Calibre: Adding a blurb to the front of a book
Two weeks ago we discussed adding plugins to crawl the internet for better covers. Today we’ll review how to add a blurb at the beginning of your book. Adding a blurb at the beginning allows you to immediately identify the contents of the book and maybe even remind yours why you bought it in the first place.
Under Preferences -> Structure Detection check the box next to “insert metadata as page at start of book.
Then you will need to reconvert your book into either ePub or Mobi.
Your reconverted book should have this page at the beginning, appearing after the cover image.
As you can see the metadata that is inserted includes title, author, publisher, date of publication, tags, and the blurb. You can further identify why you bought the book in the “Tags” section of the metadata. For instance, you could put “recommended by Jayne at DA” or “Heard on Twitter” to give yourself a little reminder.
That’s all you have to do in order to help yourself manage your mountainous TBR pile a little better.
Other posts that you might find helpful:
- Adding a plugin
- Using Belvedere to automatically move purchases from the download folder into Calibre
- Using Automator to automatically move purchases from the download folder into Calibre
- Using Connect/Share feature to send books to your devices using Calibre
- Setting up a new library with Calibre
- Using Calibre to manage a print library
Oh, this is helpful and I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who sometimes forgets why I bought a book in the first place!
@Jayne: I’m trying to use tags to help future me!
How to talk about this diplomatically…? Do you discuss managing DRM issues in any of your earlier articles about Calibre? I’m interested, but have read warnings about picking up hidden nasties with programs that assist with the issue.
Thanks for any guidance you can offer.
@Mzcue: I think the latest post is here:
https://dearauthor.com/ebooks/how-to-read-and-preserve-your-epub-library/
@Rosario: Thanks Rosario. I’m fast approaching the 1,000 book point, each and every one purchased legally, and it’s been nagging at me that I haven’t protected my library. The scary virus protection messages I’ve read about some people getting when they use Calibre have daunted me, but I can’t let this go on. Thanks for the links to earlier DA posts.
Thanks for this – my Calibre library is 7,000+ books strong (including shell books for books I read as paperback/hardback).
I have a love/hate relationship with book blurbs – they are great if you can easily see they are blurbs, terrible if you think they are the start of the book, especially if they quote a scene which doesn’t take place until half way through!
I really enjoy your tutorials, although I think I already know most of them (through painful trial and error) I appreciate the reminder and/or the better way of doing things.
I honestly dont have any idea on how to add a blurb in the front book. Thanks for making it up to me. I really learned so much from your tutorial. I think you have covered everything I need.