Recommendations re: adding books to Calibre

[PC_John]

At present I have 7,000+ Kindle, 700+ Kobo, and 4,000+ Nook eBooks which are being read on Android and Windows 7 Ultimate. My goal is to move all of the books to Calibre on Windows 8.1.

Is there a way to move the books quickly and easily? Do I need to use Nook Study, an older version of Kindle for PC, or anything else for Apprentice Alf’s Calibre plugins to work properly? When I encounter duplicate books which version should I keep: Kobo over Nook and Kindle, Nook over Kindle, or what?

Thank you in advance for your suggestions. ~~ /PC_John...

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by PC_John

At present I have 7,000+ Kindle, 700+ Kobo, and 4,000+ Nook eBooks which are being read on Android and Windows 7 Ultimate. My goal is to move all of the books to Calibre on Windows 8.1.

Install FTP Server (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/be.ppareit.swiftp_free/) on the Android devices, and FileZilla (https://filezilla-project.org/) on the Windows system. That way you can easily transfer files to your system, without using a USB port on your computer. Just be sure to turn off FTP Server, and Filezilla, when the file transfers are complete.

As far as books go:

• * Run the "find duplicates" plugin, to locate and delete exact binary matches;
  * You'll need to look through the ebooks, to determine which of two, or more, of the same file format, is the better quality book, to keep, and then delete the rest;
  * Keep multiple formats of the same book;

I've mixed feelings about auto-convert to a preferred file format. I don't do it, but I end up converting everything to either epub, or pdf, so it might be more efficient to do that when importing books into Calibre.

[dwig]

My suggestion is to first move the books to a temporary "holding" folder on the Win8.1 machine, either on an internal or external drive. Fiat_Lux's method for moving the books on the Android device seems reasonable. Once you have them on the Win8.1 device, you can add them to calibre, preferable in modest sized batches.

Prior to import, I would suggest reviewing calibre's preferences for adding books. I prefer to manage duplicates after import and never do automatic format conversion. I also have calibre add a Tag ( "new addition", you could use something similar) to all new imports (there's an option for this in Prefs). I use this to "flag" new additions that have yet to be massaged with my desired set of metadata entries and I remove the "new addition" tag as part of that massaging. Calibre's Tag Browser makes finding all unmassaged "new additions" easy.