Calibre is sending 2 books to a different folder, not /BOOKS/ on my Kobo device

[BookieBlue]

Hello!

I got a Kobo Glo a few days back and transferred my books from Calibre to the device using the "Send to device" option on Calibre. At first my books were sent to the root folder but I wanted to place them in the BOOKS folder so I deleted all of them and edited the template on both KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended plugins as well as in the "Sending books to devices" option under Preferences to this:

BOOKS/{author_sort}/{title} - {authors}

Now most of my ~400 epub files end up in the BOOKS folder just as I want them, but 2 of them are sent to folders that Calibre is creating: BOKS and BS. Deleting both folders and sending the books again through Calibre makes those folder appear again.

What could be the cause of this behavior? I searched the forum but I couldn't find similar questions. I tried moving the content of both folders to the BOOKS one using the OS tools (Finder) but after the device finishes importing the books they get and error message. I suppose the device can't open the books because the database gets corrupted as I used moved the files without Calibre.

I hope you could help me with guidance on how to solve this. Thanks in advance!

–*BookieBlue

PS: I'm using Calibre 6.11 on MacOS Catalina (10.15.7). Both KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended are updated (2.5.1 and 3.6.7 respectively). Attached picture to show both BOKS and BS folders.

[BookieBlue]

I noticed that both books have multiple authors (3 in this case) and the second author in both folders has his/her name chopped ("Barroeronica" should be Barros, Verónica for example). Could be the cause related to this?

[DNSB]

That says your filenames are too long and calibre is truncating to keep the total path/filename length below ~185 characters.

My solution to this issues was to truncate the author sort and authors to use only the first entry in the list when generating directory and filenames. For your BOOKS directory in the root, this would have you changing your template for send to device to:

BOOKS/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)}

A horrible example of a book that will break the maximum length without using that truncation is a book that my spouse read:

Frog Challenge Anthology [02] - 1001 Dark Nights Short Story Anthology 2020 - Fiona Archer & Louisa Bacio & Laura M. Baird & Kait Ballenger & Asa Maria Bradley & Eden Bradley & Boone Brux & C. G. Burnette & Cara Carnes & Caraway Carter & Sierra Cartwright & S. A. Clayton & Katana Collins & Janie Crouch & Patricia D. Eddy & Zoey Ellis & Zoe Hill & Sara L. Hudson & Tracey Jerald & A. D. Justice & Terri E. Laine & Michelle Mars & Gina L. Maxwell & Kayt Miller & Dani René & Gen Ryan & Blue Saffire & Ella Sheridan & Mayra Statham & Delancey Stewart & Jen Talty & Mary Ting & Reina Torres & Magan Vernon & Jennifer Woodhull & Khloe Wren

The filename that I send to her Libra 2 would be:
Elibrary/Archer, Fiona/1001 Dark Nights Short Story Anthology 2020 - Fiona Archer

The Series/series index is not part of the filename when sent to device since a Kobo ereader has the ability to display series information.

[BookieBlue]

For your BOOKS directory in the root, this would have you changing your template for send to device to:

BOOKS/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)}

Thanks for the quick reply! Your template code worked perfectly. Now both books are where they should be.

By the way, I made a loud chuckle when I read your spouse's book file name.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by BookieBlue

By the way, I made a loud chuckle when I read your spouse's book file name.

My spouse likes all the author names in the metadata since she can then search for any books either by or contributed to by the author. calibre is happy enough to update all the authors into the ePub metadata so a Kobo ereader can import them.

The only time I worry about the physical filenames is when I am using either KOReader or Plato and, at least for KOReader, I can use the calibre metadata file for searching.