Annotating PDFs & other newbie questions

[islavet]

I downloaded Calibre a while ago based on rave reviews, got totally confused looking at it, and finally jumped in with both feet yesterday as I had time on my hands. I've spent most of the past 2 days importing books and reading articles and this forum, getting a plan together to better manage my sprawling ebook collection. I would really appreciate comments on my plan; I was all ready to go with Google Drive until I came across comments tonight saying NEVER USE GOOGLE DRIVE, so I would like to avoid any other potential disasters! My goals are to keep track of my ebooks and be able to highlight and annotate some of them. Because reading other people's workflow plans has really helped me, I will be detailed in my plan in case it sparks any ideas.

My situation: I have a PC, iPad, iPhone, and Kindle Touch I will be working with. I have PDF books, shorter PDFs which are often professional articles, and mobi/azw non-Amazon books. I've already realized most of the PDFs will not convert well. Instant syncing is not critical to me; the same day is usually fine.

I have a few hundred non-Amazon mobi or azw3 files, and those I plan to email or Send to Kindle from Calibre on an individual basis. Then any annotations will be saved in the Amazon cloud and they will be viewed as personal documents (which is OK, I just want to be able to put them in my Kindle Collections). From what I've read, it sounds like AZW3 is the best format for more recent technology. It also sounds like highlighting/annotating is not possible to automatically save to ebooks stored in Calibre folders... correct?

I will keep my short PDFs that are not really ebooks, and all my professional PDFs, in Evernote for searchability, and if I want to annotate I can open them in Goodreader or PDF Expert, and then open the annotated PDF back in Evernote. Then I will delete the original note. It seems a bit unwieldy, but I won't be doing this a ton, and I don't really like Evernote's annotation program (nor do I want to pay for it).

Longer, ebook PDFs are what have been stumping me. I want them cataloged in Calibre. I think I can drag & drop individual PDFs I want to work on into a folder in iCloud Drive for PC, staying under the 5 GB free limit. Then, I can open that PDF on my iPad in either Goodreader or PDF Expert and read, highlight, annotate, and keep it available on my iPad. Eventually, I can "add books" in Calibre to get my updated PDF into Calibre's files, and delete the original PDF in Calibre. Unless there is a way to replace the original file in Calibre??

For backing up my Calibre Library, which will contain all my ebook files, I think I can run SyncToy (periodic syncing to external hard drive), just copying the entire folder. This will save everything important, right? From what I can tell, the only way to backup my 15 GB library to the cloud is to pay a good deal more than the $2/month I thought I could pay for extra space in my Google Drive. I'll have to decide if that's worth it... most of my ebooks came in zip file collections, so I could perhaps keep my zip files in Google Drive just in case of, you know, an earthquake that destroys my computer and external hard drive but not me. :-)

Sorry for the long post! Any comments or other suggestions are appreciated!

[eschwartz]

The main problem with annotations is that there are all sorts of standards, depending on which format you use.
PDF should be fine, at least, since PDF annotations are usually embedded in the PDF itself. Note that if you use calibre's Open With to open a PDF, it will open the copy in the library, and the annotations will be saved there. If you use the PDF on your iPad, you will need to add the iPad-updated copy of the PDF to the book record in calibre. Edit Metadata ==> Add format. It will automatically replace the current copy of that format with the newly-added copy of that format.

...

On the topic of cloud syncing, copying the entire Library folder is exactly what you need to back up your library. You can also backup the configuration directory if you want to preserve plugin/GUI settings, but it isn't necessary.

You can use Google Drive, as long as you sync a copy of your library into your Google Drive folder. Do NOT keep the only copy of your library in Google Drive!
If something happens to your library, it will require some work to reimport the books backed up in Google Drive, but at least you'd have the books, right?

Though I would still recommend finding another service like Dropbox or Box.com or Copy.com, many of which offer referral programs. Though I believe Copy.com is closing down.
See my Dropbox referral link? I have collected 17.38 GB of storage because of referrals on MobileRead.

[islavet]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

If you use the PDF on your iPad, you will need to add the iPad-updated copy of the PDF to the book record in calibre. Edit Metadata ==> Add format. It will automatically replace the current copy of that format with the newly-added copy of that format.

Thank you very much; that is exactly the confirmation I was hoping to get from someone who knows more!

I have spent today reading about iCloud Drive and Goodreader and trying to figure out how iCloud stores files opened in Goodreader. (I am still not sure.) Do you know if there is any problem with keeping my main Calibre Library in iCloud Drive on my PC? Or is iCloud Drive too new to know how Calibre will interact with it? iCloud is apparently now only $1/month for 50 GB, which would be plenty for my ebook library.

Thanks for your help!

[eschwartz]

I honestly have no idea. I've never used Apple products myself. (As a Linux user, it would be somewhat challenging anyway...)

But the only problem with Google Drive is that Google somehow decided it was okay to modify the filenames of stored files.
Apparently that makes sense to them, because who would ever be stupid enough to put numbers in parentheses in a filename, right So Google decided that was how they would implement a versioning system.

Given that Google Drive is the only service I have heard of so far with that (ridiculous) problem, iCloud is probably okay. But in order to know one way or another, I would have to have used iCloud... and I haven't, so I'm not going to promise anything.

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If you do store your library in iCloud, and Goodreader can open the PDF files directly and write the modified PDF back to iCloud, then chances are you won't even have to export the PDF to the computer and update it inside your library. The iCloud sync should do all the work for you.