libprs500, a library manager for the Sony PRS-500 (my first dedicated ebook reader) as a replacement for the awful Sony software. No problems switching machines.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by haertig

My biggest problem is finding out when one of the authors that I have read and liked releases (or announces) a new book in the series. I don't have a good method of handling this.

What I currently do, and it sucks, is every few months I scan through my Calibre library and write down the author names that I enjoy reading. That turns into a pretty large list. Then I MANUALLY go and check their respective websites, Wiki, "Book Series in Order" website, Goodreads, and Amazon to see if they have released/announced anything new. This is a real pain for authors where I have a lot of their books already. I have to then go through my Calibre library again, and my print books, to determine if what I am looking at is a new book, or an old book that I just don't remember.

This is horribly tedious, and that explains why I rarely do it. Which just compounds this problem when I put off doing it.

Boy it would sure be nice if there was a website that listed just about every author known to man and all their books - arranged into series and then sorted into oldest to newest - with checkboxes by each title that I could click on and save. Then when they come out with something new I would notice an empty checkbox at the end of the list and immediately realize that this was a new book that I haven't read. This website would also have to have a listing of authors, arrangeable and sortable using various criteria, with checkboxes by the authors name so that my default view would only be for authors that I care about. There could be a separate section of the website that makes suggestions, "...since you like author ABC, you might also like author XYZ". The website would have to find some way to monetize their work - maybe with affiliate links to books sold on Amazon. Or, I would pay outright for an Android/iOS app that does all of the above, giving the app author(s) the payment they deserve for good work like this.

A website/app like the above would be pretty simple to construct. The big bugaboo would be acquiring the data to keep it constantly updated. There's no central repository for that kind of info AFAIK (if there was and I was made aware of it, I'd be using it!) Acquiring the update data would be where the real work would come in.

A plug-in for Calibre to do this author tracking would be wonderful!!! The existing Overdrive plug-in has some of this functionality (it searches for books by one of your authors that are in specific libraries you configure).

At one time, getting notifications when one of my favorite authors had a new book was what I used author-alerts for. Great website. You put in the authors you wanted to monitor and it would send you an email when a new book came out. Unfortunately, Amazon decided to block them so they shutdown.

As far as I know, there is nothing out there that provides this service anymore. Amazon is basically being the dog in the manager over this. They don't want to make the effort, but they don't want anyone else to access their database to do it.

I really wish that there was such a service. Heck, I would be willing to pay for such a service. While the task is a bit more complex than you think, the real issue is getting access to a database with all the ebooks and meta data that is updated regularly. I've often wondered by a consortium of publishers doesn't put such a thing together. It would be pocket change for them.

[tomsem]

I don’t organize, but one could do worse than to use Goodreads (even if your reading does not involve Kindle platform). You can export your data and make reports out of that.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

At one time, getting notifications when one of my favorite authors had a new book was what I used author-alerts for. Great website. You put in the authors you wanted to monitor and it would send you an email when a new book came out. Unfortunately, Amazon decided to block them so they shutdown.

As far as I know, there is nothing out there that provides this service anymore. Amazon is basically being the dog in the manager over this. They don't want to make the effort, but they don't want anyone else to access their database to do it.

There must be more to it than that, we've just only heard one side of the story.
eReaderIQ seems to running along just fine using Amazon data to provide a different service.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by leebase

I've tried Calibre but I'm always changing my computers around and Calibre is a casualty.

It's a simple one line "scp -r" or "rsync" command to transfer your entire Calibre library. I use rsync spawned by a daily systemd timer (could just as easily use cron - more easily actually) to keep all copies of my library in sync. Then I also have backup software that maintains daily snapshots of my library on a separate server. The rsync takes only a second or two (over my LAN), even though my Calibre library is just slightly shy of 50Gb currently. My library changes frequently, but only by small amounts on a day-to-day basis.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

At one time, getting notifications when one of my favorite authors had a new book was what I used author-alerts for. Great website. You put in the authors you wanted to monitor and it would send you an email when a new book came out. Unfortunately, Amazon decided to block them so they shutdown.

Amazon tries to provide this service, but pretty much they fail miserably. I have added many authors that I'm interested in to get notifications from Amazon. Sometimes those notifications come, but most of the time they don't. Or they come months after the fact. About the only thing I see from this Amazon service are emails at the near-spam level telling me that James Paterson has released a new book. He must have about a million ghost writers these days, because notifications for him come with ridiculous frequency. Or, he writes books at about 3x the speed that I am able to read. I actually don't read his books anymore, because he no longer writes them. He was good in the beginning, but now he is just a name that they attach to someone elses work.

[theducks]

I use Calibre on a PC (always on) and I use Calibre Companion to update it (I read on a Kobo or Kindle 4nt) remotely