Metadata download when many books have correct title - but wrong author name

jer989 · 04-17-2012, 11:48 AM

I have a good number of books (~250) that at one time were emailed to my Kindle through Amazon - and apparently the metadata author field is set to the email address that I emailed them from. Some of these books were PDF's that I wanted to go through Amazon's conversion process to make AZW kindle versions of. In any event - I now have these books loaded into a Calibre library and I wanted to use the download metadata in bulk function to get the correct author set for all of them (and also of course get the appropriate tags and covers as well).

Most of these books have the Title field set correctly - some of them do also have the Author appended to the title (so for example the title field in Calibre is "<Book Title> - <Author>". I'm guessing that in these few cases I could use a Regex and do a search and replace to grab the Author from the Title field and stuff it into the Author field. But for the rest of the books (the majority of them) - it seems as though the download metadata doesn't work if the Author field isn't set correctly. (That is to say, a book with the correct title set, but the author field set to 'Unknown" fails to download metadata). Is there a way to force download metadata to only look at the title?

Is there any easy, automated way to do this, or do I just need to go through book by book and do it manually?

Thanks.

kiwidude · 04-17-2012, 11:56 AM

One thing you might want to try is using the Extract ISBN plugin. Metadata download will use ISBN in preference to title/author if it has one and can find a match. Doing that (and having overwrite title/author checked in the metadata download preferences) would allow you to most quickly update all those books with little effort.

That is predicated on your books having an ISBN in their content of course. However you may find the majority do and you can just manually correct the ones that don't.

speakingtohe · 04-17-2012, 03:35 PM

The download metadata usually works if the author is set to unknown. Some cases of duplicate titles are not great but unknown is better than wrong author.

Helen

04-17-2012, 11:48 AM	#1
jer989 Enthusiast Posts: 37 Karma: 152 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: NY Device: Kindle 3, Kindle Fire HD	Metadata download when many books have correct title - but wrong author name I have a good number of books (~250) that at one time were emailed to my Kindle through Amazon - and apparently the metadata author field is set to the email address that I emailed them from. Some of these books were PDF's that I wanted to go through Amazon's conversion process to make AZW kindle versions of. In any event - I now have these books loaded into a Calibre library and I wanted to use the download metadata in bulk function to get the correct author set for all of them (and also of course get the appropriate tags and covers as well). Most of these books have the Title field set correctly - some of them do also have the Author appended to the title (so for example the title field in Calibre is "<Book Title> - <Author>". I'm guessing that in these few cases I could use a Regex and do a search and replace to grab the Author from the Title field and stuff it into the Author field. But for the rest of the books (the majority of them) - it seems as though the download metadata doesn't work if the Author field isn't set correctly. (That is to say, a book with the correct title set, but the author field set to 'Unknown" fails to download metadata). Is there a way to force download metadata to only look at the title? Is there any easy, automated way to do this, or do I just need to go through book by book and do it manually? Thanks.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Wrong Title and Author on default ePub cover	tmlee51	Calibre	6	11-23-2011 08:19 AM
Metadata download overwriting Author/Title fields	economix	Library Management	3	11-17-2011 08:27 PM
Metadata is changing my Title/author upon exit.	Gros'Land	Library Management	2	06-04-2011 09:34 AM
Troubleshooting Wrong display of non-english characters in book title & author name.	smrtihlav	Amazon Kindle	0	04-28-2011 10:32 AM
Title and author's Metadata is switched	Student1	Library Management	8	01-23-2011 10:35 PM

04-17-2012, 11:56 AM	#2
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,637 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	One thing you might want to try is using the Extract ISBN plugin. Metadata download will use ISBN in preference to title/author if it has one and can find a match. Doing that (and having overwrite title/author checked in the metadata download preferences) would allow you to most quickly update all those books with little effort. That is predicated on your books having an ISBN in their content of course. However you may find the majority do and you can just manually correct the ones that don't.

04-17-2012, 03:35 PM	#3
speakingtohe Wizard Posts: 4,812 Karma: 26912940 Join Date: Apr 2010 Device: sony PRS-T1 and T3, Kobo Mini and Aura HD, Tablet	The download metadata usually works if the author is set to unknown. Some cases of duplicate titles are not great but unknown is better than wrong author. Helen

Advert