Best way to move books purchased from Kobo into Calibre?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

Q, when I tried to do this, Calibre says it can't open it or convert due to the DRM.

What do I need to do?

Thanks!

Head on over to the Apprentice Alf blog for de-DRM help (we can't discuss specifics here).

[petercreasey]

A, nope! I don't want to de-DRM the ebooks. I thought the method in the quote back avoided having to take that action.

Otherwise, I'll just continue to struggle with ADE moving the ebooks to KA1.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

A, nope! I don't want to de-DRM the ebooks. I thought the method in the quote back avoided having to take that action.

Otherwise, I'll just continue to struggle with ADE moving the ebooks to KA1.

Calibre should be able to move the DRM'd books just fine unless you're converting them to kePub or something.

[petercreasey]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Calibre should be able to move the DRM'd books just fine unless you're converting them to kePub or something.

A, I downloaded 3 books into ADE from kobo.com. I opened them in ADE, then closed ADE.

I went to My Digital Editions and copied and pasted each book into the Calibre folder. Calibre gave me an error message about the DRM status when I tried to process them. And, no, I don't used kePub, only epub on my KA1.

[jiminrussell]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

A, I downloaded 3 books into ADE from kobo.com. I opened them in ADE, then closed ADE.

I went to My Digital Editions and copied and pasted each book into the Calibre folder. Calibre gave me an error message about the DRM status when I tried to process them. And, no, I don't used kePub, only epub on my KA1.

Have you authorized your kobo reader for Adobe? Settings/Accounts.
Then transfer to your kobo device.

[petercreasey]

j, Adobe Digital Editions does successfully (ultimately) move books from the ADE library to my KA1. Oftentimes, the process fails and I have to do things like reload, reboot, etc., but ultimately it can be made to work successfully.

This would surely be evidence that ADE is properly set up for my KA1.

. . . . Pete

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

A, I downloaded 3 books into ADE from kobo.com. I opened them in ADE, then closed ADE.

I went to My Digital Editions and copied and pasted each book into the Calibre folder. Calibre gave me an error message about the DRM status when I tried to process them. And, no, I don't used kePub, only epub on my KA1.

Ummm.... not quite clear what you are doing. If you are using ADE, you should be connecting your Kobo to your computer with ADE running and then adding the books to your Kobo from within ADE -- this also will let you check that your Kobo is authorized with the same account as your copy of ADE. If your Kobo is not authorized or authorized with a different account than your computer, you will have to jump through the hoops required to authorize it.

If you are using Calibre, you can try adding the books to Calibre using Calibre's Add books and then connecting your Kobo and transferring the books using Calibre's send to device. Calibre seems to add the DRMed epubs happily though most of the information is not available and the Calibre viewer will not be able to open the book to read. I've never tried this so not sure how well the DRM authorization information will transfer through to your Kobo. This assumes that you do not have the DeDRM plugin installed and enabled.

Copying and pasting books into your computer's Calibre library is definitely Not A Good Idea.

[petercreasey]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you are using ADE, you should be connecting your Kobo to your computer with ADE running and then adding the books to your Kobo from within ADE

If you are using Calibre, you can try adding the books to Calibre using Calibre's Add books and then connecting your Kobo and transferring the books using Calibre's send to device. Calibre seems to add the DRMed epubs happily though most of the information is not available and the Calibre viewer will not be able to open the book to read.

Copying and pasting books into your computer's Calibre library is definitely Not A Good Idea.

David, good info...thanks!

I've been doing what you say in your first paragraph above, but ADE has difficulty oftentimes so that I have to restart ADE and/or reboot before it can transfer the books to the KA1.

What you say in your second paragraph seems to work so I'll try doing this regularly in the future so as to avoid the transfer difficulties with ADE.

What you say in your third paragraph is what I understood someone upthread said will work, but it doesn't.

[ottdmk]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You might be able to run ADE 2.0.1 under Wine, but it's a hassle to get it working if you can. If you cannot get ADE 2.0.1 running, you are best dual-booting Windows or running Windows in a V. Then you can easily run ADE 2.0.1. You download your ePub as ePub and with the DRM removal plugin for Calibre, you can remove any DRM.

There's no question about running ADE 2.0.1 in Wine. I'm doing it now. And installing it is less painful than it used to be. Just make sure you look at the Wine AppDB page for 2.0 and scroll down for the instructions from Anastacious Focht.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

What you say in your third paragraph is what I understood someone upthread said will work, but it doesn't.

I suspect that they wrote unclearly. Calibre is not happy when you manually copy books into the Calibre library directories -- I seem to remember Kovid Goyal as stating they may be deleted without warning -- as they will not have a record in the database. Dragging and dropping books on Calibre or using the Add books button works as does adding a different format for an existing book by using the add a format in the Edit metadata dialog.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

There's no question about running ADE 2.0.1 in Wine. I'm doing it now. And installing it is less painful than it used to be. Just make sure you look at the Wine AppDB page for 2.0 and scroll down for the instructions from Anastacious Focht.

The problem is that page is very much wrong. It should be mentioning ADE 2.0.1 and not ADE 2.0. Also, the link to Adobe's website is also wrong. It should be linking to the page at Adobe where you can download ADE 2.0.1. And one other botch job is the link to the MR wiki should be https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/ADE_2.0.1_Linux and not /ADE_2.01_Linux. So whoever put up that page did a terrible job and it needs fixing.

If I didn't have to register, I'd fix this botch job.

[petercreasey]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If you are using Calibre, you can try adding the books to Calibre using Calibre's Add books and then connecting your Kobo and transferring the books using Calibre's send to device.

David, Actually it intuitively occurred to me that it should be possible to eliminate one of the steps in the process you describe. Simply point Calibre to the device then Add Book from the ADE folder straight to the device. This appears to work fine.