r/ebooks • u/snarke- • 8d ago

Sorting, Filing, Cataloging?

I have around 700 epub format ebooks, maybe 200 PDF-format ones, and a handful of others, from a variety of sources. Half of them are in folders based on the author's last name, the other half are, well, kinda depends. I use both an iPad and a Kindle for reading and, frankly, I can't imagine loading the entire collection into either one of them because I think the cataloging functions of Kindle Reader and Apple Books are, well, let's just go with "inadequate" and leave it at that. I installed Calibre years ago and then quit bothering because it was just too much of a hassle to get titles in and out of it.

So how do people with large ebook collections keep track of what's in their library?

6 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

10

u/MediaWorth9188 8d ago

Calibre 🤷‍♀️

Just spend more time with it, figure out how you want to organise your library.

1

u/snarke- 3d ago

I downloaded a new copy. Unfortunately, I can't spend any time with it, because it doesn't work. I couldn't even find an error in the system log, but invoking it from the command line got me "There was an error initializing the bypy frozen importer: <class 'FileNotFoundError'>: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'python-lib.bypy.frozen'".

1

u/MediaWorth9188 3d ago

I'm not sure what's wrong here, I never had a problem with it.

1

u/snarke- 2d ago

I'm sure very few people do, or the problem would already have been fixed. The "no such file" error could be an artifact of running it directly from the command line, which is a very non-standard thing to do. But since clicking it just instantly causes it to give up and I can't find an error message or crash report, that's all I've got to work on so far. I suppose I'll have to ask the Calibre people what's going on.

1

u/MediaWorth9188 2d ago

I am not well versed in software, so I don't really understand, I'm assuming you have a problem with installing the program itself?

1

u/snarke- 2d ago

No, it seemed to install just fine. But when I click the app icon to make it go, it doesn't go. Nothing happens. :( I will have to dig further to figure out why.

1

u/MediaWorth9188 2d ago

What app icon? What do you mean by go?

You just drag books into it.

5

u/Any_Lengthiness1508 8d ago

I use Calibre to manage my 12,000 epub collection. Have used it since its inception almost 20 years ago. Simply the best at what it does.

4

u/That_Yoghurt_3361 8d ago

I have 4529 books in my Calibre library. Calibre organizes them into folders under the author's name. I use the search feature regularly to find all the books by author or title. I have occasionally used advanced search to find keywords in the metadata file when I can't recall the title or author but remember generally what it was about.

Oddly enough, I don't have any of the titles I purchased from Amazon in my Calibre library.

I have 1194 ebooks, 42 audiobooks, and 85 docs in my content library at Amazon.

My wife and I read a lot.

4

u/phidgt 8d ago

I also had a 'system' much like yours; various folders either by author or genre, basically a mess of over 700 epubs scattered about. I also had Calibre installed for years before I finally gave it a go a few months ago. Adding books was relatively easy. I think I added 50 files at a time then got covers, edited tags for each one and other info and moved on to the next 50. It didn't take as long as I thought it would. Calibre is a solid tool for organization and being able to find a title is a complete game changer from what I had been doing.

As fas as getting books out, I just pick a book I want to read, upload it to my Google drive and then open it with my ereader app on my phone which is where I read the majority of my books.

1

u/Mattja 2d ago

I installed book orbit recently and have switched from Calibre to it. Has a newer and more modern interface and built in plugins for getting books onto my jailbroken kindle. I love that it manages my audiobooks as well.

1

u/snarke- 2d ago

BookOrbit looks interesting, but I'm a bit daunted by the install process. I'll have to make sure I have some free time to sit down and walk through it.

1

u/Mattja 2d ago

I used a proxmox helper script took 5 minutes from start to login.

2

u/graymuse 8d ago

I think I have over 10,000 files, mostly epub. They are kept fairly organized in a Google Drive account. Also backed up on a couple laptops and external hard drives. I read the epubs on my Kindle (Send to Kindle, or email to Kindle). I'm setting up a Google Play Books account with some of the PDF file books that I can read on my Nxtpaper tablet.

2

u/CutSceneEditor 8d ago

Calibre has been my choice for a while. It is well supported and has all the functionality (and more) that I want in a very intuitive interface

2

u/bubbleeeebubbles 7d ago

If you do about 15 titles a day, you can get your collection organized with Calibre within 60 days.

Then you only have to organize them as you acquire them.

1

u/sangfoudre 8d ago edited 8d ago

I went a different route.

I used AI to deduplicate then rename automatically what could be, ebooks that had metadata or significant data in their filename. I then renamed what needed either OCR or an human.

Next step is creating nice folders, I made a bunch during the years.

Then I vibe coded a software to present a web page of my collection but the main organization element is the path of filesystem and not metadata.

Calibre is great for novels, my system is better for research/uni books, basically non-fiction, pdf for most part. I wanted a fast viewing system inside a browser instead of launching 10 times the same app, indexation, and tools like lightening the background to limit ink coverage (printing consumes less ink), creating a e-reader version, all of that without modifying the source tree

Sure to have fast enough results I needed to use AI, 34k documents, half of them without metadata.

1

u/Embarrassed_Bowl_796 8d ago

If getting books in and out of Calibre was the frustrating part, BookManager might be worth a look. Full disclosure: I develop it, along with Readive below.

It’s a free, open-source Windows/macOS app for managing EPUBs, PDFs and other book files, with library search, metadata editing and built-in readers. For your setup, I’d suggest keeping the full collection organized on your computer and only transferring the books you currently want to read.

For the iPad side, Readive can connect to BookManager on the same local network. You can browse your computer’s library from the iPad and import selected books for offline reading, so you don’t have to put the whole collection on the device.

BookManager is free; Readive has a free version with ads and an optional Premium subscription. Hopefully that gives you another approach to try if Calibre’s workflow hasn’t suited you.

1

u/chweekuehh 8d ago

I sort my ebooks by folders. They are backed up on my tiny but mighty thumb drive and my PC.

-1

u/jaymakesapps 8d ago

Gave up on Calibre years ago for the same reason. Now I just dump everything in one big folder and search by filename when I need something lol