Kindle Paperwhite: Author not getting rewritten when using plugboard template

[kevbo]

I'm following the instructions in the old thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=2687257

I am having trouble getting the Author rewrite to work as described.

I have a 2013 Kindle Paperwhite (so, second generation, 2GB RAM). It has updated to firmware 5.6.5.

I have the problem that this thread was created to solve: I have lots of books in series, and I like the idea of using the Author field to contain the series name.

I have followed the instructions, and I am having the same problem that peaceridge reported back in November 2013: books on my Kindle show the series number in the title (like [1]), but the author like displays just as Firstname Lastname (like "Stephen King"). If you actually display by Author Sort, however, the names are properly sorted by author last name.

It feels like the Author tag on the books on the device still just contains "Lastname, Firstname", and the Kindle is "helpfully" reversing them, as normal. It appears that the authors substitution isn't occurring. But the title substitution is.

I'm a little stuck, because I haven't found a tool that lets me look at the metadata in the file that's on a disk. I can't completely tell that Calibre is showing me what is actually in the tags. The main reason I think Calibre may not be displaying things as they really are is because if I click on "Device" and have Calibre just show me the books on the device, and then I click on a book (ostensibly a book on the device), the panel on the right-hand side actually shows Series, like "Series: II of The Dark Tower". I don't know where it is getting that info, if it is just looking at the book on the device.

If I open the book ("Click to open") and then click on "Show book metadata", I don't see anything about series:

Title: [2] The Drawing Of The Three
Authors: Stephen King
Author Sort: King, Stephen
Published: Dec 2010
Publisher: Signet Classic
Languages: English

So I'm not 100% sure what is actually in the metadata on the device.

I use AZW3 on my device. I'm wondering if that is part of the problem. I have the option "Use author sort for author" enabled on "Output options" for AZW3 and MOBI. It appears from reading the thread above that I should have that set. I tried removing my .AZW3 version of the book, disabling that option, and then re-converting the book and resending it: no change.

I went in to the plugboard and removed the Title change, so that the only remaining one was the Author, and then re-sent the book. The Title then lost the [2], but nothing changed on the Author.

I've kind of run out of ideas on this.

For completeness, my plugboard is set for any format:any device, and:
authors
{author_sort:re(\, ,_)} {series:|(|)}

title
{series_index:|[|]} {title}

Any suggestions?

I'm using Calibre 2.37.1 [64bit]. I just updated to that version with the hope that this was a bug. I've used several 2.x versions over the last month, and all have acted like this.

Thanks,

Kevin

[eschwartz]

Device view is irrelevant, that contains cached JSON information sent together with the book.

I don't know why the plugboard would refuse to send anything (the extra information should be somewhere), though you can dump the metadata for the copy on the Kindle using the command-line tool `ebook-meta`:

ebook-meta K:\documents\some-book.azw3

[kevbo]

Well....

K:\documents\King, Stephen>c:ebook-meta.exe "Drawing Of The Three, The - Stephen
 King.azw3"
Title               : [2] The Drawing Of The Three
Author(s)           : Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Publisher           : Signet Classic
Book Producer       : calibre (2.37.1) [http://calibre-ebook.com]
Languages           : eng

I discovered debug mode, and turned that on and tried the upload. The log shows this:

Job: 6 Upload 1 books to device:The Drawing Of The Three started
Device using plugboard azw3 KINDLE2 [[u'{author_sort:re(\\, ,_)} {series:|(|)}', u'authors'], [u'{series_index:|[|]} {title}', u'title']]
Setting metadata in: The Drawing Of The Three at: C:\Users\kwhite\AppData\Local\Temp\calibre_2rb5fj\ur4pehcaltmpfmt.azw3

But what's in the output of ebook-meta.exe does not match the plugboard in the debug output, at all.

I wish the debug output would actually show what the results of the substitutions actually were.

Any ideas? This is weird if others aren't having this problem. What continues to be odd is that the one template is being used, and the other isn't.

[eschwartz]

It is replacing "authors".

You did say you unchecked "Use author sort for author" for MOBI/AZW3, right?

[kevbo]

OK, I _thought_ I had tried the entire process both ways, with "Use author sort for author" both checked and unchecked. It made sense to me too that having that wrong could mess things up.

But I just tried again after _disabling_ that option, and it worked.

Thanks. Maybe I didn't restart Calibre in between changing the setting last time. Or I just messed up the process.

Kevin

[eschwartz]

You're welcome.

Mystery solved.