I have a lot of eBooks. So many, that I may, in fact, have a problem and need to attend some kind of meetings. Seriously. I love books, I love to read them, and I used to have shelves upon shelves of them before the greatest downsizing in the history of the world. Now I have them stored on a hard drive, and backed up weekly, along with many other things, using the “3,2,1” method (more on that another time). So how do I manage my vast library and not completely fill up my Dropbox?
UPDATE (6OCT2017): This method is not affected by the Apple and Calibre updates that remove connecting through iTunes.
== I’ve also written a follow-up article: Advanced Dropbox + Calibre
Every article I’ve read on the topic of combining Dropbox and Calibre, the best eBook library manager ever, is to just use Dropbox to house your library in a public, yet secret folder, then you make an index file that you can access from anywhere to download whatever you want to read from your library. There are just two problems with that setup for me:
- My Dropbox currently has
4.4Gb13.4Gb of total space, whichis only about 25% ofstill doesn’t hold my entire eBook library. I told you I needed help. - I’m not so sporadic with my reading that I can’t choose 12 or 20 books to keep on my iPad at a time on the off chance that I’ll want to read something right then and there.
So here’s what I did, and it may seem obvious to you, but not everyone knows Calibre, Dropbox, or this whole neat trick, and that’s who I’m writing it for…heck, I didn’t think of this until after I realized I just couldn’t fit my library in my Dropbox.
Dropbox
First, download it, if you haven’t already. Yes, it’s an affiliate link, clicking it gives both you and I an extra 250 500Mb of space. It’s easy to setup and use, but if you have trouble, refer to their website, it explains everything very well.
Calibre
Next download Calibre. Install that bad boy, and follow through creating a new library. Importing your existing eBooks is as simple as drag and drop. You should bookmark this page right now because after you start playing in Calibre, and discover it can update the cover images and metadata fairly automatically, you’re going to lose track of time. Don’t blame me if you miss a meal or two, I tried to warn you, Calibre is great and very addicting to those of us who are the kind of people who want proper music genres and complete tagging in our music library.
Good morning, sunshine. I told you yesterday would disappear! Anyways, I assume you’ve got both installed, and have a couple of eBooks in your library ready to go.
Link them
Open up your Dropbox folder, and create a “Library” folder inside. Don’t put this inside the “Public” folder, there is no need, we’re going to rely on Dropbox to tell us which app can open our different eBooks…more on that in a minute.
Fire up Calibre, and click the Connect/Share >> Connect to folder menu item. Navigate to your new “Library” folder in your Dropbox, and click Select folder.
Now all you have to do is right click on any eBook, and choose Send to Device >> Send to main library. After a couple of seconds, a green check box will appear in a new column titled “On Device”. Calibre treats your folder like an eBook reader, so it calls it a device. I should point out that only a copy of the book is now in your Dropbox library, Calibre still has its own copy on your hard drive.
Once you’ve added a couple of books to your Dropbox folder this way, use the Device >> Eject menu item to unlink from your Dropbox folder.
Verify that the Dropbox icon in your task bar indicates that it’s done syncing, and then open Dropbox on your iPad (or other iDevice/Android thing). Tap/click the “Library” folder and you should see all the books you sent to Dropbox from Calibre.
Calibre can store eBooks of any format, it just doesn’t really care what kind of eBook file it is, but Dropbox can only read a few file formats natively, like PDFs. If you open a MOBI or EPUB, two popular eBook formats, Dropbox will grab the file, but tell you it can’t open it.
DON’T DESPAIR!
One of the icons in the Dropbox toolbar, at the upper-right, is to “Open file in another program”! As long as you have an eBook reader installed on your iDevice that can handle the eBook you’re trying to access, it will show up in the list, and allow you to read it to your heart’s content! I use iBooks, Kindle for iPad, and Cloud Readers, and between them, I don’t usually have a problem accessing eBooks I temporarily store in my Dropbox library. If I do, then I can sometimes use Calibre to change the eBook to EPUB so that iBooks can read it.
So that’s how I do it. I don’t have my whole library in Dropbox, but I have a select “portable” version that I can access on my iDevice. This setup isn’t ideal for everyone, but it works for me, and that’s what I care about right now. One final note, I’m not sure about the other readers, but I know if I open an eBook from Dropbox in iBooks, the book gets copied to the iBooks folder, so even if I remove it from the Dropbox library, later on, I still have it in iBooks until I delete from there. It’s a slight bit of extra work, but not enough for me to worry about. Also, you should only manage the Dropbox library with Calibre, don’t delete them directly from the Dropbox application because Calibre keeps track of what books are where.
If this article has been helpful to you, consider buying me a cup of coffee as an inexpensive, but a rather awesome way of saying “thanks”. It’s a great way to encourage the bloggers you like to write more of the things you like to read.
