WARNING: signing out of Kobo destroys all your organising

[LivresInOz]

Thanks to the several people that suggested I use Calibre to organise my collections.


This will be a far easier solution in the long term!

I managed to do it. It's not as involved as it looks, esp if you follow the 'short' method below

[LivresInOz]

A short (if somewhat rough) only-the-essentials version of how to get Calibre to organise your COLLECTIONS
to help other people, including something I didn't see in the sticky version:

1. It's probably easier to just watch this video - but taking into account the points that follow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEoQGwPN8wg

2. HOWEVER you don't NEED to
a) do the part related to the 'metadata plugboard' if you don't want to automatically rename your books (AFAIK)
b) include 'series' if you don't care about series (AFAIK)
This makes the process a fair bit quicker

3) NOTE: with my Kobo Libra H20 I was able to use the 'extended' kobo touch plug-in.
I disabled the other one referred to.


4) Its important to do the following:

- plug in kobo
- 'DEVICE' button
- configure this device

This part is also covered in the video (referring to configuring the plugin):

* TAB: Collections, covers & uploads.
* COLLECTION check box - tick it
* Collection columns field: enter the names of the columns you wish to use for collection.
For example, #myshelves, series
(I didnt bother with 'series').
* Tick create collections. Otherwise, books will be moved in and out of existing collections.
* Tick 'Remove empty collections' if you want to remove empty collections

Source (with more detail)

5. Obviously you then need to edit the CUSTOM METADATA for your books.
Choose the parameter you used for your collections (eg 'My Shelves').
AFAIK you CAN do this in bulk - worked for me.
It will even add a new collection name to an existing one. Eg adding 'History' to the following:

Read 1, History

Or adding 'science':

Check Out 1, Science

6. Then plug in the Kobo and (if you've set it to 'automatic' as the video explains), it SHOULD do the magic by itself!

[LivresInOz]

Thanks again Meera for your help

[davidfor]

@zenji:

Reading through your posts the one thing that comes to my mind is that you have no idea what is going on. And you did very little research before doing something that was obviously going to have side affects. This started with your warning about losing collections when you sign out of your Kobo device. That has been met with a universal response which is basically, "Well, duh". This fact is well known here and has been discussed many times over the years.

The advice to sign out of the Kobo account to fix problems is something commonly given. The most likely reason for it is when there is a database corruption. And mostly it comes with a warning about what you lose. You seemed to have picked the one place that none of that advice was given. But personally, I'm a lot more surprised that you didn't complain about losing the reading status than losing the collection organisation. That is the usual thing people are worried about.

Lets be clear, in case the others haven't made it clear enough: Kobo only syncs details about books purchased from them and synced through their environment. Kobo uploads nothing about your sideloaded books that will be returned to the device. That includes reading status, bookmarks/annotations and what collections the books are in. And of course it means the books as well. The existence of the collections are synced as they can also contain purchased books downloaded directly to the device. And they are synced whether there are books in the collection or not.

You will note above that I have included bookmarks and annotations as something not synced for sideloaded books. While you think Kobo is saving these for sideloaded books, they are not. The fact that they can survive a sign-out is almost a bug. And they will only survive for epubs and PDF. They won't survive for any other format that is sideloaded. They also won't survive if the epubs are on the external SD card (for those with older devices that have one). And they won't survive a factory reset. They only survive the sign-out because Kobo does not clean them up properly. And even then, you won't know they are still there until you open a book that has them.

You are making a big fuss about collections. As I said, all this is very well known here. One of the very common things new Kobo users have commented on over the years is the difficulty to put books in collections and then asked if there was an easier way to do it. And, as has been pointed out, there is. And again, it has been discussed a lot, so much there is a sticky thread in place for it. Hence the frequently offered suggestion to use calibre.

As to whether Kobo should be syncing this information, again, this has been heavily discussed here. Some people think they should, some are glad they don't and some are vehement that they shouldn't. But, Kobo does not and have never claimed to. Why they don't, I don't know. The privacy issues that @DNSB pointed out is probably a big reason. But the development and support costs will be another reason. And simply whether they think it is an important feature for their customers. And that to me is the real reason they don't do it. They don't think enough of their customers want this to make it worth the investment.

As far as I can see, no other ereader manufacturer supports this either. Kindles don't. You will probably say that they do, but, to get the book on the device so that it is synced, you have to email it to Amazon and then sync. And it has to be a MOBI, not one of the better formats. Again, they don't sync anything about books put on the device via the USB connection. Tolino don't do it automatically. For them, you need to sideload the book and then explicitly push it to the server. It isn't automatic. And if you don't do that, nothing is remembered. In both of these cases, if you did the equivalent of signing out of the account, you would lose the collections.

Lastly, and for my curiosity, when you spent all that time organising your books into collections, did you do it one at a time? Or did you use one of the methods to do it in bulk?

[astoriedsoul]

Originally Posted by zenji

8.

Making accusations with no evidence. Yet laughable, since I have zero love for Amazon. Less than zero. If you re-read what I said, I was giving an example of another platform to test whether its reasonable to expect large data loss upon signing out.
Again: feel free to name an account on the planet where you lose that much data when you sign out.
I'm waiting!


9.

a) The person who gave the advice to sign out of Kobo to fix the Overdrive problem was a 'Wizard' with 3000 posts. I thought the advice was followable. (See the actual thread below)

b) 'Rant': the name given to people's complaints by fanboys and followers who hate anyone who rocks the boat. People who would have us be using Windows 95 and never improve anything

c) ...Not that what you're doing in the above is a rant or anything. Just complaining about the PAST behaviour of someone who has almost zero effect on you, whose actions you will have little affect on, without including a single word that's actually helpful. No, that's not a rant! 🤣

d) Feel free to provide the evidence of where I was 'condescending people's knowledge' (sic)



10. I have no evidence of 'database corruption'. Everything was working fine. Indeed, I'd just synced I think. The problem I had is described well here and this is the thread that also offered the "solution" - signing out of Kobo.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=4154960

I find it laughable that you attack me for having "no evidence" when you don't actually acknowledge anything I or others have suggested; you just attack my language. I used my words correctly. See the OED. Feel free to continue twirling your propeller cap.

Do your research before you do something. It's that simple. This issue has been discussed so many times on this forum. davidFor quite thoroughly explains this to you as do all the others.

You can keep condescending; you can keep attacking others, but it doesn't change the fact that you started off by RANTING, and you continue to deflect.

You're in the wrong.

[ewphoenix123]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@zenji:

Reading through your posts the one thing that comes to my mind is that you have no idea what is going on. And you did very little research before doing something that was obviously going to have side affects.

I mean he did say that he worked in marketing... followed by insulting people who gave technical advice. Checks out here... another one for the ignore list.

[LivresInOz]

Originally Posted by davidfor

you did very little research before doing something that was obviously going to have side affects. This started with your warning about losing collections when you sign out of your Kobo device.

SERIOUSLY David: i say again:
feel free to name me one major service or device that loses such a large amount of (customer-created) data as the assignment of books (even 500+ books) to different collections.

I'd argue that this is NOT expected behaviour for most people, which is WHY I felt no compulsion to check on weird side fx. I also repeat: the person who gave the advice was a 'wizard' with thousands of posts, who literally said it wouldn't cause 'any problems', so I took that as enough advice. It seems pretty obvious you didn't read my posts before making these comments.

Originally Posted by davidfor

As far as I can see, no other ereader manufacturer supports this either. Kindles don't...In both of these cases, if you did the equivalent of signing out of the account, you would lose the collections.

All I know is that on the Kindle app on Android, you can put a book into a collection and those same collections will EVEN appear on that app on another device! Indeed, knowing this, it's entirely reasonable for a person to expect similar behaviour on the Kobo - because that is surely one of the most similar situations you can come up with. Given this, a SPECIFIC WARNING is the minimum a customer has the right to expect.

(...Especially considering many people will be familiar with the Kindle APP, but far fewer people will have both a Kobo and a Kindle DEVICE. So, most people, including Kobo owners, will go on their Kindle APP experience.

So - you say Amazon don't even retain the collections info for books you email to yourself. (Are you talking about ONLY the device, or also the Kindle APP?)
But how many people bother with that and therefore know that? Better to be safe than sorry and warn people. EVEN BETTER: get one over Amazon and enhance your USP of being able to easily load third-party books, by adding collections-retention as a feature!)

Originally Posted by davidfor

@zenji:And mostly it comes with a warning about what you lose.

The warning says NOTHING about collections. Just as it doesn't mention your bookmarks WILL be retained. It's far from perfect.

Originally Posted by davidfor

I'm a lot more surprised that you didn't complain about losing the reading status than losing the collection organisation. That is the usual thing people are worried about.

True, right? Esp considering I'm usually reading 10 books at a time. 🤣

But what you say does point out that people care about the retention of the information they most certainly spent time creating.

Originally Posted by davidfor

While you think Kobo is saving [bookmarks] for sideloaded books, they are not. The fact that they can survive a sign-out is almost a bug...

One man's bug is another man's feature. Again I say: this proves it's almost certainly technically possible for them to keep your collections info. So the Q consumers should ask is: why don't they?

Originally Posted by davidfor

One of the very common things new Kobo users have commented on over the years is the difficulty to put books in collections and then asked if there was an easier way to do it.

So my complaint is one many can sympathise with. (Though I must apologise for not scanning the entire site for past discussions before I brought it up! 🤣 )
Surely they could provide the option of saving all that useful data - whether or not it has to be UPLOADED somewhere (like your kobo-bought-books collection info already is...so much for it being a privacy concern).

Originally Posted by davidfor

And, as has been pointed out, there is. And again, it has been discussed a lot, so much there is a sticky thread in place for it. Hence the frequently offered suggestion to use calibre.

Yes - every cloud has a silver lining. Discovering how to do this has been fantastic. It's made things so much easier that I'm probably going to finish the project of moving my most important books to the Kobo. Kovid Goyal is a genius and a gift to all readers!

Originally Posted by davidfor

As to whether Kobo should be syncing this information, again, this has been heavily discussed here. Some people think they should, some are glad they don't...The privacy issues that @DNSB pointed out is probably a big reason....

Clearly it's important to many. So am I such a bad person for complaining about it? By the attack I got so quickly, it seems like some think so. If privacy is the main reason, it seems they can keep that info on the device after sign out using the same method that bookmarks are kept.

Originally Posted by davidfor

But, Kobo does not and have never claimed to. Why they don't, I don't know.

Whether some company claims to do something is not really relevant to whether its helpful to customers or not doing it is harmful.
Ford never claimed the Pinto would not explode on impact. 🤣
Toyota never claimed it would make an electric car - until it did.

Originally Posted by davidfor

They don't think enough of their customers want this to make it worth the investment.

Seems to me that what customers want is not a major guide for Kobo. Or they would have retained the external storage or at least offered a variation with it.



I also know - and I'm shocked that several people are ignoring this - that there is hardly a service or product on the planet that destroys this much user-created data on exit!

Originally Posted by davidfor

Lastly, and for my curiosity, when you spent all that time organising your books into collections, did you do it one at a time? Or did you use one of the methods to do it in bulk?

I did alot of it in bulk and - since I don't just decide to put someone in the 'dislike' basket and ignore the good they do - I will happily point out that their interface for doing this is pretty good. (One of many things l like about the Kobo!) But nowhere near as good as Calibre

[issybird]

The first Guideline at MR is Discuss Things Politely. Several posts have been deleted for rudeness. Apologies if what’s left doesn’t quite follow or if I missed something. Members are reminded that not engaging and escalating is the preferred course; report problem posts and let the mods handle it. Thanks.

[LivresInOz]

Originally Posted by astoriedsoul

Do your research before you do something. It's that simple. This issue has been discussed so many times on this forum.

Funny that you quote the very part that counters this and yet still don't seem to have taken it IN. This is evidence you failed to read what I wrote before commenting.

I SAID : the person who suggested that the solution to the Overdrive-sign-in-problem was a 'wizard' with thousands of posts. I quoted the very advice in fact ! I will now add: the person said it would NOT CAUSE ANY PROBLEMS.

I honestly thought that was sufficient info to go ahead.

ESPECIALLY GIVEN THAT:

1. A similar situation MANY including me would have used as a comparison is the Kindle APP (with millions of users). On that app, you can not only sign out and retain your collections, they will even appear on OTHER DEVICES without you doing ANYTHING. Therefore I had a reasonable expectation that signing out on the Kobo wouldn't destroy hours of work. (Thanks for giving me the opportunity to mention that again 🤣 )

2. Now, if the Kindle DEVICE loses your collection info for books you sideloaded (by emailing?), then many of us DONT KNOW that, because its far LESS likely for a person to spend money on TWO different devices. I ONLY own a Kobo. And guess what? The MAIN USP for that device for me is the capacity to have your 'own' books on it! So I was honestly SHOCKED (and dismayed) it let all my collections info get destroyed without even WARNING ME.

Originally Posted by astoriedsoul

You can keep condescending; you can keep attacking others, but it doesn't change the fact that you started off by RANTING, and you continue to deflect.

Actually:

1. (Apart from a playful jibe about how some people respond to a complaint by laughing at the complainant and defending the company), I was ATTACKED FIRST

2. I DID listen to the advice. One or two people kept their comments to BRIEF, HELPFUL ONES without adding in a bunch of unnecessary criticism. I always intended to follow their advice after I responded to the garbage, and then I did. With awesome results.

[LivresInOz]

Originally Posted by ewphoenix123

I mean he did say that he worked in marketing... followed by insulting people who gave technical advice. Checks out here... another one for the ignore list.

Mate, a couple of people gave GREAT advice in a couple of sentences. I followed that advice and the result was fantastic !

Others appeared to give advice, but:
1) If you looked closely it was actually information which had little bearing on solving the problem and certainly added nothing useful to what had already been said

2) What it did contain however, were alot of unnecessary insults. And it seems that the advice in (1) was mainly designed to demonstrate that (as they said directly) 'you don't know what you're talking about'. In other words, it was a classic attempt at 'humiliation-by-advice' ! 🤣

That's why I responded to THOSE people with counter-criticisms of what they said, and THANKED the people who kept their comments to helpful info.

It's fine if you ignore me. That means other people will see what I have to say in response to you, but ironically, you won't! 🤣

Anyway, it seems that all of us that wrote things that were (from mildly to moderately) snarky utterly wasted our time, because the mod(s) deleted those posts. And a good thing too I say!

It provides a good disincentive against being unkind. And from now on, I will just report posts that contain that stuff. It's probably the biggest cause of public forums being less than they can be.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by zenji

SERIOUSLY David: i say again:
feel free to name me one major service or device that loses such a large amount of (customer-created) data as the assignment of books (even 500+ books) to different collections.

I'd argue that this is NOT expected behaviour for most people, which is WHY I felt no compulsion to check on weird side fx. I also repeat: the person who gave the advice was a 'wizard' with thousands of posts, who literally said it wouldn't cause 'any problems', so I took that as enough advice. It seems pretty obvious you didn't read my posts before making these comments.

The problem is that if the database is corrupt, sometimes the only way to fix it is to start over. You very well may have had a corrupt database given how your Kobo was acting. So in that case, the fix is to start over. You have no need at all to logout if your database is not corrupt.

But for the future, f you use Calibre to manage your eBooks and put them on your Kobo, you can also use Kobo Utilities to make a backup of the database when you connect your Kobo to your Calibre library. If the database is not corryot, Kobo Utilities will make a copy n your computer so if you do somehow have a corrupt database, you can copy the latest copy over the corrupt database.

One other thing is there is a problem with CBZ files at the moment so if you do have any CBZ on your Kobo, delete them so you don't have any problems.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by zenji

SERIOUSLY David: i say again:
feel free to name me one major service or device that loses such a large amount of (customer-created) data as the assignment of books (even 500+ books) to different collections.

Dare I suggest "Windows"? If you delete an account from a Windows PC, you lose all the configuration you have done. And all the data you mistakenly kept in the documents directory. The data you kept elsewhere should be available. If I create that account again, I won't get that configuration back. Deleting the account from the device is what you are doing when you sign out of the account on the device.

And exactly how much would you lose if you signed out of your phone? I know there is plenty of things in the phone that will be wiped if I signed out and then back in a few minutes ago.

But, I'm pretty sure that Kindle also does it. And tolino. Adding sideloaded books (books added to the device using the USB port) to collections for both is only a local configuration and is lost when you sign out.

I'd argue that this is NOT expected behaviour for most people, which is WHY I felt no compulsion to check on weird side fx. I also repeat: the person who gave the advice was a 'wizard' with thousands of posts, who literally said it wouldn't cause 'any problems', so I took that as enough advice. It seems pretty obvious you didn't read my posts before making these comments.

You trust someone just because they have a lot of posts? That isn't a very good idea. What if all of the thousands of posts are in some other part of the forum and this was their first post in a Kobo related. But, that

All I know is that on the Kindle app on Android, you can put a book into a collection and those same collections will EVEN appear on that app on another device!

Yes, that does happen. But, it is not the same. Remember we are talking about sideloaded books. Books that are added to the device via the USB port. Books that are not uploaded to the server. Neither Kobo or Kindle automatically add books that have been sideloaded to the devices to their servers.

The Kindle app works differently. You have to explicitly add the book to the Kindle app. And that automatically uploads the book to the server. And the book will download to other instances of the app, and I assume the Kindle devices. If the collection information does not follow the book, then I would be complaining.

But, as Kobo does not sync the sideloaded books, it has nothing to sync the collection information with. So, how is it supposed to restore the information?

Indeed, knowing this, it's entirely reasonable for a person to expect similar behaviour on the Kobo - because that is surely one of the most similar situations you can come up with. Given this, a SPECIFIC WARNING is the minimum a customer has the right to expect.

Sorry, just because one company does something doesn't mean others should. And just because one does it one way, doesn't mean that all companies should do it in exactly the same way. No one should expect the same behaviour. Hope maybe, go looking for it, yes. Look to see what if they do a similar thing, definitely. But, not expect the same thing. And people do buy different devices because they are wanting different behaviour.

As to the warning, it possibly isn't good enough. But, if they do what you are suggesting, then it would be several pages long and would be as useless as the current warning as no one would read it. And yes, I am serious that it would need to be that long to cover everything that might possibly need to be covered.

(...Especially considering many people will be familiar with the Kindle APP, but far fewer people will have both a Kobo and a Kindle DEVICE. So, most people, including Kobo owners, will go on their Kindle APP experience.

So - you say Amazon don't even retain the collections info for books you email to yourself. (Are you talking about ONLY the device, or also the Kindle APP?)

No, I did not say that. The discussion is about sideloaded books. Kobo does not have anything like the email to an account method so I was not discussing that. But, as I have said here, Amazon does sync the collections for books added to their syncing environment. But, that cannot be done by sideloading to a Kindle using the USB connection.

But how many people bother with that and therefore know that? Better to be safe than sorry and warn people. EVEN BETTER: get one over Amazon and enhance your USP of being able to easily load third-party books, by adding collections-retention as a feature!)


The warning says NOTHING about collections. Just as it doesn't mention your bookmarks WILL be retained. It's far from perfect.

It doesn't tell you that the bookmarks will be retained because in many cases they will not. Something I carefully explained in my post. It also doesn't tell you that you will need to sign into your Adobe, Pocket and OD account again or that you will lose a lot of statistics. The message talks about what can be saved, not what can't be saved.

True, right? Esp considering I'm usually reading 10 books at a time. 🤣

You should note that the above comment and similar is what is rubbing people the wrong way. That will be taken by most as a snide comment from you demonstrating you are superior to them. No matter what you think, it is insulting.

There are plenty of people here who have multiple books on the go at the same time. I normally have two or three. There are people reading books that are published serially, so they have those open to the last chapter they have read while waiting for the next. I have had a book open for a long time because I couldn't bring myself to read the last chapter. There are lots of reasons to have multiple books opened. And a lot of people want to keep a record of what they have finished. The Kobo devices display this well and make it easy to filter books in different states. Which makes it easier to find books/

But what you say does point out that people care about the retention of the information they most certainly spent time creating.

It doesn't tell you that the bookmarks will be retained because in many cases they will not. Something I carefully explained in my post.

One man's bug is another man's feature. Again I say: this proves it's almost certainly technically possible for them to keep your collections info. So the Q consumers should ask is: why don't they?

Just about anything is technically possible. Whether it is desirable or practical is another matter.

So my complaint is one many can sympathise with. (Though I must apologise for not scanning the entire site for past discussions before I brought it up! 🤣 )

Well yes, it is on you to do some research when looking for the solution to a problem. And that does mean looking through the site for related discussions.

Surely they could provide the option of saving all that useful data - whether or not it has to be UPLOADED somewhere (like your kobo-bought-books collection info already is...so much for it being a privacy concern).

Kobo already know about your books bought from them. And syncing them and the details about them is a service they explicitly offer. So, it is something you agree to. If you disagree with it, there are ways to avoid it by manually downloading the books and sideloading.

And no, saving extra information is not necessarily desirable. Again, you think it is, but not everyone else.

Yes - every cloud has a silver lining. Discovering how to do this has been fantastic. It's made things so much easier that I'm probably going to finish the project of moving my most important books to the Kobo. Kovid Goyal is a genius and a gift to all readers!




Clearly it's important to many. So am I such a bad person for complaining about it? By the attack I got so quickly, it seems like some think so. If privacy is the main reason, it seems they can keep that info on the device after sign out using the same method that bookmarks are kept.

No, clearly it is important to you. Nowhere have you demonstrated that it is important to others. Your "poll" about sideloading books does not demonstrate it. From experience here, collections are far less popular than you seem to think. Especially since Kobo added the Series tab. That was one of the popular uses for collections. For those here still using collections, they recognised the difficulty in managing them on the device and found another way to do it. That means that losing them if they need to sign out is completely insignificant.

Whether some company claims to do something is not really relevant to whether its helpful to customers or not doing it is harmful.
Ford never claimed the Pinto would not explode on impact. 🤣
Toyota never claimed it would make an electric car - until it did.

No, but what they do claim is important in what the product will do. If it doesn't do that, then you should complain and get them to fix it. But, if it doesn't do something that they don't claim to do, then a complaint isn't what you should be doing. Making a request to add that function is reasonable. Examining why it was you think it was something the device did is something you should also do. Maybe you brought the wrong product.

And bravo on the pertinent examples. It must have taken you such a long time. The problem is that they are far more damaging to your point, and everyone's opinion of you, than they are helpful.

Seems to me that what customers want is not a major guide for Kobo. Or they would have retained the external storage or at least offered a variation with it.

Sorry, but Kobo definitely responds to their customers. The problem is that they decide which of their customer requests to respond to, not you and or me. While I have been using Kobo devices, they have added features I thought were useless and removed features that I wanted to use. But, I know that those changes were in response to customer requests. Or in response to customer support problems.

But, a very important thing is to remember that the members of MobileRead, and that includes you, are not really the target market for Kobo. Or Kindle or any other ereader manufacturer. What we want to do with these devices is different from the typical users of these devices. And adding all the features we think are important would make the devices much more complicated and cost a lot of money for development, testing and support. All that for a very small number of potential sales of devices. And no guarantee of an increase in number of books sales (as demonstrate by your "poll").

I also know - and I'm shocked that several people are ignoring this - that there is hardly a service or product on the planet that destroys this much user-created data on exit!

See my first comment above. And the fact that you use the word "hardly" makes your claim invalid. You obviously know of others that do something similar.

But, most of this is personal opinion with some personal experience thrown in. Your opinion is that the warnings given aren't good enough. I don't agree. I'm not convinced that they need more. But, in the end, it is up to them to decide what to do based on feed back from their customers.

Which leads me to my last comment...

You have told Kobo about this, haven't you? I mean, with all the claims of them breaking your device, I am sure that you reported the problem to them so that they know it is something that they must fix.

[Joliet Jake]

Originally Posted by zenji

Kobo has not seen fit to warn users that if you sign out of your Kobo account on the device, ALL of your books will lose their connection to the different collections you've made.

The collections will be there but none of the books will be in them.
You will also lose all annotations.

So in my case, that's dozens of hours of work lost.

I wish they would warn people.

Add to this the fact:
- you now can't add any extra memory to their devices
- you can't EASILY send or receive books wirelessly
- it won't sign in to Overdrive (the whole reason I signed out: i read that singing out of Kobo fiex the problem)
and I'm just about fed up with this company.

Alternative suggestions sought !
(Also any suggestions for backing up your collection info, until I can find a better reader)

I had to do this recently, maybe two months ago. It wasn't nearly as bad as you have described it.

I use Calibre, which is free. All the books on my Kobo are either on Calibre or in Kobo's "cloud". Calibre organizes books by series and collections. Even though Calibre cannot directly interact with Kobo books, I still was able to quickly organize all my Kobo books again. When I redownloaded the books, they were assigned to series, and I had to use a little bit of time to put them into matching collections.

I have over 900 books on my Kobo, including some manga, and I'm at no risk of running out of memory. I only have 8 GB of memory, and it's only now that I put some manga on the Kobo that I run any risk of running out (I still have more than half of the memory available). I don't need a memory card.

I had no problem with wirelessly downloading Kobo books. The largest part of my library was in Calibre, but the Kobo collection didn't take too long. To be blunt I keep too many books on the Kobo anyway. Most of my Kobo books can just stay in the Kobo cloud.

I had no problem signing into Overdrive. It just needed my library card number and PIN, and I had been using that with my library for years. (I found it easier to directly download library books to the Kobo rather than use Adobe Digital Editions.) To get the library card I just opened my wallet. The PIN is the last four digits of my phone number, although I guess that rule varies from one library jurisdiction to another.

I don't use annotations, but I'm surprised you would lose them. I can apply annotations via Kobo Desktop, so I would expect the annotations to reappear in my Kobo-derived books when I redownload them onto the Kobo. (Can anyone confirm?)