# Author suddenly not showing on all new books emailed from Calibre



## paultheitguy (Aug 26, 2011)

Hello everyone,

I wonder if anyone can advise on a problem that has suddenly started.

I use Calibre to manage all the books I don't get from Amazon for my Kindle. For a year this has worked really well until last night (25th Aug 2011) when I tried to email a new book to my device. It emails out fine, and downloads to the device, but when it appears there the author field does not show the author, but my gmail address instead. So where before it would have said "Oliver Twist" as the title and "Charles Dickens" as the author it now says "Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens" as the title and "myaddress at gmail dot com" as the author.

At first I thought it was a problem with a specific book, which I converted to various different formats, but then it happened with another book and finally it happened when I tried emailing myself a book that had worked fine a few days prior to this problem (23th Aug).

I am not sure if this is a problem with Calibre (v 0.8.15) or the Kindle (v3.1) so have logged it here and on the Calibre boards. Books I have downloaded direct from Amazon seem to display correctly - I downloaded one this morning just to check.

I'd be grateful if anyone could elaborate on a possible solution.

Thanks

Paul C


----------



## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

I believe the Calibre version you have is the latest - but did you upgrade from an earlier version in those couple of days between when it worked and when it didn't? If you're not doing anything different from what you usually do, it's possible it's a bug in the new version of the program. Could you try installing an older version and trying again?


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

By George, it's doing it for me as well!  

It's nothing to do with Calibre, it's something that Amazon have changed. It's something in their conversion routine.

To explain the conversion first, if you email a PDF, it is delivered without change (ie it is a PDF on the Kindle).
If you email a PDF and put Convert in the subject, Amazon convert it to a .azw
If you email a mobi, Amazon convert it to an azw.

I've just experimented emailing several files which have never been near Calibre. The unconverted PDFs seem to act the same as before, so the PDF title and author are displayed.

Anything converted (PDF or mobi) now seems to have the file name as the book title, and my kindle address as the author.

Time for an email to Kindle CS I think - you might want to do the same, if enough of us complain they might take it seriously!


----------



## Lisa J. Yarde (Jul 15, 2010)

Yes, it's happening to me too. I used Calibre to convert a file for my friend, and now my email address is listed under the Author section of her book on kindle.  Thanks for posting this, I thought I'd messed something up.


----------



## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Arggg same here. This is upsetting. Its the only way I have been putting books on my K3 since last august with Calibre.  

It was so nice to have wifi and not having to plug it in. Now I can't do that anymore, it messes with all the sorting without the author. Darn it. Why would they mess with this. 

Now I have to plug it in to transfer the books which was the whole point of having wifi not having to do that anymore. 

Argggg. Hmpf. 

I honestly wouldn't even begin to figure out how to put this in words to send to Amazon.  . I mean I use it, but I can't explain it. I can't put it in logical anything.


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Morf said:


> Anything converted (PDF or mobi) now seems to have the file name as the book title, and my kindle address as the author.


As far as I know, this is how it has always worked. . . . if you send to Amazon for conversion they put your email address as the author. If you want it to be something else you have to side load it; in that case it will retain embedded metadata. I've never used Calibre so I have no idea how it's functionality factors in.


----------



## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Yes, if you send it straight with email it did do that before, but when you did it through Calibre, it used the Meta data that is in the fields, which I change a lot to make it work. Now it doesn't anymore an puts the email in the author field on the Kindle.


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> As far as I know, this is how it has always worked. . . . if you send to Amazon for conversion they put your email address as the author. If you want it to be something else you have to side load it; in that case it will retain embedded metadata. I've never used Calibre so I have no idea how it's functionality factors in.


Sorry Ann, I disagree, this has definitely changed in the last couple of days. I've just gone to my Sent Mail, pulled out an email sent with a document a couple of weeks ago, and sent it again.

The first sent document has the correct title and author, the resent one has the filename and my email address.

Something has definitely changed.


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Atunah said:


> I honestly wouldn't even begin to figure out how to put this in words to send to Amazon. . I mean I use it, but I can't explain it. I can't put it in logical anything.


If you can send anything it would help, just tell them that the author used to be correct, now it's always your email address.


----------



## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

The other reason I always like better sending through Calibre over wifi rather than USB is that when I send through USB, Calibre creates folders on the Kindle in which it places the books. Sending them over wifi didn't do that. 

I could send send whenever throughout the week with my wifi turned off and then when I did turn it on, they would just appear. So much more convenient than having to plug in every single time. 

I see people over on the mobile forum are also emailing so hopefully they put it back the way it was. If they can even figure out what they did to change it and who


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Morf said:


> Sorry Ann, I disagree, this has definitely changed in the last couple of days. I've just gone to my Sent Mail, pulled out an email sent with a document a couple of weeks ago, and sent it again.
> 
> The first sent document has the correct title and author, the resent one has the filename and my email address.
> 
> Something has definitely changed.


That's interesting. . .I remember specifically reading in the K1 users guide (3+ years ago!) about how stuff I sent would have my email address as author. And I don't remember ever seeing it any other way unless I sideloaded something.

Again, I've NEVER used Calibre. And it's actually been a while since I sent anything wirelessly at all. . . I just don't buy stuff from anywhere except Amazon.

I do occasionally send files with daily Mass readings. . .hmm. . .let's see. . . . . Well, I just found the latest file and sent it and, sure enough, there's my email address. Other similar files don't have it listed, but I might have sideloaded them. . . .so, really, I'm not much help. 

I'm feeling like maybe it changed at some point (possibly with the advent of the K3 and WiFi delivery?) and let the metadata come across and now, for some reason, it's changed again. Odd.

I wonder if it has something to do with the conversion process that will be used to enable library lending . . . .maybe they're testing something.


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

I've just got off the phone with UK Kindle support having emailed them a couple of times, they have accepted that this is a problem (not just me being stupid  ) and are escalating this to the engineering team to take a look at what's gone wrong.

I've pointed them to this thread, so if anybody else is having this problem then please post details here.

In particular, can anybody pin down more exactly the date/time it stopped working? So far I've worked out:

Aug 22nd - OK (my test) - 10pm UK time.
Aug 23rd - OK? (Paul, am I reading your post correctly? What time. do you know?)
Aug 24th - ?
Aug 25th - Failed (Paul, what time?)
Aug 26th - Failed (me)
Aug 27th - Failed (me)

Anybody any other transfers on the 24th/25th and times which might help?

Finally Paul, where else did you raise this problem (you mention the Calibre boards)? Anybody seen it discussed elsewhere?


----------



## paultheitguy (Aug 26, 2011)

Hi - I can't remeber exact times but I know that on the evening of 23rd I was able to email books to myself successfully - probably about 11:00pm - and that by approx 7:00pm on 25th it was not working (this was when I next sent myself a book).

I logged this also in the Calibre official board (which they run from Mobileread.com/forums) in the Kindle and Calibre sections - everyone there is clueless as to the cause so far - but all seem to blame it on the Amazon wireless delivery.

Paul C


----------



## ancatdubh2 (Sep 1, 2011)

This has been happening to me since August 25th, as well (2011).  The only reason I'm even posting here is because I'm specifically doing a google search for "kindle email address instead of author information" because it bothers me so much!  I have never used Calibre to send things over to my Kindle, I have always just manually e-mailed them to my kindle address and allowed the download to take place via Wi-Fi.  This has ALWAYS worked, pulling the correct title and author metadata from the MOBI file that I send.  So it has nothing to do with Calibre, it is absolutely an Amazon issue.  If anyone has heard anything from Amazon regarding a fix, please please let me know.


----------



## ancatdubh2 (Sep 1, 2011)

I've just logged a complain with Amazon describing the issue as the Amazon personal delivery service not pulling the correct title and author metadata from the MOBI file e-mailed, and instead displaying the filename as the title and the email address (from which the document was sent) as the author.  They said they would have a response for me within 48 hours.


----------



## ancatdubh2 (Sep 1, 2011)

I would recommend others do the same, please!


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

I've not heard anything from Amazon (despite being promised a response by Thursday 1st) so I've just emailed them to chase it up.

I'll post as soon as I hear anything.


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Quick update...

I have just carried out another experiment, I connected my Kindle to my PC and copied the files for the two versions of the book from the Kindle to my PC.

I then opened both files in Kindle for PC.

The results were exactly the same as on the Kindle: the old book had author and title correct, the new book had the wrong title and my email address as author.










I've also looked inside both files with a hex editor and there are obvious differences: I can see the authors name in the old one but not in the new one, and I can see my email address in the new one but not in the old one.

Anyway, I've told Amazon all this (and offered them the files if it will help): we'll await developments.


----------



## ancatdubh2 (Sep 1, 2011)

Morf, thanks!  This confirms our suspicion that the problem is inherent in the Amazon Delivery Service.  The service is not pulling title and author metadata.  Another experiment would be to take a MOBI file from Calibre that has intact metadata and change the filename to something nonsense on your desktop.  Copying this nonsense file over by USB will result in a perfectly fine book with readable title & author.  But emailing it will result in a nonsense file showing up on the Kindle.  I can guarantee this would happen.

Nice redaction, btw. =)


----------



## ancatdubh2 (Sep 1, 2011)

This problem is now fixed.  Thank you, Amazon. =)


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Yep, it is indeed fixed.

Normality is restored!


----------



## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Yay, that is awesome. Off to go sending some stuff to my Kindle.   This really did bug me. 

I think maybe because lots of people emailed that helped them get on it. Wonderful.


----------



## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Rather amusingly, in my last email from Amazon their tech support person said that he could see that the problem had been fixed from reading the discussion on Kindleboards!


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Morf said:


> Rather amusingly, in my last email from Amazon their tech support person said that he could see that the problem had been fixed from reading the discussion on Kindleboards!


I always suspected they kept an eye on this place!


----------

