eBook Readers, Editing Software, And Meta Data

[Phog Allen]

Good evening gents. I am the happy owner of a Kindle Fire SWMBO bought for me last Christmas. I have mostly used it for internet browsing whilst sitting on my lazy bum in the easy chair. It really is a nice little device. But I have wanted to get back into the habit of reading. I mean like I used to when I was young. I was a voracious reader. Going through a couple of pocket novels per week. I couldn't get enough of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical drama.

So when I got the Kindle I knew it was an opportunity to get myself back into the reading habit. I knew about Gutenberg.org and now they have a lot of the books already formatted in mobi. which is native to the Kindles. I have also discovered a rather useful programme called Calibre. This eBook manager is a beaut. It has an e-reader feature but more importantly, it will handle conversion of ebooks from one format to another. Albeit not the DRM types. This opens up a large portion of the Gutenberg library to use on the Kindle. For a long while they only had EPUB format which is non proprietary but unrecognisable by the Kindle. Calibre handily converts them to mobi. and they appear in the books folder on the Kindle. BTW, the Nooks support EPUB natively so there's another option.

Calibre also allows meta data to be edited. This allows me to add covers or more information to the ebook files. Check out Calibre. A very good programme.

Cheers, Todd

 

[SmoovD]

If you read ebooks, Calibre is a must. The absolute best way to manage an ebook library.

 

[joshgambit]

Good evening gents. I am the happy owner of a Kindle Fire SWMBO bought for me last Christmas. I have mostly used it for internet browsing whilst sitting on my lazy bum in the easy chair. It really is a nice little device. But I have wanted to get back into the habit of reading. I mean like I used to when I was young. I was a voracious reader. Going through a couple of pocket novels per week. I couldn't get enough of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical drama.

So when I got the Kindle I knew it was an opportunity to get myself back into the reading habit. I knew about Gutenberg.org and now they have a lot of the books already formatted in mobi. which is native to the Kindles. I have also discovered a rather useful programme called Calibre. This eBook manager is a beaut. It has an e-reader feature but more importantly, it will handle conversion of ebooks from one format to another. Albeit not the DRM types. This opens up a large portion of the Gutenberg library to use on the Kindle. For a long while they only had EPUB format which is non proprietary but unrecognisable by the Kindle. Calibre handily converts them to mobi. and they appear in the books folder on the Kindle. BTW, the Nooks support EPUB natively so there's another option.

Calibre also allows meta data to be edited. This allows me to add covers or more information to the ebook files. Check out Calibre. A very good programme.

Cheers, Todd

+1 on everything you've said. I have found myself reading more books now that I have an ebook reader and Calibre. It is probably one of the best pieces of software available.

 

[Matt555]

Calibre is excellent! I have been using it for some time now with my Kindle Touch. Although Kindles are compatible with PDF documents they look terrible and are a mess to navigate on the Kindle (probably not a problem on your Kindle Fire as it is more of a tablet and not a plain E-Reader). Often times I use Calibre to convert PDF docs to MOBI so I can read them comfortably on my Kindle. They convert perfectly and then you still have the option to adjust text size and spacing and such. I have also found books in EPUP format only, just like you, and have converted them to MOBI so I could read them. Love my Kindle and love E-Books. I was very reluctant to get one for years as I was convinced I would hate it. I think I now enjoy it more than traditional books. I find I can read longer with less eye strain due to the grayish color of the Kindle screen. Sometimes if I am reading a book printed on bright white paper, it strains my eyes.

 

[AlanL]

As gutenberg.org offers mainly material in the public domain, Amazon also offers most of this for free explicitly for the kindle. So don't miss out on browsing the free kindle shop on Amazon.

 

[tinashubby]

Calibre is great! I found it about a year ago and have a BooKoo of books in it! (about 360)

 

[reyrascon]

This is the first I have heard of Calibre. I am amazed just by looking at the video, I can't wait to use it. Thanks everyone for the recommendation!

 

[Phog Allen]

Hey chaps. Thank you for the great responses. I cannot believe how powerful and useful Calibre is. And for free? I will be donating a little something to the author. I used the meta data features to add covers to some of the books I converted from EPUB to mobi but they do not appear on the books themselves when you view themnin the Fire's carousel. What am I doing wrong here?

Cheers, Todd

 

[Matt555]

As gutenberg.org offers mainly material in the public domain, Amazon also offers most of this for free explicitly for the kindle. So don't miss out on browsing the free kindle shop on Amazon.

Yes! Amazon has lots of free stuff straight from the site. If you look on Barnes and Nobles website, they charge $3.99 for each of these titles that are out of copyright and free everywhere else. Amazon also lets you "read for free" up to six titles per year for free. Not all titles are available under the "read for free" feature though.

Hey chaps. Thank you for the great responses. I cannot believe how powerful and useful Calibre is. And for free? I will be donating a little something to the author. I used the meta data features to add covers to some of the books I converted from EPUB to mobi but they do not appear on the books themselves when you view themnin the Fire's carousel. What am I doing wrong here?

Cheers, Todd

What books are you trying to add covers to? Most books should already have covers when they are in EPUB format and they should stay the same once you covert them to MOBI.

 

[Phog Allen]

These were most of the classic Charles Dickens novels such as Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickelby. After I downloaded them and even after conversion they looked like the "cover" was the copyright page. I used Calibre's meta editor to search for covers and after clicking okay and sending them to the Kindle they still displayed the page-like covers.

Cheers, Todd

 

[tinashubby]

I'm not sure what you are doing wrong, but you can also copy and paste covers found on the net from other sites besides amazon, such as Goodreads.com. I've done that if I don't like the cover (or introduction) found on amazon. Calibre has a facebook page as well, lots of people ask questions there.

Calibre is about the best thing I've found to come along to e-readers besides e-readers themselves!

 

[Matt555]

These were most of the classic Charles Dickens novels such as Little Dorrit and Nicholas Nickelby. After I downloaded them and even after conversion they looked like the "cover" was the copyright page. I used Calibre's meta editor to search for covers and after clicking okay and sending them to the Kindle they still displayed the page-like covers.

Cheers, Todd

I would try inserting or copying and pasting a cover like tinashubby suggested. Does Calibre have an option to import a cover?

 

[AlanL]

Another feature to take advantage of is "borrowing" Kindle books. If someone else owns a Kindle book, they can lend it to you for free. You download it and can use it for a limited time (few weeks?). During that time, the original owner cannot use it, so it's really like handing it over to you for that duration. So if you have friends and relatives with Kindle, look into this. You can also borrow from strangers online.

 

[Phog Allen]

Yes Calibre has a cover search/import feature. You highlight the ebook file you want to edit and click the "edit meta information" button. In the box that opens there is a bar shaped button that lets you search for covers. It searches Amazon, Google, and another source I cannot remember. You highlight the one you want and click okay. I amnnot sure if there is something I missed.

Cheers, Todd

 

[tinashubby]

You can also get books for you re-reader from the library. It is all done online and is easy once you do it a couple of times.

 

[mr_economy]

You can also get books for you re-reader from the library. It is all done online and is easy once you do it a couple of times.

Unfortunately the Kansas state library system had a disagreement with the pricing of Overdrive, which is the library e-book system that is compatible with Kindles. Instead, we have an (in my opinion) inferior system from 3M that is only compatible with .epub readers like the B&N Nook. At least Calibre can strip DRM from .epub files to allow conversion to a Kindle-friendly format, although that is not exactly legal. Just another example of why DRM is ridiculous and only pushes people toward piracy.

 

[Phog Allen]

Thanks Kyle. I knew there was some issue with the state library and ebooks but was unaware of the overdrive brand. I had heard of the 3m brand and your post brought back the memory of the non-Kindle ebooks. What a pain. Good to see you posting again.

Cheers, Todd

 

[Phog Allen]

Sorry for the bump chaps but I need some coaching with Calibre and possibly transfer of files to Kindle Fire.

First up the transfer of files. When you sideload books onto the Fire(MOBI. files which Kindle uses) they wind up in the Docs folder. This is kind of okay but I would just as soon have them in the "books" folder. I have done a bit of searching and the recommendation was to go to preferences. Under the "conversion" heading select Output Options>Mobi Output. There is a shaded box toward the bottom that says Kindle Options. In this box there is a down arrow selection that has three options; old, both, new. It was set to "old" and I left it like that. Under that is a dialog box that had the tag [PDOC] or something similar. Every instruction tutorial I found said to delete that entry and leave it blank. Some recommended adding [EBOK] I am unsure exactly how the bracketing worked but anyroad I simply deleted the PDOC entry and...nothing. It still sends them to the Docs folder. I had seen one article that claimed you set it up to leave them in the docs folder but they would appear in the books folder as well as a shortcut. Can't seem to make that happen either. Any suggestions?

Now the other issue. After getting a number of books in the Calibre library it became agonsingly apparent they need some sort of folder structure to cut down on the mass of files in the library viewer. So I went to Calibre's help site and they recommend setting it up in heirarchy sort of fashion. I followed the instructions HERE but when it came to the part about selecting a book and using the "edit metadata" function I did not have the column they suggested for custom subgroups/columns/genres or whatever. In fact, I could not find the "custom metadata" dialog box anywhere. I suspect I was in the wrong window pane but who knows? Here is what I want to do. Create a few genres so as to clear the clutter in the main library viewer. Any suggestions?

Cheers, Todd

 

[rupertbear]

...Here is what I want to do. Create a few genres so as to clear the clutter in the main library viewer. Any suggestions?

In Calibre, you use tags. Go to the metadata for the book and you'll find the 'tags' drop down box. You can use the existing wones or create your own. Save that. When you go to the main library page there's menu choices on the left and your list of tags will be there. Click on a tag and only those books with that tag will show on the screen. By the bye, you can assign several tags to each book and as long as one of those tags is in the metadata the book will show (cross-referencing, I guess). For example, you might have a work by Peary that would show up under 'Arctic' or under 'biography' (assuming you've used those tags.

Hopw this helps,

 

[Phog Allen]

Thank you Rupert. I will give it a go.

Cheers, Todd