Kobo/Koreader - best way to organise 1000s of books

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Since this thread is dealing with KOReader, it belongs in the KOReader forum.

I disagree.

[jospalau]

For me, there is nothing better than KOReader to manage books. You can create as many collections as you want to group books. You can do it manually or you can make an script to do it from Calibre db data. There is no limit.

[DNSB]

Whereas for me, there is nothing better at this time than search to locate a book to read. I went through creating collections back when Kobo still called them shelves. Much like the directory structures I created back when I first started collecting ebooks, collections were a PITA to maintain. Search is a simpler and more effective solution when you are looking at thousands of books. To me, one of the most useful improvements to KOReader was when the ability to search in the metadata.calibre file was added.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Whereas for me, there is nothing better at this time than search to locate a book to read. I went through creating collections back when Kobo still called them shelves. Much like the directory structures I created back when I first started collecting ebooks, collections were a PITA to maintain.

Why? Calibre maintains them automatically, there's no need to do anything manually.

[JSWolf]

I much prefer how Kobo handles eBook organization then KOReader

You can filter by
All
eBooks
Unread
Reading
Finished
Purchased
Previews
Previous
Imported
Downloaded

You can sort by
Recent
Date added
Title
Author
Series
File size
File type

calibre is best to use to manage your eBooks on a Kobo.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Why? Calibre maintains them automatically, there's no need to do anything manually.

Every time I added a book, I had to make sure it had the correct metadata to end up in the collection(s) I would want it in. When you have over 3,000 books on your ereader and about 16,000 in calibre, the number of collections needed got ridiculous especially since you can't nest collections. When Kobo made series and author collections unneeded and search was improved, I cut down on the number of collections I used and finally gave up on collections altogether.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Every time I added a book, I had to make sure it had the correct metadata to end up in the collection(s) I would want it in. When you have over 3,000 books on your ereader and about 16,000 in calibre, the number of collections needed got ridiculous especially since you can't nest collections. When Kobo made series and author collections unneeded and search was improved, I cut down on the number of collections I used and finally gave up on collections altogether.

Search is fine as long as you remember author, title or series name. I don't always. So I need the collections as a backup method of locating a book.

[DNSB]

For me, the backup is the various filters in My Books such as unread combined with the sorts such as recent, date added, etc. Given that the search shows results as soon as you start entering characters and those results are for any of the searchable fields, it works for me.

Assuming that I still used series and authors collections, that would have me been scanning through 800 collections plus 3600 titles for the ebooks I currently have on my Sage looking for a specific book. Life is too short to make squandering my time worthwhile.

If I get really desperate, I can always use calibre on my computer to search as well.

[Sirtel]

I have well under 100 collections, mostly based on genre. Not authors or series.

Entering a few characters doesn't help when I remember absolutely nothing about the author, title or series, only the genre and vaguely what the synopsis was about. Not too unusual for me. I could enter characters for an hour and still not get the right result.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I much prefer how Kobo handles eBook organization then KOReader

You can filter by
All
eBooks
Unread
Reading
Finished
Purchased
Previews
Previous
Imported
Downloaded

You can sort by
Recent
Date added
Title
Author
Series
File size
File type

calibre is best to use to manage your eBooks on a Kobo.

And Collections.
Also Search will use text of author, title, subtitle, series and collection fields.

KOReader only has a file browser and a clunky awkward search using a calibre file.

[sansoleil]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I much prefer how Kobo handles eBook organization then KOReader

I agree with Jon. The native Kobo software is superior to KOReader for organising ebooks.

[Lordblacknail]

I am obviously missing something here, but I can't quite see what it is. Kobo puts my books from Calibre into folders by author. When I enter the book into Calibre, if there are multiple series, I name the books in each series, A01, B01 C01 etc. so that I know what order to read them in and can see which books belong to which series. Why in the world would you care what kind of file it is? isn't it going to be always EPUB? As long as you have all of the books in the series, and all of the books by the author, what else would be important?

I handle anthologies by putting them all in a folder called anthologies. The editor is not important so I make the author's name, anthologies.

When I get a new author that I want to try out, I always load at least five of his/her books of the series if there is one, and then I put the first book in a folder called New Books 12092024. I do that by changing the author’s name for that one book to 12092024, and the original book into the author folder. That way both books go to the proper folder. If I like the book after the first one, it is very simple to switch to the author’s folder to continue reading. If I find I don’t like them, which happens, again it is simple to delete them. If it is a standalone book, it goes in the new books folder.

I read by author not genre, so maybe my views are different than others. I can’t imagine needing a folder or any sort of tag that would say mystery or science fiction or thriller.

Even my comics are by main author, Carl Barks. I only read Disney comics. Yah, Yah, I know I am 79 so sue me. If it is something like a Dresden file graphic novel, then it goes in the Jim Butcher folder. Why in the wide world of sports would you put it in a graphics novel folder?

All of the million plus books on my hard drive are by author or title, I have never really sorted them, but when I need one, Everything, (the program) makes it easy to find. All the books in Calibre are of course by author or type, such as anthology or new books.

Now if you are putting nonfiction books on your Kobo, then that is different. I don't have any nonfiction books on my Kobo, so it isn't an issue for me. But I would think the author would be less important than the subject.

And just a side note, I just discovered Blake Banner’s Dead Case Files series. I just can’t put them down. 3 am, I get up for a bathroom break, notice I only have 150 pages to finish, and just have to do it before I crawl back into bed.

I welcome comments because you are never too old to learn something new, and I would love to learn a better way to do this.

I love this forum; I have learned a lot since 2010 when I got my first Kindle Keyboard. But I love my libre 2 and now my color a lot more than I ever liked my Kindle. The Kindle was a tool, the Kobo is a joy.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Lordblacknail

I read by author not genre, so maybe my views are different than others.

And I read by genre and content, not by author. That's why using genre- and tag-based collections is important to me - often enough I don't remember the author or the title at all, unless it's an old favorite. Relying only on searching or on the author tab doesn't always work for me.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lordblacknail

I am obviously missing something here, but I can't quite see what it is. Kobo puts my books from Calibre into folders by author. When I enter the book into Calibre, if there are multiple series, I name the books in each series, A01, B01 C01 etc. so that I know what order to read them in and can see which books belong to which series. Why in the world would you care what kind of file it is? isn't it going to be always EPUB? As long as you have all of the books in the series, and all of the books by the author, what else would be important?

You should edit where your books get put on your Kobo by calibre. The problem is that the default of creating directories by author is going to make a real mess. You will eventually end up with many empty directories. I have a single directory called books and that way I do not end up with a mess of empty directories.

When you use KoReader, that mess will be even worse as you won't know which directories are empty or have eBook(s). So it's best to get rid of all of those directories and move all of your eBooks on your Kobo into just one directory.

Also, you'll need to go into the settings of the Kobo driver you use and change it from creating author directories to a single directory.

[Sirtel]

If you only delete your books via Calibre, there will be no empty directories. That's what I do.