How to combine different editions of the same book in Calibre?

Question

I have the first and second editions of the same book with me. If I include them in Calibre, they are shown as separate entities.

Rather, I want them to be shown together (like, how files of the same book but different file types, are shown together).

How to do this?

Solution 1

My suggestion is to select the two book records of different format, and do as follows,

1. Edit metadata
2. Merge book records,
3. Merge only format into first selected book - delete others

Or for short cut, select the two book records with different format, "ALT SHIFT M"

BTW, I've read in previous version Calibre used this option for merging them,

Turn on the autosort/automerge option located at Preferences|Add/Save|"If books with similar author and title found ...."

It will cause Calibre to identify the second book by author and title, determine if there is another matching book with that author/title and then add the new format to the existing matching record.

My version is calibre 0.8.38

Solution 2

In 3.28.0 version of Calibre to enable auto-merge feature go to Preferences, then Adding books in Import/export group, than to the tab Adding actions and set the check mark against the item Auto-merge added books if they already exists.

You can also choose from the drop-down menu next to the checkbox what exactly shall happen with the duplicate: ignore duplicate incoming formats, overwrite existing duplicate formats, create new record for each duplicate format.

Solution 3

I have been looking for the answer to that also. From what I have found you have to add them as two separate books. Make the title contain the edition info.

If you add them with same metadata the last one will overwrite the previous one.

Comments

[Hashken]

But, if the two editions of the book are of the same format, this won't work right?

[pablaasmo]

It will work anyway, since you add them as two separate books. Each book you add can have several formats added. I typically add books with epub, pdf and mobi formats. If they are available. My last comment about overwriting was if you tried to add a book with the same title, the metadat will be overwritten. So, to avoid that I change the title to include the edition info.