Clara Series sort order

It's 04:00 here, and I am too tired to think straight. I've copied 5 series over to my Clara from Calibre, a total of around 70 books. All have series order metadata showing in Calibre, but when I open my Clara, they are not in any order at all - I can sort by author, and that's it. Do I have to manuall rename all the books in each series with a leading number?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by stuartjmz

Do I have to manuall rename all the books in each series with a leading number?

No, but you do need to double-check how your selected calibre driver (KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended) is configured. Open the config widget for whichever driver you're using, go to the 'Metadata, on device & advanced' tab and make sure you have checked the 'Set series information' box.

Once that's done, each time you connect the Clara to calibre, the series metadata on the Clara will be brought in line with that in calibre.

As a new Kobo user an important thing to know about Kobos is that some of the calibre metadata is not transferred during the initial send-to-device process for any given book. Some of it, including Series data, is only sent the second time (and every time thereafter) you connect to calibre.

davidfor, the Kobo/calibre guru, could explain this better than me, but the initial send-to-device is mainly concerned with physically transferring the book file. When you disconnect this first time the Kobo then does its complex routine of importing the new book into the Kobo's SQLite database (.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite). Some metadata (e.g. author, title) is extracted from the book during the import, but not all. The next connection adds the rest from calibre to the new entry in the Kobo database.

Once you can actually see Series & index in your Kobo My Books list choosing Series from the drop-down Sort menu will sort your books by Series/index.

Whilst you're getting your Series data sorted out, if you want calibre to help you manage your Kobo Collections you might also want to get Collections configured correctly in in the calibre driver. More info here if you haven't seen it already.

In addition there are even more ways to transfer extra calibre metadata to your Kobo's book list and/or book details page by using the 'Update metadata' option contained in the calibre Kobo Utilities plugin. I strongly recommend installing this plugin as it has all sorts of useful options for Kobo owners.

Thank you both - you for pointing me to the plugins I needed and davidfor for writing them. It's all sorted!

[Shadowjack]

This reminds me of a question I have been meaning to ask about sorting by Series. If I am viewing an author's page on my kobo and select sort by series, those books that are not part of a series are not grouped together, rather it appears to use the book title to compare and order with series name. Is there a way to alter this behavior? In Calibre those books not in a series are grouped together.

Thanks.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Shadowjack

Is there a way to alter this behavior?

Not as far as I know.

It used to be possible by faking it. Using a calibre metadata plugboard to change 'author' to 'author_sort - series series_index' during send-to-device then sorting the My Books list by Author. However, if you do that with current Kobo firmware it will foul up the new-ish Author lists feature.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Shadowjack

This reminds me of a question I have been meaning to ask about sorting by Series. If I am viewing an author's page on my kobo and select sort by series, those books that are not part of a series are not grouped together, rather it appears to use the book title to compare and order with series name. Is there a way to alter this behavior? In Calibre those books not in a series are grouped together.

The sort order is basically "series + series index + title". So, if there is no series name and index are empty, then it is just the title.

To do what you want, you could put something in the series name for non-series book. The driver won't do this unless you have something in the series column in calibre. You could update the database directly, but it would probably get wiped out the next time you connected to calibre. It might not if you use a space, but it probably will.