New Nook Simple Touch will not connect to B&N

[Bookworm_Girl]

Sorry about your problems. I sideload all my books to my Nooks onto an SD card using calibre. I even have it set up so that it loads the books into folders based on custom genre columns that I setup in calibre. Makes it easy to find books in the My Files view and you don't have to assign them manually to the Nook bookshelves. Then if anything happens with their software issues, I can easily reload my books and have it organized quickly.

[RAH]

That's a scary story, Banjo. It's a good thing that you have it documented here, so others will know how to fix the problem if it happens to them. Actually, it is good to know that it is fixable via the typical uninstall/reinstall, etc, etc route. A lot of times things are not so easily (or actually not easily) remedied.

As far as ADE, it is astounding to me that a company like Adobe can be the big dog in image manipulation software (Photoshop) and other software too (Acrobat, Illustrator), and yet their software is often really awful and almost always quirky and strange, IMHO.

[JanG]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Sorry about your problems. I sideload all my books to my Nooks onto an SD card using calibre. I even have it set up so that it loads the books into folders based on custom genre columns that I setup in calibre. Makes it easy to find books in the My Files view and you don't have to assign them manually to the Nook bookshelves. Then if anything happens with their software issues, I can easily reload my books and have it organized quickly.

---sort of! Can you tell me how you set that up in Calibre? I'd really love to use folders for genres. Calibre automatically puts all books for the same author into folders, but genres would be an added bonus! I dislike the Nook's shelves, I'm used to Bookeen's Opus with it's folders and sub folders, and sub sub folders, etc.

I'm not very tech minded, so please explain simply if you can.

[Banjo]

From what I have seen of Calibre, it looks to be a pretty good tool. I would also like to figure out how to use it to better effect. Most of my reading on the NOOK will be side-loaded public domain books on the SD card and library books. I think the NOOK will be a good device once I get past the startup pains. But the startup pains have been severe so far.

Using the NOOK will require using both Calibre and ADE because ADE does not present a way to sideload a book the SD card, and Calibre does not handle any DRM books.

One thing that I didn't point out in my previous rant is that B&N applies their software upgrades automatically if your device is connected to the wireless. Some of the complaints on the Adobe forum were that the broken 1.2.1 update was applied behind the scenes, and then suddenly people could not read the books they had bought. The fix for the problem involves wiping out your entire collection and starting over from scratch. One poster said that he had to go re-shelve all of his books after a reset because B&N does not preserve that information when downloading the books from the B&N store.

From a customer relations point of view, that really stinks.

As an eReader, once I got it working, the NOOK is nicely done.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

[Bookworm_Girl]

You can use calibre to organize DRM'ed books and transfer them to your Nook. You just can't do manipulative things like convert them or open them in calibre viewer, etc.

I should note that I have a Mac, but I think the commands should be very similar in the Windows version of calibre.

To create a custom column in calibre, you select Preferences > Change calibre behavior from the menubar. Select "Add your own columns". Type a lookup name such as genre, a column header name such as Genre, and for column type select "Text, column shown in the tag browser". You could create a second custom column for subgenre. You will see your new column in the calibre main window. If you put your mouse over the column header, then it shows a tool tip that says the "The lookup/search name is #genre" for example. Notice that it puts a # sign in front of whatever you typed for the lookup name when you created the column.

Here is a good tutorial from the calibre blog if you want to get a little more sophisticated with your genre column.
http://blog.calibre-ebook.com/2011/1...m-columns.html

I chose to use both genre and subgenre to organize my books. For example, I have a genre called Classics and then subgenres like Adventure, Thrillers, Romance, etc.

The next step is to tell calibre that when you transfer your books to your Nook that you want it to create folder and subfolders with this column data. Select Preferences > Change calibre behavior from the menubar again. This time under Advanced select Plugins. Then hit the dropdown button next to "Device Interface Plugins". Then select Nook Device Interface from the list that has the long list of Nook models (note that it is accidentally spelled TSR rather than STR for the Simple Touch). Next select Customize plugin at the bottom of the screen. A new window will open on your screen. I have both "Read metadata" and "Use sub-directories" checked yes. Then under the save template I have typed:

{#genre}/{#subgenre}/{title}

I like to use title for the name of my file. Some people like to use {title} - {authors} as the file name but that takes up too much space on the Nook screen in my opinion.

After you have transferred your books over USB through calibre, open your Library on your Nook. Select "My Files" from the drop down list. You can then select Memory Card and navigate through the folders under Books! I took a photo to show you an example of my genre "Classics" and subgenre "Thrillers". Hope that helps!

[JanG]

Thank you, Bookworm Gal. I'm going to try this.

[gbm]

These are the templates I use for sending to devices.

This one puts the ebook in a genre folder; authors subfolder; series subfolder (if needed) then names the ebook file by series number(if needed) and book title.

{#folder}/{authors}/{series}/{series_index:0>2} {title}

This one is for large series, also series with multiple authors.

{#folder}/{series}/{series_index:0>2} {title}

Replace #folder with the name of your custom column.

bernie

[Banjo]

That's great information. Thanks for posting it

Banjo
(_)=='=~