101: iPhone+Stanza+Calibre (the almost-perfect solution)

Having purchased an iPod Touch, I am in constant search of new eBooks
(one of the main, if not the only, reason I bought this awesome little
gadget). Since I did not have any intentions of jailbreaking, I needed
to find ways to transfer my ever growing library (Gutenberg is such a
great source). I have come across several forums talking about eBooks
and eBook readers. One of them is the source of the following how-to:

Here is how to transfer eBooks from your PC to your iPod Touch. I would

like to thank to the original author, ChrisZA. I edited the content

which reflects my experience with the instructions.

Software required:

·        Stanza: The reading app on your iPodTouch (also applies to iPhone, but I will keep using iPod Touch for the rest of the instructions). Get it from the appstore, it's free.

·        Calibre: Stanza desktop does not manage your library, and you need to do that if you have more than a few books. Calibre is free, and works on multiple desktop platforms.

Using Calibre:

·        Install (get it here http://calibre-ebook.com/)

·        You can use "Add Books from multiple directories" to get it to load your existing eBook collection. Now, it'll handle nearly all formats that I'm aware of, and will pull them all into 1 library. PDF's, LITs and PCRs all mixed and treated the same; you'll see how well this works now...

·        Set your default output to EPUB (button in top right area). This is the standard that Stanza works best with

·        Clean your library up:

o   Set up free ISBNdb.com and LibraryThing.com accounts. Calibre helps with this. It's worth the minor effort; with these you get a very intelligent assistant to help you ID your book's ISBN, and from there you can get the cover art

o   For each book, press E to edit metadata, then use button "Fetch metadata from server". You will be given a list of likely matches to your book title and author. If not, you need to check the title and author in this same screen - they may have silly filename characters that need editing. You'll figure it out easily enough

o   Once you have the metadata, click "Fetch cover image from server". Select cover, and close with "OK"

o   Do for all books, and your books will be nicely completed with author, title, publisher, date, cover, and in most cases a synopsis.

o   Consider adding tags; if you do this, they will appear as subjects in Stanza iPhone. Nice for separating fiction classes, non-fiction subjects, hobbies & interests, etc. Note that from the above metadata, stanza will automatically group authors so don't tag them.

·        Now you need to convert all your books: Select the lot, make sure you have chosen 'EPUB' as the output, and click "Bulk Convert" button. Just accept the box that comes up as blank. Now, here's where calibre comes into it's own; even though you had mixed formats, you will end up with all books having both the original format, and the desired EPUB format, BUT your library will still look like a single list. Nice! Gone are the days of storing multiple directories for different devices.

Getting your books into Stanza:

·        This is surprisingly easy. Do not try to open each book in Stanza desktop and then 'share' to your iPhone. Takes time, covers get lost, and some LIT files will not open.

·        Instead, use settings in Calibre (minute hammer button in top right area) to check the 'Content Server' is started

·        Make sure your iPhone and PC are on the same WiFi network

·        In Stanza iPhone, choose 'Online Catalog', then the '+' button in bottom right

·        Choose 'Add Stanza Catalog', and enter a name (eg My PC library) then enter

·        http://192.168.1.2:8080/stanza for the URL. (The red and underlined text needs to be the IP of your PC on the

wifi network: To find out what the IP is, run the following command in a command window (press Windows + R keys, and type cmd > type "ipconfig /all" without the quotes and press enter. Check for wireless lan settings. Yes, yes, that is the one.)

·        When all is set, go to main screen of Stanza, and then to Online Catalogue. There you see it, the books, hundreds of them, waiting to be downloaded. Download the ones you want or just for the heck of it, press the little button in top right hand side of the screen. A warning will pop up, asking whether you would like to download all the books, as it would take quite some time (depending on the number of books you have).

·        Voila!!!!

·        That's it; a complete library, nicely organised, on an awesome reading device. I have not tried the following, hence I can't comment and/or edit this part. When/if I ever try them and have time, I will also make necessary amendments.

Tips/Tricks:

1.     Set stanza to have a black background and white text; you can then read at night without your spouse complaining

2.     For now, I am rating my books by changing the title in Stanza; I put a score of 1-5 at the front. It's not great, but stanza does not rate books, and any ratings you do in calibre do not get carried across to stanza.

3.     This one is more sophisticated, but well worth the effort:

If you have a large library (ie over 100 books), AND you have them organised with tags so that stanza groups them under the subject button, there is a way to get that stanza grouping benefit without having to download them all 1-by-1. With Calibre2Web from itimpi, you create an online catalogue of your books with awesome structuring; drill by author, subject (tag), series, title letters, and even recent additions! Why is that cool; now you actually never need to put the books on you iPhone at all! Your library becomes so accessible and organised, that you can browse online (3G, wifi, etc) and only download books 1 at a time for reading, then delete afterwards. Think it thro a bit; you feel a need to keep books downloaded and with you, but in reality you only need a few wit you at a time, AND the ability to get a few more very easily (for when you are about to go out of coverage). So, here's how:

·        First download Calibre2Web here (you may have to read through the thread from the bottom to find the latest version)

·        The text file explains how to run it from windows (windows only I'm afraid). It's really rather easy.

·        Now, you have 2 choices, and this is where it gets tricky:

1.      If you have a web site of your own, just copy your entire library structure and the new CATALOG directory to the server, and follow itimpi's instructions on adding an online stanza catalog to your iPhone.

2.     Otherwise you have to turn your PC into a web server on your wifi network. That requires some savvy; set up a website in IIS mapped to the calibre library directory, disable or open your firewall, find your PC's IP, then do as per itimpi's instructions to add an online stanza catalog to your iPhone. If you know this stuff it's dead easy, but if you don't, rather stick to option 1

Right now, the ONLY thing that prevents this combo from being 100% perfect is that stanza (calibre is not the culprit) does not allow one to rate books. Rating is usually the way to indicate that you've read a book, and in large libraries it becomes tricky to know what you've read and what not. IRL one uses the dog-eared state of the book to determine if you've read it or not - ebook solutions really should not omit this functionality.

update: Now that iBooks for ipod/phone is available, using iTunes to transfer ePub and pdf files to the idevices are easier than before. Hence the above lengthy process seems obsolete.