How to feed a Kobo with thousands of books?

[Mingyar]

I haven't read the whole forum, so I hope I'm not duplicating anything.
I wanted to share, with those who have difficulties, my method to load thousands of books on a Kobo.
All this text has been translated from French to English by Deepl.

I have a Kobo Aura One LE with more than 13,000 books.
I bought a Kobo Sage on which I went back to the patched 4.30 firmware, after some problems with the 4.31.

I use Windows and Calibre in its latest version to manage my books, in association with the KoboTouchExtended and KoboUtilities plugins.

I got the reading status of the books on the Aura One LE with the Store Bookmarks option in KoboUtilities.

Now, let's tackle filling the Kobo Sage with about 13,000 books.
It's a multi-day operation, tedious, but successful if you're patient and thorough.

The transfers are done in blocks of 250 to 300 books maximum.
For each block:

1. Note the number of books (X) on the reader, displayed on the home screen.
2. In Calibre, send the block of books to the Kobo, transformation on the fly into kepub with the KoboTouchExtended plugin.
3. Upload covers from the KoboUtilities plugin with black & white and keep ratio checked. (this to minimize the space occupied by the covers)
4. Eject the reader AND close Calibre, after noting the number of books transferred (Y)
5. The Kobo scans and recovers the information of the new books. Several situations can occur
   1. After the scan, the home screen displays the right number of books (X + Y). All is well, we go to step 7)
   2. The home screen appears, but the number of books recognized by the reader is less than X + Y, go to step 6)
   3. The scan progress gets stuck on a percentage that does not progress anymore. Give the Kobo a chance for 1 to 2 minutes, then turn it off by pressing the physical button for about 10 seconds.
      After turning the Kobo back on, if the number of books = X + Y then go to step 7) (this is rare) otherwise, go to step 6)
   4. The Kobo restarts by itself, even before starting the scan. Let it restart and wait for one minute to see if it starts the scan.
      If yes, go back to 5.1 or 5.2 or 5.3. If not, go to step 6)
6. The Kobo did not scan all the books transferred (number of books displayed on the home screen < X + Y)
   After making sure that Calibre is not launched, connect the Kobo to the PC, after a few seconds, eject it, without doing anything on it.
   Go back to one of the steps 5)
7. Connect the Kobo to the PC, launch Calibre and select the books of the last block transferred.
8. Update metadata in device library of the KoboUtilities plugin. I check only Title, Author, Series & index, Language and Update Kobo epub.
9. If block contains books with read status and progression, select only these books and restore bookmarks with KoboUtilities plugin.
10. Eject the Kobo.

Repeat all these steps for each block of books.

Again, this method is really tedious, but effective. You can increase the size of the blocks, it's up to you to experiment. Personally, I think that blocks of more than 500 books will cause problems.

This post is an opportunity to thank the authors of KoboTouchExtended (jgoguen) and KoboUtilities (davidfor)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[DNSB]

When I sent my collection to my new Sage, I sent in blocks of 2500 books. Mainly since I've edited and error-checked my calibre collection over the years so I have some trust in none of them causing import issues.

For your step 6, I would either trigger an import using NickelMenu or a reboot, again using NickelMenu. Or possibly both. Then I'd go back to calibre to see if any books in that block did not import correctly.

[Sirtel]

I have sent epubs in blocks of 1000-1500, but kepubs I had to send in smaller batches, as those tended to get stuck in processing. The books themselves were exactly the same, epubs for Libra 2 and kepubs via the extended driver for Sage.

[davidfor]

Firstly, as with @DNSB, I have loaded a lot more books at a time than the low hundreds. I have needed to sign out recently on my Clara HD and it loaded the 8000+ books with no issues. If I was loading in bulk, I'd probably do it in batches of 2000, but, that would mainly be because of the timing.

For your steps:

Why have you separated sending the covers? If you are always uploading the covers, then enable the option in the driver. That will do it each time you send a book and you don't need to remember to do it.

Again, for step 8, just configure the driver to do it automatically.

And to me, a step is missing to work out why the failures happened in the import. That way I know I won't have issue later.

[Mingyar]

With my previous ereaders, I had problems when sending blocs of more than 500 books. Next time, I'll try to send thousands.

Originally Posted by DNSB

For your step 6, I would either trigger an import using NickelMenu or a reboot, again using NickelMenu. Or possibly both. Then I'd go back to calibre to see if any books in that block did not import correctly.

I don't use NickelMenu. Why ? Because I never had the curiosity to know what it is and what it does. I'll take a look on it, thanks.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Why have you separated sending the covers? If you are always uploading the covers, then enable the option in the driver. That will do it each time you send a book and you don't need to remember to do it.

Again, for step 8, just configure the driver to do it automatically.

I learned KobUtilities plugin but didn't take enough time on the driver.
Just set it up, thanks for the tip.

[JSWolf]

Why does anyone need thousands of books on their Reader?

You do know that makes sure the metadata and series is correct and updating the cover to a real cover is going to take a very long time (time best spent reading).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why does anyone need thousands of books on their Reader?

It’s not “need”, it’s “want”. And people want what they want.

That said, I agree with you. I personally don’t see the point. But that’s me. And I do keep about 250 books on my Aura One and that would be ridiculously high in many opinions, too.

You do know that makes sure the metadata and series is correct and updating the cover to a real cover is going to take a very long time (time best spent reading).

All time spent tending books that will never be read is time wasted and don’t forget organizing thousands of books with sufficient granularity so they’re searchable and discoverable. However, “real cover”? Who cares? More time wasted, IMO. And isn’t any cover “real”? More to the point, what’s a cover when it’s digital?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why does anyone need thousands of books on their Reader?

With me, I add books as I buy them. Over time, the number of books on the device builds up. Then, when I get a new device (or flaky firmware lobotomizes my current one) I replicate what was already on it.

I only read one book at a time and I read slow enough that I could probably get by with two or three books on my reader at a time. But I took the 'library in your pocket' statements seriously.

[Sirtel]

I keep thousands of books on my ereaders because I never know which of them I'll want to read next - my wishes change all the time. And as I sideload everything, I don't want to constantly fiddle and connect my ereader to my computer. Too much bother.

Note that the thousands I keep on my ereaders is still only a part of my whole library, the part I'm likely to want to read in the near future.

[Mingyar]

For me, all is said by Sirtel.
My question is why still someone asks this question asked and answered thousands times

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Mingyar

For me, all is said by Sirtel.
My question is why still someone asks this question asked and answered thousands times

Because adding all those books to your ereader makes it too heavy to carry around easily?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by issybird

It’s not “need”, it’s “want”. And people want what they want.

That said, I agree with you. I personally don’t see the point. But that’s me. And I do keep about 250 books on my Aura One and that would be ridiculously high in many opinions, too.

I think I have between 100 and 200 eBooks on my Libra 2. I cannot say for sure right now. But I also don't see the need for thousands of eBooks. To me, that would make it much more difficult to find what I want to read. And if you just send the eBooks to the Kobo without making sure they are formatted in a way that works for you, then you have a lot of eBooks that you won't like the way they look.

All time spent tending books that will never be read is time wasted and don’t forget organizing thousands of books with sufficient granularity so they’re searchable and discoverable. However, “real cover”? Who cares? More time wasted, IMO. And isn’t any cover “real”? More to the point, what’s a cover when it’s digital?

If the eBook has a pBook version, the cover is the image used for the pBook cover and not some bland cover used when the publisher isn't willing to use the real cover image.

It looks much better having a proper cover image when viewing covers.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Mingyar

For me, all is said by Sirtel.
My question is why still someone asks this question asked and answered thousands times

Which question: how to do it, or why does one want to do it?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

With me, I add books as I buy them. Over time, the number of books on the device builds up. Then, when I get a new device (or flaky firmware lobotomizes my current one) I replicate what was already on it.

I only read one book at a time and I read slow enough that I could probably get by with two or three books on my reader at a time. But I took the 'library in your pocket' statements seriously.

I too like to have enough books available to be able to choose what I want to read. But (to me) having thousands of books would be much more difficult to find what I want to read when I am not sure what I do want to read.

[Mingyar]

Originally Posted by John F

Which question: how to do it, or why does one want to do it?

why does one want to do it?