Jun 04
Sony Reader – trouble with metadata?
I just read a post at e-book addict where she complains about the fact that the metadata of files can’t be changed with the Sony Reader. Often the files are named in a horrendous way, the author is wrong (Elemental Alchemy anybody?), the book title is odd and what not. That way you will never find your book on the Reader if you look for a specific title or author.
Yeah, that’s right, but with Calibre, this all is in the past. Calibre is an open source program that works perfectly to solve all these problems.
With Calibre you can change all metadata, like author, book title, publisher etc, you can add tags or keywords which show up as collections, as well as even number books in a series, so you know in what order to read them.
Calibre will convert the given file – if you want – into the Sony Reader format .lrf before you upload it to your Reader. I first downloaded .pdf files and converted them, but the pages just never lined up properly. It was a pain. Now I use the Mobipocket format, convert it to .lrf and this works like a charm.
If you have any of those problems – and you probably do – get Calibre and you troubles will be over.
6 responses so far General talk
Thank you so much, Rikki. This problem with the meta-titles drives me absolutely bananas with my Sony reader. I will follow up on this at once!
Val Kovalin’s latest blog post..Review – Smart Ass Close Quarters
Rikki, you are fabulous!!!!!!!!!!
I just tried the Calibre program and it is great. I was able to correct the title/author name, convert and add a book to my Sony reader in just a couple of minutes. Normally it’s such a long process to convert from PDF to RTF and then I have to deal with horrible page breaks and such.
Wow, you made my night!!
Thanks a bunch for the great info,
Lily
Val and Lily, I’m glad I could help. Calibre is great. But, Val, I’m not sure if it works with the 700 yet. Maybe you could let me know?
Hi, Rikki, yes it does work with the 700. I haven’t combed through the result with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that the formatting is perfect — but, frankly, it works beautifully in my opinion just being able to edit the meta-data title stuff and everything (plus to download the correct cover just by putting in the ISBN). It also converts formats beautifully and — best of all — I can completely bypass that pesky Sony Ebook Library software and do all my loading of books onto my reader straight from Calibre after I’ve spruced it up the way I want it. You’ve really helped us out with this Calibre information. Thanks again!
Val Kovalin’s latest blog post..Friday Cover Art – Lieutenant Samuel Blackwood (deceased)
This is something that has been driving me mad for ages! Previously I’ve emailed the ebook supplier directly and had them change the data so that I can then re-download a corrected ebook. My question is will Calibre work with with DRM enabled ebooks? Or will changing the metadata prevent them from working correctly?
Adam, I don’t think that it will work with DRM enabled books. I had previously downloaded a couple of DRM protected books by mistake, and whenever I wanted to convert the file to the reader format and transfer it to the reader, calibre gave me a warning and couldn’t process the file.
Other than those few problems I have no experience with DRM books, in fact I give them a wide berth.
HTH