Import group of books as a Collection?, then view in Moon+ Pro

[AZBooks]

How do we import our folder of "Best 70's Sci-Fi" books into Calibre so when we move these 35 books to our tablet, there will be a "Best 70's Sci-FI" choice someplace in Moon+ Pro to view only these books? We have about 20 uniquely named folders (Collections) we would like to create.

We were hoping there was another way other creating a new "tag" name. It would be horrible to sort through the nearly 300 tags that already exist just to find Best 70's Sci-FI.

We are new users of Moon Reader and tablets.

[chaley]

At the risk of making a blatant plug for our app, you can do this easily with calibre + Calibre Companion. The best way is to make a custom column in calibre where you put the collection name(s), then add that column to CC's grouping drawer. You can then choose a collection, choose books using other criteria (if desired), then launch Moon+ on the chosen book.

Try the free demo version to see if CC works for you.

For more discussion about CC, see the CC forum here on MobileRead.

[AZBooks]

Thanks Chaley.

From what I can tell, CC acts like a front end GUI for sorting books, then launches an ereader, which in our case would be Moon Pro. I suspect when you close the book it defaults back to the CC GUI.

I watched a Moon+ video where in the screenshot below the guy selects a book, clicks Favorites icon, then creates a new Category name. These categories (Awakes, Watchtower....) that show up at the very bottom of the "All Books" dropdown. This would be PERfect, but we have way to many books to assign manually, one book at a time.


There must be a way to create these "Category" names in Calibre and assign the books. Any ideas?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by AZBooks

There must be a way to create these "Category" names in Calibre and assign the books. Any ideas?

@AZBooks - looks like chaley already told you

Originally Posted by chaley

... The best way is to make a custom column in calibre where you put the collection name(s), then add that column to CC's grouping drawer. You can then choose a collection, choose books using other criteria (if desired), then launch Moon+ on the chosen book.

You'll have to specify the collection(s) for each book of course.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by AZBooks

There must be a way to create these "Category" names in Calibre and assign the books. Any ideas?

I don't think that there is such a way. Those are moon+ collections in the moon+ library manager, made and managed by moon+. I don't think that book metadata plays any role. Of course I could be wrong, but in the 7 years I have worked on calibre and the 4.5 years we have shipped CC no one has ever suggested a way to do it.

You might get a different answer by asking this question on some moon+ support forum or by contacting the moon+ developer.

[AZBooks]

I figured it out. Thanks so much Chaley.

You create subfolders on your device for each Category/Collection label you wish to appear in the ALL FILES dropdown menu. Default location for Moon books was sdcard/Books/MoonReader. Some of my subfolders look like this:

sdcard/Books/MoonReader/Best 70's SciFi
sdcard/Books/MoonReader/Mary's Classics
sdcard/Books/MoonReader/Racing Manuals

Using Calibre you just dump your books into each respective subfolder. Then using "Import Books" in Moon Reader, you click the "Change Path" triangle icon, which expands whole window to expose more features. This is where you create the new label name.

Select checkbox "Favorites" at the bottom. It's a bit deceiving, the words "Category (Optional)" will still appear grayed out. It gives the impression it won't accept free text entry, but it does. Just tap on these words and enter the new label. Rinse and Repeat this for each subfolder/label name.




Using Calibre "Series" and "Tag" metadata fields to create Collection/Category labels will appear in Moon Reader. Series labels appear first. Both can can be accessed by using the sort "By Tags" dropdown.

CUSTOM COLUMN DATA:
I could not get any data to carry over to Moon Reader if the data was in a Custom Column created in Calibre. Whether the labels were free text entry, specific parameter text choices, or commas separated text, this data would show up nowhere when books were moved to Moon+ Reader.