Best Way to Consolidate and/or Get Kobo Books to Show in Calibre Library

[aquarialily]

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way for the books that I bought in the Kobo store that exist in my ereader to show up in Calibre. I tried the way where you download the files from my Kobo account and loading them into Calibre, but then what happens is that it's a different file than what is on my ereader, and if I upload it, I get duplicates. What I'd really like is for them to be one and the same -- is there a way to do that, or do I just simply have to delete one? I hate deleting the Kobo version since that one has the more detailed stats, etc., but obviously it's also DRM protected and doesn't show up in my Calibre library when I plug my device in. I'm not a power user of Calibre so I don't know if there's something I might be missing about how things show up when I plug in my device? Thanks for any help!

[davidfor]

Just add the books from the Kobo library to calibre. Don't send them to the device. When calibre sees the device, it will match most of the books on the device to the books in the library. That will give you the best of both worlds: epubs for use elsewhere, and kepubs from Kobo with the in-book stats and syncing if you have other devices.

You can also use the book the Kobo desktop application downloads. But, you need the Obok plugin that is part of the DRM tools to add these to the library. That will give you books with the kepub internals, but the books are added as epub. Again, the book should get matched to the books on the device when you connect it.

[aquarialily]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Just add the books from the Kobo library to calibre. Don't send them to the device. When calibre sees the device, it will match most of the books on the device to the books in the library. That will give you the best of both worlds: epubs for use elsewhere, and kepubs from Kobo with the in-book stats and syncing if you have other devices.

How do I add the books from the Kobo library to Calibre? I tried to do it from the device by selecting the book and right clicking "Save to library" but it told me the book was "virtual" and couldn't be added. It does that for every book I purchased through Kobo.

I've seen the obok plugin floated around but haven't been able to find it in the plugin directory and for some reason I thought it was the same DRM stripping as what I currently have when I open the ebook in Adobe and then import the epub that Adobe creates. Didn't realize that it could keep both the kepub and epub in one under one entry.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by aquarialily

How do I add the books from the Kobo library to Calibre? I tried to do it from the device by selecting the book and right clicking "Save to library" but it told me the book was "virtual" and couldn't be added. It does that for every book I purchased through Kobo.

I've seen the obok plugin floated around but haven't been able to find it in the plugin directory and for some reason I thought it was the same DRM stripping as what I currently have when I open the ebook in Adobe and then import the epub that Adobe creates. Didn't realize that it could keep both the kepub and epub in one under one entry.

Obok comes in the zip file that contains the DeDRM plugin you have already installed but needs to be installed separately. MobileRead does not permit much discussion of DeDRM otherwise we may find an infestation of lawyers.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by aquarialily

How do I add the books from the Kobo library to Calibre? I tried to do it from the device by selecting the book and right clicking "Save to library" but it told me the book was "virtual" and couldn't be added. It does that for every book I purchased through Kobo.

I didn't say to add them from the device, but, the library. By that I meant the library on the store ("My Books" under "My Account"). What I was trying to say was: "Do what you are currently doing, just don't send the book from calibre to the device".

I've seen the obok plugin floated around but haven't been able to find it in the plugin directory and for some reason I thought it was the same DRM stripping as what I currently have when I open the ebook in Adobe and then import the epub that Adobe creates. Didn't realize that it could keep both the kepub and epub in one under one entry.

Obok is a separate plugin in the same DRM tools package. It can show you the books that the Kobo desktop application has downloaded and copy them to the calibre library. And will remove DRM at the same time. This has absolutely nothing to do with ADE or the copy of the book that was downloaded with ADE. And while it copies the kepub, it treats it as an epub when adding the book to calibre.

And calibre can keep multiple formats for each book. A conversion will do this, or you can add the format from elsewhere.

[aquarialily]

Oh! Sorry for misunderstanding! I think I *might* have figured it out -- need to tool around a little more to make sure I'm doing it correctly, but thank you for helping me with something that has been bothering me for months!