(Tiny Tips) – Calibre is a very easy-to-use e-book management software. This allows you to tag, sort, or otherwise use ebooks in your personal library. If you’re like us, you’ve probably accumulated a ton of e-books in your Kindle library.
Organizing your Kindle books in a meaningful way can be difficult. Here are four ways to organize your Kindle library using Calibre.
Use a plugin board to categorize books into series
If you purchase multiple books in a series directly from Amazon, they will automatically be sorted into collections. This is a convenient way to separate them into their own small files on your Kindle. Unfortunately, the collection feature doesn’t automatically apply to sideloaded ebooks.
This is where plugboards come into play. This is a code that automatically converts your book titles into a specific format, meaning that when you sort the titles on your Kindle by title or author, they will appear in order.
To use Plugboards, you must first ensure that your books on Calibre have the appropriate series metadata attached. You can do this by selecting the book, clicking the “Edit Metadata” button in the top bar, and entering the correct number in the pop-up window (if it doesn’t already exist).
The example used here is Munro by Kresley Cole, the 19th book in the long-running fantasy romance series Immortals After Dark.
Once this has been done for all the books in the series, it’s time to set up the plugin board. Click on the Edit Metadata window and select Preferences from the top bar. In the window that appears, you will see a number of options. Click the Metadata plugboards button under Import/Export. The following screen should appear.
Select the ebook format you have (MOBI, AZW3, or KFX) and Kindle from the drop-down lists under Format and Device. In the Source Template field, select how you actually want your header to look. There are many different options, but here are some basic strings and what the output looks like:
{series}{series_index:0>2s| #| <span class="hljs-symbol">&ndash;</span> }{title}: Immortals After Dark #19 <span class="hljs-symbol">&ndash;</span> Munro {series}{series_index:0>2s| <span class="hljs-symbol">&ndash;</span> | <span class="hljs-symbol">&ndash;</span> }{title}: Immortals After Dark <span class="hljs-symbol">&mdash;</span> 19 <span class="hljs-symbol">&mdash;</span> Munro {series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|[|] }{title}<span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-name">em</span>></span>: <span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-name">em</span>></span>Immortals After Dark [19] Munro
Or, if you don’t mind doing some coding, you can create your own templates by checking out Calibre’s template language guide.
Now copy and paste the code (minus the colon at the end) into the Source Template field and select title from the Target drop-down menu. Apply the plugin board (via the checkmark button at the bottom of the window). The plug-in board is now saved.
The next time you connect your Kindle to your computer, you can send books to it from Calibre using the “Send to Device” button in the top bar. Once books are sent, they will appear in this new title format, ensuring they are automatically sorted in series order.
Organize books by format
You may have a book stored on your computer in several different formats, possibly left over from converting EPUB to one of the few formats supported by your Kindle device.
Calibre stores all of these formats under a single entry where the book exists, so you don’t have to worry about duplication. However, you can delete unwanted formats to free up storage space.
Flag this book in the Calibre database. In the information sidebar, you can see basic metadata such as cover, serial number, and author. The following is the format in which this book is saved. Just right-click on the format you want to delete.
When the list of options appears, select Delete the X format. There are many other things you can do with it, such as: For example, you can save just this format to a specific location on your hard drive, open it in Calibre’s native e-book reader, or set a specific cover for it.
Use plugins to get higher resolution covers
One of the metadata you can edit for your book is the cover appearance. Especially when the book is inserted in landscape orientation, the native cover image may be too small, resulting in poor resolution. The Kindle Hi-Res plug-in can help solve this problem.
Click the “Preferences” button at the top, then click “Plugins” under “Advanced.” A window like the one below should appear.
Select “Download new plugin” below. Then a second window will appear. In the “Filter by name” box, start typing “High Resolution Cover.” The correct plugin should appear. Click “Install” and when you return to the first window, click “Apply“. You must restart Calibre for the changes to take effect.
Once you do this, however, you’ll find a whole new variety of coverage options open to you. Select a book in the library, then select “Edit Metadata” in the top bar, and finally “Download Cover.”
One of the options you now get is to get high-resolution images directly from the Kindle Store, so you don’t have to find and save images yourself again. Using this plugin also means the books on your device will have beautiful, uniformly sized covers, making your library even more aesthetically pleasing.
Tag and rate your books to make categorization easier
One of the great things about Calibre is that it has an extensive archiving system that allows you to tag and rate your books. Granted, you can do this on Goodreads as well, but if you only need this information as your own, it’s much more private on Calibre. Searching for tags or reviews is also much faster than Goodreads.
To rate and tag books, first select a book and click “Edit Metadata” to open the common window.
In the middle, you’ll see a field to enter your rating. When you click the arrow, a drop-down menu will appear where you can select a star rating from 1 to 5. (Unfortunately, it’s impossible to give half a star here, but it’s also impossible on Goodreads.)
Marking a book is almost as easy. When you enter a day for the first time, the date is saved so you can easily access it again. In the main program you can now search for books by keyword or rating.
Calibre lets you get the most out of your Kindle
Calibre allows you to perform a wide range of operations. This also includes the ability to read books with the DRM removed. This means books purchased on Amazon can be read on any other device.
Even if you want to stick with your Kindle when you read; use Calibre to tag your books, rate them, choose better covers, and more. This makes it an important program.