Need help putting series books in order, plz

[20LEgend]

Having built up quite a library with Calibre/Kindle I find I have numerous books by the same authors. Some of these may be part of a series and so I want to read them in order. Is there an easy way to place the titles in order, eg drag and drop, or do I have to edit titles, eg title-1, title-2 etc, to know which to read first?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by 20LEgend

Having built up quite a library with Calibre/Kindle I find I have numerous books by the same authors. Some of these may be part of a series and so I want to read them in order. Is there an easy way to place the titles in order, eg drag and drop, or do I have to edit titles, eg title-1, title-2 etc, to know which to read first?

A Kindle user will have to help with the Kindle collections part.

NB On a filename based system like my PEz, you put the series index First (using Save to disk/Device Templates): 01-WOT, 02-WOT, 798- WOT so that it sorts in order

But you have to lay the foundation before any the solutions will work.
(Remember the old computer phrase: GIGO. Garbage in = Garbage out)

You need to populate the Series field and THEN set the book number correctly for each title in the list in the Metadata editor.

Series info Does Not belong in the Title of a book in Calibre's Library view.

Check your work (Quality?) it the Series section of the Tag editor. If you see the Series name 2 or more times: Typo or spelling error.
(There is a possible case where two different (author)series have the same name. (I have been lucky to Not have this issue ) You will have to Make the names different Deliberately)

So work on getting all your ducks in a row for when a Kindle specific answer come back.

[kiwidude]

As theducks says, getting your Series column in Calibre populated correctly is the key to the best approach.

You might be interested in the Manage Series plugin to assist with that. That will let you drag/drop books into whatever order you like with the intent of setting the series column value correctly. It is just a more powerful/flexible alternative to manually typing in series values or using the edit metadata dialogs.

Once you have done that, then you look to how to order them correctly on your Kindle. The approach I use is with the Metadata plugboards feature (Preferences->Metadata plugboards). Look on the forums, there are examples for Kindle in the sticky thread. I setup a plugboard which means the title metadata inside the book stored on the kindle has series prefixed before it, so you can sort by it. In my case the plugboard I use is this one:
{series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|[|] - }{title}

So I get titles appearing on the Kindle like this:
The First Law [1] - The Heroes

Hope that helps.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by theducks

...You need to populate the Series field and THEN set the book number correctly for each title in the list in the Metadata editor.

Series info Does Not belong in the Title of a book in Calibre's Library view...

Excuse me? I agree that in the OP's case that the default series column (and a custom subseries column if necessary) is the proper way to go but I strongly disagree with your statement that series info Does Not belong in the title of a book. I always put the series info into the titles of my books and they work just fine in calibre's library view (I also have the info properly entered in series and subseries columns which is what I use for sorting). This way the series info gets carried over into my JBL. It may not appear in order (it would if I did series name, series number, then title but that would destroy caliber's ability to sort by title) but at least I can still select the next book in a series I am reading. If it is a long series, I can always add the series number to the beginning of each title once I copied the books to the
SD card to make finding the next book easier (I haven't found that necessary yet). I realize it is probably different for Kindle and the way I'm doing it probably won't work (I wouldn't be caught dead using Kindle anyway) but to flat say that series info doesn't belong in the title is just wrong.

In my comic library, I'm using a custom series column that is unnumbered (i.e. Archie Comics, Disney Comics, etc.) and just put the series number in the title (i.e. Jughead and Archie Digest No. 034; the title is essentially a subseries name). It works just fine and is way easier to input. Since the title of each comic is the same for all comics in a subseries, as long as I use three digit numbers for the comic number, they will sort just fine in the title column.

[kiwidude]

Hi Jeannie,

Funnily enough at virtually the same time a user has posted in the Search the Internet plugin thread an example of one "issue" that putting series information into the title caused them.

I know nothing about your device, but it does make it a problem if you ever have a need for just the "raw" title again (which things like metadata searches, plugins etc can all make use of).

You are absolutely correct in terms of Calibre allowing you to do it and if you are happy with it go for it. But I would agree with theducks that it isn't an approach that I personally would recommend unless you are fully aware of all the downstream issues of that choice

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Excuse me? I agree that in the OP's case that the default series column (and a custom subseries column if necessary) is the proper way to go but I strongly disagree with your statement that series info Does Not belong in the title of a book. I always put the series info into the titles of my books and they work just fine in calibre's library view (I also have the info properly entered in series and subseries columns which is what I use for sorting). This way the series info gets carried over into my JBL. It may not appear in order (it would if I did series name, series number, then title but that would destroy caliber's ability to sort by title) but at least I can still select the next book in a series I am reading. If it is a long series, I can always add the series number to the beginning of each title once I copied the books to the
SD card to make finding the next book easier (I haven't found that necessary yet). I realize it is probably different for Kindle and the way I'm doing it probably won't work (I wouldn't be caught dead using Kindle anyway) but to flat say that series info doesn't belong in the title is just wrong.

In my comic library, I'm using a custom series column that is unnumbered (i.e. Archie Comics, Disney Comics, etc.) and just put the series number in the title (i.e. Jughead and Archie Digest No. 034; the title is essentially a subseries name). It works just fine and is way easier to input. Since the title of each comic is the same for all comics in a subseries, as long as I use three digit numbers for the comic number, they will sort just fine in the title column.

We differ.

The 'Title' is what the Author and the copyright page says it is.

Metadata look-up usually fails to retrieve when extra stuff appears in the 'Title'.
OTOH there are exceptions: Like Magazines, where the title is the same and the Volume# or Issue is part of the copyright
Then there is the 'series' that the author declared "Is Not a Series" (MZB about Darkover. In most cases, there is not a 'reading order')

[mdietz39]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

As theducks says, getting your Series column in Calibre populated correctly is the key to the best approach.

You might be interested in the Manage Series plugin to assist with that. That will let you drag/drop books into whatever order you like with the intent of setting the series column value correctly. It is just a more powerful/flexible alternative to manually typing in series values or using the edit metadata dialogs.

Once you have done that, then you look to how to order them correctly on your Kindle. The approach I use is with the Metadata plugboards feature (Preferences->Metadata plugboards). Look on the forums, there are examples for Kindle in the sticky thread. I setup a plugboard which means the title metadata inside the book stored on the kindle has series prefixed before it, so you can sort by it. In my case the plugboard I use is this one:
{series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|[|] - }{title}

So I get titles appearing on the Kindle like this:
The First Law [1] - The Heroes

Hope that helps.

I have followed Kiwi's suggestion on using a plugboard to prepend the series data to the title on the Kindle display. That way the search the Internet plugin works since the title on Calibre is the title without any additional coding.

However I have one small problem with the template as Kiwi has it. One of my series is "The Chronicles of Narnia". If I use that as the series name on the Kindle I get seven books with a title similar to "The Chronicles of Narnia [01] Th". The series name is too long.

I fixed it by creating a custom column heading of "Series Code" with a type of "Text column for keeping series-like information" and a lookup name of "series_code". This will also create another custom column called "Series Code Index". My template is
"{#seriesname:|| }{#seriesname_index:0>2s|[|] - }{title}"
(all without the quote marks).

Using the value of CN as the series code the Kindle displays the book as "CN [01] - The Lion, The Witch and th". Still missing part because the title is so long but much better than before. Also remember you have to place the correct numeric value in the Series Code index.

Thank you Kiwi for the help. Now if you could only let me know what the next Powerball numbers are I would be an extremely happy camper.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Hi Jeannie,

Funnily enough at virtually the same time a user has posted in the Search the Internet plugin thread an example of one "issue" that putting series information into the title caused them.

I know nothing about your device, but it does make it a problem if you ever have a need for just the "raw" title again (which things like metadata searches, plugins etc can all make use of).

You are absolutely correct in terms of Calibre allowing you to do it and if you are happy with it go for it. But I would agree with theducks that it isn't an approach that I personally would recommend unless you are fully aware of all the downstream issues of that choice

I fail to see what problems can result since I haven't run into any. Here is a sample of a title with series info: The Princes of Dublin (The Dublin Saga, Book 1). Mayhap the way I put it in makes a difference. I have had no trouble when doing title searches.