# Calibre mobi2mobi Legally bought .azw books help?



## Amarithmoon (Feb 5, 2009)

So here are the problems:

1. I love books way to much! (bad for me, great for Amazon).
2. I buy/get my books from Amazon.com
3. I want to change the metadata (note I have DRMed .azw files and do NOT need to hear/want to hear about breaking DRM as that is not my intention at all.)

So here is the basic story in as few words as I can make it.  I have my kindle and about 200 books (all either amazon freebies or bought from amazon).  I have calibre (which I love the theory of, but not sure what to do to fix what I need fixed).  I have mobi2mobi (as it supposedly allows the change of metadata without removing or doing anything to the DRM which is the important part).  Now here is what I want to do, so someone help me out a bit if you can with basic or only slightly tech explanations.

Okay, so we all know Amazon/publishers etc cannot decide how to list Author, book titles, series' etc.  I have seen many useful tips about changing metadata for the title to include the series and book number for example (or to fix some of the freebie classics that list as Title by Author (yes it actually shows up as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (sometimes with years of life too)).  I also want to be able to fix the authors so that for instance all of Jacqueline Carey's books when sorted by Author all come up together and correctly capitalized.  Oh and if I can add Amazon's info into the metadata that would be great (which I know is a great wonderful super function of Calibre).

So the issue is this, since my files are drmed .azw files, calibre (per its creator) will not resync all my hard work to get everything perfect to my kindle as he (im pretty sure) has turned off that functionality...  hmmm...  So, that brought me to the semi scary land of mobi2mobi, which supposedly will correct the metadata and allow for it to be saved as .mobi (drm intact) which can then be transferred back to the kindle.  Now, thats awesome, and very very time consuming to play with that particular gui.  UGH!  Over 200 books.

So here is my big question, if I go and do the whole lot of them with mobi2mobi and get them saved as drmed .mobi files and then import the whole lot to calibre and fix whatever is left (mobi2mobi doesn't have some of the better features of calibre), technically since drmed .mobi functionality is not turned off I should be able to sync the whole lot of them back to my kindle and have everything come out good on the Kindle right??  I mean, its great that everything looks pretty on my computer screen, etc..  but really I got the Kindle so that I can take my books with me.  LOL.  

Any help/advice is seriously welcomed.  Thanks


----------



## GRiker (Aug 11, 2009)

I believe the answer is Yes.

You can use mobi2mobi to change the metadata as you choose, then import the modified file into calibre.  If you do so, be sure to remove any previous versions of that same book from calibre before adding the edited one, to avoid confusion. 

You do not need to modify the DRM to do what you want to do.

I would encourage you to edit one book's metadata with the workflow you anticipate, import it to calibre, then download it to your Kindle to confirm the results.  Once you've got the process down, then you can confidently do the rest of your books.

G


----------



## Amarithmoon (Feb 5, 2009)

Thanks for the response.  I will give it a go in the next few days and will post a sequence if it works in case anyone else has the same need.


----------



## Amarithmoon (Feb 5, 2009)

So, tried it out, and indeed it does work. So here was my process. I had already loaded everything to calibre from my Kindle. So I knew which folder to go to with Mobi2Mobi.

Opened the file with mobi2mobi and changed author/title and included the backwards series info (ie.. [series name #] Title and then fixed the author to being last name, first name. Oh and I included whatever cover I had for it.

change the name of the output file just enough that you know which one it is, and it will be .mobi not .azw

Then i converted it.

Then I went into calibre, and deleted the book. (check the folder after this to make sure the .azw file is gone) You should only have the .mobi file left now

Hooked up the Kindle and deleted the book from my kindle as well.

Unhook kindle for the moment.

Go into Calibre and Update with metadata if you want, and plop it back onto the kindle via the send to device function.

I know the book I tried this with is drm, and the drm is still intact. But it sorts fine now, and my title is how I want it. And so is the metadata.

Yes, I know I'm very detail oriented with how I want things listed on my Kindle. But I have over 200 books and hate hate hate trying to search for the next book in a series.


----------

