eBooks

[kevinmsadler]

Hi Guys,

I am about to upgrade and wonder whether Bookpedia will be able to cope with an ebook collection. I have a very large collection now for my Kindle in azw and mobi format. These are not supported by version 4 and wonder whether version 5 will cope.

The books are also stored using the calibre database/library management software and wonder whether it is possible to link the 2 together or get data from calibre into Bookpedia without requiring a degree in computer science and command line expertise.

Thanks for the great software.

Kev

[Conor]

Hi Kev,

Thank you for the feedback. The new version adds support for epub format but not yet azw and mobi. I have added it to my to do list to add for the upcoming updates.

[gryphonent]

Any update on Kindle's .mobi format? I hate using the Kindle software on my Mac.

[Conor]

We have been working on Pocketpedia and have had little time to add new features to Bookpedia. Do let me know where I can get some free .mobi files so that I can look at expanding Bookpedia to handle those, when the times comes.

[gryphonent]

Well, there's plenty of free .mobi files directly on Amazon... Try "Treasure Island" by Stephenson for starters, a great novel anyway.

[Conor]

Thank you for the tip about "Treasure Island" I have downloaded it and come to realize why the MOBI format is so unpopular for third parties, it's incredible complicated compared to EPUB. I have stored them away for latter to try to decipher.

[gryphonent]

There're plenty of free books on Amazon. I even think they've a section dedicated to ebooks in the public domain. As I'm not a programmer/developer I cannot tell whether MOBI is more complex than EPUB or PDF... but it seems to be the format chosen by Amazon for their Kindle. Hence all my books, and most ebooks purchased online, are in MOBI. I hope you can add the format to Bookpedia at some stage, because without it there's no reason for me to use the app and replace "Kindle for Mac." I'm sure other Kindle users feel the same.

[andrea.omicini]

I am a Kindle user, but I prefer to rely on the ePub format. To this end, I use the Calibre <http://calibre-ebook.com/> free software, which I use to convert any format (including .mobi) into the ePub format. Personally, I don't feel like I really need BookPedia to handle every format: in particular, non-standard formats like .mobi. Calibre is perfect for that, and is free

[gryphonent]

Thanks for the hint! I'll check out Calibre.

[democrite]

About other issues with managing eBooks in Bookpedia, I wonder how possible is it to drag a mass of ePubs and PDFs into Bookpedia. The metadata is there for both, author and title, and a file link and entries with available metadata could be made. Then if I edited the ISBN, for instance, I can, at my leisure, update the info from Amazon or another source. Searching for each book individually, and then adding it, and creating a file link, is quite a bit of work.

[Conor]

You can drag a number of ebooks mixed format and Bookpedia will import the information it can and the link. You can then gather more info from the gear button at the bottom right of the edit panel or the "Book" menu "Update from".

[Hendrix]

Hi Guys,

I am about to upgrade and wonder whether Bookpedia will be able to cope with an ebook collection. I have a very large collection now for my Kindle in azw and mobi format. These are not supported by version 4 and wonder whether version 5 will cope.

The books are also stored using the calibre database/library management software and wonder whether it is possible to link the 2 together or get data from calibre into Bookpedia without requiring a degree in computer science and command line expertise.

Thanks for the great software.

Kev

Kevin,
In the meantime, here is what I do.....it works very well and is simple, although slightly long-winded. Import a book into Calibre, make any changes to it you need (download metadata etc etc), then do two conversions - one into "mobi" for the Kindle, and one into "epub". The "epub" version is simply used to import the book into Bookpedia.
Have Bookpedia as the default to open "epub"s, double-click on the "epub" file in the Finder (you'll find it in the Calibre Library folder, under the author's name - I have this Calibre Library folder open all the time, beside the Calibre app, when I'm dealing with ebooks), or drag it to Bookpedia as Conor suggests above, and it'll import into Bookpedia, along with all the metadata, cover etc.
Once this is done, delete the "epub" version....or you can leave it to take up space, or use it to read on your iPhone or another ebook reader. However, you don't need this file once you've imported it into Bookpedia.
This method will not work for DRM'd files (.azw for example), as Calibre won't convert them with the DRM still on them, so you'll either have to find a way around this, or just enter them manually into Bookpedia.
Hope this helps.

Hendrix

P.S. Just in case you're unsure, to set Bookpedia up as the default to open "epub" files, find an "epub" file on your computer, click on it, choose "Get Info" from the "File" menu. About 1/2 way down the window, change "Open with" to Bookpedia, and click on the "Change All" button. Now a double click on any "epub" book file will import that book into Bookpedia.

[Ted]

I spent a lot of time fixing metadata and cover art in Calibre, imported the stuff to iTunes only to find that it is all still broken the way it was before I started fixing it in Calibre -- clearly something isn't making it to the .epub files which Calibre spits out.

But, to get to the point: Calibre is a terrible, ugly program compared to Bookpedia: I am grateful that Calibre exists, because it allows me to translate between .mobi and .epub, however imperfectly, and allows me to backup my Kindle purchases -- but it is not a usable piece of cataloging software.

Conor, I can readily imagine how awful the .mobi format is, but lets face it, eBooks are the future, and for some of us, me included, are pretty much the present -- I have stopped buying paper books altogether. And as long as Amazon is still around .mobi will play a major role -- for Bookpedia to continue as a viable cataloging option.

Indeed, the more of Calibre's functions (it is an open source Python program) can be incorporates in future versions of Bookpedia, the better.

[Conor]

Hi Ted,

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. Sadly I can't use the bits of Calibre to extract Mobi files as it uses the GPL license that restrict the use of the code to other GPL projects. Put I did find some other Mobi parser projects (also python) that I will look at incorporating in the future. As I hate to have to write my own as you can see here how undocumented and what a mess the Mobi headers are.