Calibre, iMac and iBooks

[Stu109]

I have standardised on using 2 formats for my eBooks. Those 2 formats are EPUB and PDF. Happy with my process on my PC but as we seem to have become an Apple household I am converting over to Apple products completely.

I have just purchased an iMac and want to use standard functionality as far as possible. My products/processes for EPUB so far are as follows:

1. Amazon Kindle (version 1.17 to allow Calibre DeDRM plugin to work)

2. iMac Calibre (current version) setup metadata, set series to reflect the series the books belong to and setup tags to reflect the different genres

3. iMac iBooks, use add to library to "import" the books from Calibre in one go. This works well and doesn't allow duplication and the standard iCloud functionality seems to replicate round the 2 iPads and iPhone. Drag and drop of individual books from Calibre to iBooks also seems to work well

Only problem seems to be that the series doesn't seem to carry over. This has always worked in the past when using a Windows 10 setup

Anybody got any suggestions as to how I can make this setup work.

I could migrate to Marvin and use the Calibre server but I'd like to see if I can get this setup to work

[HarryT]

Series information is only held within Calibre - there is no series metadata in a book - so when you export the book in any way, you lose that information.

What I do personally is use a metadata plugboard to prefix the series name and number to the book's title, so I end up with titles like "Miss Marple 01 - The Body in the Library". That way I can sort my books by series simply by sorting by title within author.

[Stu109]

Thanks for your reply, could you show (screenshot) an example?

[skb]

Something like this?

[HarryT]

No, I was not suggesting editing the book's metadata. That's a completely different thing to using a metadata plugboard.

To set up a metadata plugboard, go to "Preferences / Metadata Plugboards". I have mine set up as follows:

Format: Any format
Device: Any device
Source template: {series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}
Destination field: title

If the book has series information, this prefixes "Series name", then a two-digit series number, and then " - " before the title. If the book has no series information, it leaves the title alone.

So, as I said, the first book in the "Miss Marple" series ends up on the device with a title of:

Miss Marple 01 - The Body in the Library

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Stu109

Thanks for your reply, could you show (screenshot) an example?

Enter a plugboard such as the one attached and click save plugboard.

Format: epub
Device: any device
Source template: {series}{series_index:05.2f| - | - }{title}
Destination field: title

Click save plugboard.

The device can be specific. You can choose Apple and it will update the book's internal metadata title field only when sending and epub to an Apple device. This updates only the book as it is being sent to a specific device.

Alternatively you could skip the plugboard and just use Calibre Companion App on your IOS device.

[Stu109]

Thanks for the information. This nicely replicates what I was doing manually in Calibre where I was manually updating the title with the series number.

I've tested this out and in general it seems to work. I have one or two instances where it doesn't. Can't see anything obvious, any ideas?

I was hoping to just drag/drop from Calibre to iBooks in the iMac so that the standard Apple functionality would take care of the syncing but I'm finding there are many things that I really do not like about the iMac version of iBooks. The worst is that it seems impossible to combine genre and series in any meaningful way.

On my previous windows install from PC to iPads with iTunes sync I had very few issues both the genre (tags in Calibre) and the series came down into the iPad/iPhone. If I looked at categories I would see the books grouped by series and books not in a series would be grouped in the category. If I looked by author
then again I would see for each book the series on the right hand side and if not in a series the the category (genre) shows

It seems to be impossible to replicate this in iMac iBooks and when synced to the iPads/iPhones the only series that you can see is where you have purchased a book in a series from the Apple store.

To be honest this implementation of iBooks seems really "flacky" so I am considering going Marvin for Epubs and keeping iBooks for PDF (where series is not really an issue.

Or is it me?

[DoctorOhh]

I have zero Apple experience.

Originally Posted by Stu109

The worst is that it seems impossible to combine genre and series in any meaningful way.

That is why I suggested Calibre Companion (CC) App, you get all of calibre's metadata easily accessible.

Originally Posted by Stu109

To be honest this implementation of iBooks seems really "flacky" so I am considering going Marvin for Epubs and keeping iBooks for PDF (where series is not really an issue.

Many folks use CC and Marvin.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Stu109

I've tested this out and in general it seems to work. I have one or two instances where it doesn't. Can't see anything obvious, any ideas?

Are they perhaps PDF files? Calibre can't update the metadata in many types of PDF.

[Stu109]

The couple of books affected are EPUB. I've deleted, dowloaded and dedrm'd into Calibre, downloaded meta data and re-drag/dropped into iBooks with no joy. I think that iMac iBooks is starting to appear unfinished and more than a little inconsistent.

Marvin seems like a good bet, relatively clean with OPD but no sync across iPads/iPhones. Why advantages do you think utilising Calibre Companion would have over Marvin?

Option 1: Calibre OPD to Marvin
Option 2: Calibre wireless to Calibre Companion to eBook Reader of choice

As far as I can see neither would sync across multiple iPads/iPhones but both options would keep "genre" and "series" as long as I stay away from iMac iBooks?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Stu109

The couple of books affected are EPUB. I've deleted, dowloaded and dedrm'd into Calibre, downloaded meta data and re-drag/dropped into iBooks with no joy. I think that iMac iBooks is starting to appear unfinished and more than a little inconsistent.

The metadata plugboard works when the book is sent to a device via calibre or exported from the library by save to disk feature. You can use the connect to folder feature too.

Originally Posted by Stu109

Marvin seems like a good bet, relatively clean with OPD but no sync across iPads/iPhones. Why advantages do you think utilising Calibre Companion would have over Marvin?

Option 1: Calibre OPD to Marvin
Option 2: Calibre wireless to Calibre Companion to eBook Reader of choice

As far as I can see neither would sync across multiple iPads/iPhones but both options would keep "genre" and "series" as long as I stay away from iMac iBooks?

Ask this question in the Calibre Companion forum to get answers from folks that use it.

[Stu109]

it seems to work perfectly if I "drag & drop" with the exception of 4 books out of 300?

By that I means highlight multiple epub books in iMac Calibre and drag/drop onto an open instance of iBooks. Are you saying that should not happen ?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Stu109

it seems to work perfectly if I "drag & drop" with the exception of 4 books out of 300?

By that I means highlight multiple epub books in iMac Calibre and drag/drop onto an open instance of iBooks. Are you saying that should not happen ?

As I stated I have no Apple experience, and I have no idea what you mean by drag & drop from calibre. This isn't a feature I'm aware of.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

As I stated I have no Apple experience, and I have no idea what you mean by drag & drop from calibre. This isn't a feature I'm aware of.

On Windows Drag'n'Drop from the library moves the Preferred Output format from the library to the drop point. If it's not present, then I think it moves first format available from Preferred input list. I assume it's same on the other OSs.

Added : The file names are what ever is in the book folder- so Cyrillic Titles and Authors will have Latinized ASCII values etc, i.e. no template name transforms, no conversion etc.

BR