Can I make Sony Ebook Library consolidate my library?

[palex481]

I found the purchased files in My Documents\My Books\eBook Library, but I figured out that that the rest of the files I import, if the path changes, then Sony can no longer find the file.

But this is confusing behavior as it gives a warning if you delete a book about it being gone if you got it from removable media... Does it copy to a central location if you are importing from a CDR for instance?

Itunes for instance can consolidate your library into a single location. But unless I'm missing something, I can't get Sony Library to do the same.

Quite annoying. I only use Ebook library because of the Pre-pagination, otherwise I'd most gladly use Calibre, as I use that for conversion already.

[Onemack]

From what I can figure out there is no really good library available for ebooks. You have to show them all, and cannot file them easily or readily into files or folders. Particularly if, like me, you happen to be somewhat inept with the world of computers, programs and the associated jargon.

I find Calibre good for what it does but it is limited.

To solve the problem as best as I can, I use a program called Book Collector. At least it keeps all the books in whatever field you choose say, format, author, etc, and can be sorted how you like at the touch of a button, say read or unread. It also has the added delight of showing the covers. It can upload almost all metadata from a huge variety of inbuilt sites. Of 176 books I have loaded into it there are only two which I had to manually load the data.

The current drawback is linking each book directly to the reader. This is possible, but I just haven’t got around to it yet, mainly because I am slightly unsure of how to go about it.

The link is
http://www.collectorz.com/

it is not free

Hope this helps,

John

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by palex481

I found the purchased files in My Documents\My Books\eBook Library, but I figured out that that the rest of the files I import, if the path changes, then Sony can no longer find the file.

That's correct. When you import an eBook into the Sony software it just links to where ever the file is. So you need to put the file where you want it to live before importing into eBook Library.

Originally Posted by palex481

Quite annoying. I only use Ebook library because of the Pre-pagination, otherwise I'd most gladly use Calibre, as I use that for conversion already.

What I do is download to my desktop upon purchase, or getting from TOR, or bane or whatever. Then, if it is a LIT that needs convert lit I run that on it. Once that is done I import it into calibre and convert it into an LRF. Then I do a save to disk for that/those books from calibre. I always select the same folder, My Documents\My eBooks\calibre... calibre creates a nice organization folder structure by author name then book name.

Finally once that is done, I import the .lrf from the calibre folder structure into eBook Library. If it is a mobi download I also add it to Mobipocket software. Finally I delete the book off my desktop.

This gives me the books, on my drive nicely organized and the ability to move books to my 500 with eBook Library. Although I am highly contemplating a move to a reader that supports mobi.

Anyway... the above may sound bad, but it only takes a few seconds. I have a single directory with all of my books that can easily be backed up with Jungledisk or whatever. I also have the books converted for the Sony and in the eBook Library for moving to the device.

HTH,
BOb

[palex481]

Yeah now that I know what it is doing it isn't so bad, its just that I didn't think about that fact when I was originally importing them into Sony so I have files scattered here and there.

I was thinking though, I should be able to plug my reader into the USB, copy off all the LRF files into one directory, delete them all from the Sony Ebook Library, and then resync, being more careful in the future.

I've been putting all my Sony Reader files in one directory now, I just wish there was some way in Calibre just to save the LRF files out, but apparently there is not.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by palex481

Yeah now that I know what it is doing it isn't so bad, its just that I didn't think about that fact when I was originally importing them into Sony so I have files scattered here and there.

I was thinking though, I should be able to plug my reader into the USB, copy off all the LRF files into one directory, delete them all from the Sony Ebook Library, and then resync, being more careful in the future.

I've been putting all my Sony Reader files in one directory now, I just wish there was some way in Calibre just to save the LRF files out, but apparently there is not.

If you want only the lrf files you can do a simple xcopy from the calibre folder to a sony folder. It will mirror the folder structure but only include the .lrf files.

Open a command window (dos window)
Cd to the calibre (save to disk) root folder.
run this command: xcopy *.lrf ..\sony /s
(you can replace ..\sony to be any target path you want.

Once you've done that you can do an Import folder in Sony eBook Library to add them all in. I just imported the calibre folder into sony and deleted the items I didn't want in it. I couldn't do the above because I do have some Sony formated PDFs from sci-az.com that I wanted in eBook Library.

BOb

[palex481]

Nice. I didn't think about that, I'll try that. Nothing beats good old DOS for file management.

What I had been doing is just putting in *.lrf in the open window to create a filter there, but still the directory is needlessly cluttered.

As a matter of fact, I think I will just write a nice little batch file that will sit in my Sony Library directory and just delete the extraneous files with a click of the mouse.