Seeking Advice

[MicS]

Hi, I'm new to the forums and I am hoping someone can help. I apologize if this is not in the right place, but I just don't know where to look for an answer.

I have an iPad mini with the Nook, Kobo and Kindle apps and books in each of those libraries. I want to put all the books in one place (Calibre seems most likely) so that I can index them and find what I have and on which app it calls home.

I do not want to read the books on my computer and I do not want to load content from Caliber to a device, I just want to get everything I have listed in one place that I can search with relative ease to find a particular book. My library isn't that large comparatively, probably just over 500 books, but I sure can't remember where they all are. And I cannot seem to find the content on my computer if I download the books to the app on the computer in order to load into Calibre that way. Nor does any of the content appear in iTunes when I select the app - iTunes thinks there's nothing on any of them even though I'm currently reading several of them!

If Calibre is not the best option, then can someone please suggest a better alternative. I am frustrated beyond belief in trying to sort this out and I do not know where to look for an answer. I cannot believe there isn't a simple way to do this. And if there really isn't, then I implore you programmer-types out there to create one. PLEASE!!

Thank you in advance for any and all help - and if this is covered somewhere else, please just point me in the direction.

[theducks]

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[AlexBell]

Welcome to the forums.

I have the same problem, but have no idea whether calibre can help. In fact I only use calibre for my Sony, not for my iPad. Have you tried asking on the iPad forum?

[GRiker]

Originally Posted by MicS

I have an iPad mini with the Nook, Kobo and Kindle apps and books in each of those libraries. I want to put all the books in one place (Calibre seems most likely) so that I can index them and find what I have and on which app it calls home.

To clarify, you would like to have entries in calibre representing books installed on your iDevice in multiple reader apps, with a column indicating which reader app has the book installed.

There is no automated way to do this currently, but it can be done manually.

Create a custom column of type 'Text, but with a fixed set of permitted values'. Those values would initially be 'Nook', 'Kobo' and 'Kindle'.

You would then create a new book by selecting Add books|Add empty book to create a new book in your library without any associated content. Add the metadata, then set the custom column to indicate which reader app the book is installed in.

G

[MicS]

Thank you for your response!

Originally Posted by GRiker

To clarify, you would like to have entries in calibre representing books installed on your iDevice in multiple reader apps, with a column indicating which reader app has the book installed.

There is no automated way to do this currently, but it can be done manually.

Create a custom column of type 'Text, but with a fixed set of permitted values'. Those values would initially be 'Nook', 'Kobo' and 'Kindle'.

You would then create a new book by selecting Add books|Add empty book to create a new book in your library without any associated content. Add the metadata, then set the custom column to indicate which reader app the book is installed in.

G

I apologize for not being exact with my problem description. I do know that I would have to add a field to Calibre - that is not my problem. My problem is adding the books to Calibre. Since I do not have individual devices for each library, only the applications, I do not know how to find and add all the books to Calibre.

I have found many references on how to get books from Calibre on to any device, but I cannot find any information on how to get the libraries from the devices (or more accurately, the apps) to put the books into Calibre. I cannot find the Nook or Kobo libraries stored on my computer (MacBook) nor does iTunes recognize any content when accessing the apps. I realize that I could enter all 500+ entries manually by going through each app and then each book one by one, however I simply do not have the time. I was looking for a way to automate the book-adding process.

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but I just can't find what I'm looking for. I suppose ideally what I would love would be to put my account information for each (B&N, Amazon and Kobo) in a library manager (e.g. Calibre) and have it automatically update the list the way the apps currently do. For what I would like it is not necessary to load the complete book - I really only need the metadata and the ability to organize it the way I would like. I'm only asking about adding the whole library because it looks like that's the only way to do this.

Thank you!

[GRiker]

You're not missing anything. The data is not easily accessible. Each iOS app maintains a database of its installed books in its own app directory. Individual reader apps each use their own database design to store that information. So the first challenge is finding the database using an app like iExplorer or iFunBox, then writing code to extract the booklist from the database.

The second challenge is doing this under program control so that the process can be automated. Due to Apple's 'walled garden' philosophy, it's not possible to simply read the contents of your iDevice without either jailbreaking or using a code library that knows how to get to the individual app directories.

In order to do what you want, a plugin would need to be written using a special code library to peek over the garden wall into the databases for each of those reader apps (and presumably others), returning a list of books with associated metadata to be added as empty books to your calibre library. The required special code library is not currently part of calibre, but may be at some point in the future. Even when that code library becomes available, the plugin would still need to be written by a motivated developer.

To do this on your own today, you would need to do it manually using the tools I mentioned above.

Hope this helps.

G