Apple Books (Epub) to Kindle Mobi Question

[Spartan626]

This is NOT a DRM question/issue.

I need assistance converting my Apple Books to Mobi format. I entered the directory on my Mac where I downloaded all of the .epub files for my Apple Books (334 of them. I know, it took me several years to see the light on a Kindle).

I was able to input the files into Calibre and export them into Mobi (about 200 of them are DRM free, the DRM ones obviously didn't work). A quick check after transferring them to my Kindle shows that overall the process was successful (I didn't dig into it enough to check any minor issues, but the books are there). My only problem is that the book metadata (Title and cover mainly) are't there. In Calibre it also shows Author as "Unknown", but on the Kindle it has the proper Author on the generic book cover. The book name is just a random number (which is how the Apple Book .epub files are named).

I tried to download metadata with Calibre but that didn't work. I used the "Extract ISBN" plugin, which successfully pulled the ISBNs for about 30 of my 300+ books. When I did another download metadata, almost all of the books with an ISBN pulled the proper data (yay)!

My current solution is to go down the numbered file names one at a time and input the ISBN into Calibre individually, then run the download metadata command again. With 300 books this could take a while.

Is there any way I may be missing that will allow me to transfer the Metadata easier? (Again, at least 200 of these books are DRM-free).

Thank you!

[Quoth]

ISBN on ebooks?
An eBook doesn't need an ISBN. Also the same text has different ISBNs for different paper formats.
A different edition on paper gets a different ISBN.
ISBNs are really only of use to either look up a specific paper edition or for a bookshop to order a book, which is why the 13 digits are the same as UPC/UAN with the Country = Bookland (978 prefix). Last digit is a checksum, hence different on the obsolete 10 digit ISBN.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Spartan626

This is NOT a DRM question/issue.

I need assistance converting my Apple Books to Mobi format. I entered the directory on my Mac where I downloaded all of the .epub files for my Apple Books (334 of them. I know, it took me several years to see the light on a Kindle).

I was able to input the files into Calibre and export them into Mobi (about 200 of them are DRM free, the DRM ones obviously didn't work). A quick check after transferring them to my Kindle shows that overall the process was successful (I didn't dig into it enough to check any minor issues, but the books are there). My only problem is that the book metadata (Title and cover mainly) are't there. In Calibre it also shows Author as "Unknown", but on the Kindle it has the proper Author on the generic book cover. The book name is just a random number (which is how the Apple Book .epub files are named).

I tried to download metadata with Calibre but that didn't work. I used the "Extract ISBN" plugin, which successfully pulled the ISBNs for about 30 of my 300+ books. When I did another download metadata, almost all of the books with an ISBN pulled the proper data (yay)!

My current solution is to go down the numbered file names one at a time and input the ISBN into Calibre individually, then run the download metadata command again. With 300 books this could take a while.

Is there any way I may be missing that will allow me to transfer the Metadata easier? (Again, at least 200 of these books are DRM-free).

I'm pretty sure this is going to be a manual process. If the original copy of the book didn't have metadata that calibre could use to set the basic details (title and author), then you will need to set that manually. The Extract ISBN plugin was a good idea, but, it requires that a valid ISBN was somewhere in the text of the book. What you are doing is probably the only way. You could use the author and title instead of the ISBN, but, that will need to be manually entered and is probably as prone to error as the ISBN.

A possibility is to use the Import List plugin. That can take a CSV and apply the metadata in it to the books in the library. But, it needs enough details to match the books. I think the only advantage would be that it might be easier to create the CSV than edit the metadata in calibre. But, unless you have a source for this that can be massaged, I don't think it would be that useful. Is there a list in Apple Books that could be exported?

@Quoth: I'm not sure of your point. @Spartan626 is after a quick way to set the basic metadata of the ebooks. An ISBN is an accurate way to do that. It doesn't matter that the ISBN is not for the exact edition of the book. As they probably just want the correct author, title, series, etc. using the ISBN of any edition of the book will be good enough for that. And if they do care about using the correct ISBN or other identifier for the edition of the book they have, having one will probably be a good starting point.

[Spartan626]

Thank you for the responses.

I wasn't aware ISBNs on ebooks was different, or that some don't have ISBNs. I don't care about the particular version of the books. My goal is to find an efficient way to get mainly the title, author name, and cover for my iBooks before converting them.

@davidfor - In my primary Books folder Apple has a .plist that contains information on all the books I've downloaded. It does have the information I need, but also a ton more, and is probably not in a format a program can parse out the information I need.

I think you are right, that I need to go through manually and add the titles and authors. Hopefully then I can pull covers automatically (although covers aren't a HUGE deal to me). Guess I know what I'll be doing during conference calls for the next couple weeks. I do wish there was an easy way to tell which books have DRM so I can just delete those from the library before doing this. Oh well.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Spartan626

Thank you for the responses.

I wasn't aware ISBNs on ebooks was different, or that some don't have ISBNs. I don't care about the particular version of the books. My goal is to find an efficient way to get mainly the title, author name, and cover for my iBooks before converting them.

@davidfor - In my primary Books folder Apple has a .plist that contains information on all the books I've downloaded. It does have the information I need, but also a ton more, and is probably not in a format a program can parse out the information I need.

You might be able to massage it into a suitable format. I'd need to see it to get an idea of how much work it would be. But, at the least, it gives you somewhere you can copy the title and authors from.

I think you are right, that I need to go through manually and add the titles and authors. Hopefully then I can pull covers automatically

It's a pain but sometimes it just comes down to doing the work.

although covers aren't a HUGE deal to me). Guess I know what I'll be doing during conference calls for the next couple weeks.

I try to that, but, my cats consider that to be a good time for some attention.