Extract Fanfic Metadata 1.3.0

This release makes the plugin friendlier to anthologies: EPUBs that bundle several stories, usually made with FanFicFare's anthology feature.

New

• Your story columns can fill in for anthologies. In Configure column mapping, tick Also for anthologies on the fields you want. For an anthology they get:

  • Status: the series status recorded in the file. Left empty when none is recorded.
  • Completed? (yes/no): yes when the series is marked complete.
  • Date Published / Date Updated: the earliest and latest story dates.
  • Chapter Count: chapters across all stories, added up.
  • Fandom(s), Characters, Relationship(s): combined from every story.
  • Rating: the Highest rating, or All ratings, comma separated.

  All ticks are off by default, so nothing changes until you choose.

• Published date for anthologies. Under "Update standard Calibre metadata", you can set Published to the earliest story's date.

Changed

• The anthology report is now a column-mapping field, Anthology Story Report, filled in the same run as everything else. Its text is unchanged. The separate Extract story status from anthology menu item and the Anthology Status settings tab are gone.
  If you used the report, your report column is added to the column mapping automatically. Mapped columns are refreshed on every run, so the report's own "Overwrite existing column value" setting no longer applies.
• fanfiction.net ratings are stored as FanFicFare stores them: "M" rather than "Fiction M", whichever tool saved the file.

Fixed

• Anthology Comments written by "Update standard Calibre metadata" lost their line breaks. They now keep one story per line, as when Calibre imports the file. Run the plugin again on affected anthologies to restore the formatting.

See the Settings and fields
guide for details.

Install

Download extract_fanfic_metadata-v1.3.0.zip under Assets. In Calibre, open Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file, select the ZIP, then restart.

If you still have the old Extract Epub Metadata installed, remove it in Preferences → Plugins after installing. Your settings and toolbar button are kept.

Notes

• Requires Calibre 6.0 or newer. Checked on Calibre 9.15 for macOS and in Calibre Zen.
  Windows and Linux were not rechecked.
• Anthology checks used FanFicFare-made AO3 series anthologies. Anthologies from other tools or sites may recover less.

Extract Fanfic Metadata 1.2.2

Fixed

• Fandom from FanFicFare EPUBs. FanFicFare's title page lists the fandom under "Category" rather than "Fandom", so it was missed for AO3 and fanfiction.net books. It now fills your Fandom column and is added to Tags. Other sites use Category for their own labels, so those are left alone. (Issue #2)
• Translators. People credited for translations or related works are not added as authors. The fix itself shipped in 1.2.0. (Issue #3)

Changed

• The mapping field for AO3's M/M, F/F, Gen label is now called
  AO3 Category (M/M, F/F, Gen...), so it isn't mistaken for the fandom.
• Anthology fields and previews now say anthology instead of "collection",
  matching FanFicFare.
• Existing column mappings are kept.

New

• A Settings and fields guide explains every setting and every field you can map to a column.
• Every field in the column mapping now has hover help.

Install

Download extract_fanfic_metadata-v1.2.2.zip under Assets. In Calibre, open Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file, select the ZIP, then restart.

If you still have the old Extract Epub Metadata installed, remove it in Preferences → Plugins after installing. Your settings and toolbar button are kept.

Notes

• Requires Calibre 6.0 or newer. Checked on Calibre 9.15 for macOS and in Calibre Zen.

Extract Fanfic Metadata 1.2.1

Extract Fanfic Metadata 1.2.1

Extract EPUB Metadata is now Extract Fanfic Metadata, because it also reads TXT
and AO3 PDF files. The name is the only change; metadata recovery works as it did in 1.2.0.

Install

Download extract_fanfic_metadata-v1.2.1.zip under Assets. In Calibre, open
Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file, select the ZIP, then restart.

If you have the old name installed

Calibre sees the new name as a separate plugin, so it will not update the old one
for you. After installing, open Preferences → Plugins, select
Extract Epub Metadata, click Remove plugin, then restart. Your settings and
toolbar button are kept.

Notes

• Requires Calibre 6.0 or newer. Checked on Calibre 9.15 for macOS; the switch from the
  old name was also tried in Calibre Zen. Windows and Linux were not rechecked.

Extract Epub Metadata 1.2.0

Extract Epub Metadata 1.2.0

You can now recover metadata directly from AO3-generated PDFs, using the same
preview and Saved Metadata, standard metadata and custom-column options.

This update also improves recovery from AO3 HTML files converted to EPUB,
including titles, authors, summaries, categories and story URLs.

Install or update

Download extract_epub_metadata-v1.2.0.zip under Assets. In Calibre, open
Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file, select the ZIP, then restart.
Existing plugin settings are preserved.

Notes

• EPUB takes priority, followed by TXT, then PDF. PDF recovery reads only the
  opening pages; scanned PDFs and browser printouts are not supported.
• For HTML, import into Calibre and convert to EPUB before running extraction.
• Recovery depends on the metadata present. Review the preview before writing;
  ambiguous fields may be omitted with an explanation.
• Requires Calibre 6.0 or newer. Checked on Calibre 6.0 and 9.15 for macOS, with additional
  PDF testing in Calibre Zen. Windows and Linux were not rechecked.

Extract Epub Metadata 1.1.0

Extract Epub Metadata 1.1.0

Recover metadata directly from supported TXT archive headers and FicLab EPUBs.

New

• TXT support: read recognizable opening archive headers directly, including
  compact headers, spaced/wrapped headers and AO3/SquidgeWorld PDF-style prefaces.
  There is no need to convert supported TXT files to EPUB first.
• Partial TXT recovery: when PDF text has detached columns, recover explicit
  facts and explain which ambiguous fields were omitted.
• FicLab EPUB support: recover labeled counts, status, rating, matching author
  profiles and mixed tags from marked front matter. Preserve source timestamps;
  prefer summary story word counts over the EPUB extent count.

Fixed

• Refresh the book list, Book Details and tag browser after writes, so fields such
  as word count and chapters appear without running FanFicFare afterward.

Install or update

Download extract_epub_metadata-v1.1.0.zip under Assets. In Calibre, open
Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file, select the ZIP, then restart
Calibre. Existing plugin settings are preserved.

Requires Calibre 6.0 or newer. This release is checked on Calibre 9.15 for macOS;
preview builds received additional testing in Calibre Zen. Windows, Linux and
Calibre 6.0 were not rechecked for this release.

Notes

• EPUB remains preferred when a book has both EPUB and TXT.
• Recovery depends on the saved file’s layout and available fields; TXT support
  does not cover every archive format. Missing URLs and ambiguous metadata are
  not guessed.
• Enable Update standard Calibre metadata to write recovered author names to
  Authors. Existing values are kept unless standard overwrite is enabled.
• Direct writes do not apply FanFicFare personal.ini transformations. Run
  FanFicFare’s Update from Saved action afterward if you use those rules.
• The plugin does not download stories. The installable ZIP includes only plugin
  files; the repository’s public test examples are synthetic.

v1.0.0

Extract Epub Metadata 1.0.0

Recover metadata already present in fanfiction EPUBs in your Calibre library. The plugin can stage
FanFicFare Saved Metadata for a supported single story, write standard Calibre metadata,
or map recovered values directly to custom columns. These options can be combined.

This release adds limited, collection-aware extraction for epubmerge anthologies and EPUBs
whose primary URL identifies a series. It can use verified outer metadata and reliable
totals without treating the first included story as the whole book. Collection Saved
Metadata is skipped because FanFicFare's import action expects one story URL. The separate
anthology status report continues to show individual stories when the EPUB preserves them.

Also added: support for tested ao3downloader EPUBs and a conservative labelled-header
fallback for converted PDF EPUBs. The 1.0 fixes include coauthor handling, series links,
summary formatting, word counts, Calibre placeholder fields, preview/write safeguards,
and URL precedence when checking FanFicFare support. Full changes are in
CHANGELOG.md.

Requires Calibre 6.0 or newer. Metadata availability still depends on what the EPUB
contains; review the preview before writing. FanFicFare support for a story URL is checked
against its installed adapter registry when available, without a network request.

Install

Download extract_epub_metadata-v1.0.0.zip from Assets below. In Calibre, open
Preferences → Plugins → Load plugin from file, select that ZIP, and restart Calibre
if prompted. GitHub's automatic Source code (zip) archive is not an installable
Calibre plugin ZIP.

See the README for setup,
mode choices, examples, and limitations. Source and MIT license
are in the repository.

v0.3.0-beta

Download extract_epub_metadata-v0.3.0-beta.zip under Assets below — not "Source code (zip)", which Calibre will reject.

New

• AO3 works recovered from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, saved with either WebToEpub or the Save as eBook browser extension. The story URL is set to the real AO3 link, and the Wayback snapshot URL is kept as a new "Wayback Machine URL" field.
• AO3 PDF downloads converted to EPUB (e.g. in Calibre): tags, series, stats, title, author and summary are read from AO3's preface page.
• Series is now recovered from AO3 downloads, work pages and PDFs, and can be written to Calibre's Series field or a custom column.

Fixed

• Old download.archiveofourown.org story links are recognized.
• Calibre's "Unknown" placeholder author is no longer treated as a real name.
• "Update standard Calibre metadata" read the wrong series value.
• A finished work could be marked In-Progress when AO3's stats had no spaces between them.
• For Wayback copies, FanFicFare now gets the real AO3 URL (as a url identifier) instead of the Wayback one.

v0.2.1-beta

Added

• A separate Total Chapters (if known) field, mappable to its own custom column —
  previously the only way to get a chapter total was the combined "x/y" text field, with no way
  to get just the total as its own number. Empty, not zero, when the source itself doesn't
  know the total yet (wip).
• The custom column mapping dialog now labels its two columns ("Extracted Field" / "Write To
  Column"), so it's clear at a glance which side is this plugin's data and which is your Calibre
  column.

Fixed

• A FanFicFare-downloaded EPUB whose spine has Calibre's own auto-inserted cover page (commonly
  named literally titlepage.xhtml) ahead of the real title page could lose its entire
  category/genre/status/dates/chapters/words silently — the extractor gave up on the first
  title-page-shaped file it found even when that file turned out to have no actual content.
• AO3 singularizes some of its own preface labels when there's exactly one tag in that category
  ("Relationship:" instead of "Relationships:" for a single-pairing work) — only the plural form
  was recognized, so ships were silently dropped entirely for any single-relationship work.

v0.2.0-beta

Added

• Recovers metadata from fanfiction.net stories, from two additional sources beyond the
  original AO3/FanFicFare-focused extraction:
  • Front-matter pages generated by fichub.net (recovers fandom, rating,
    status, chapters/words, dates, and more).
  • fanfiction.net's own native story-info page, as saved by the
    WebToEpub browser extension (recovers the same
    fields, plus author profile link/ID and fandom from the site's own breadcrumb).
• Show confirmation after writing — a new toggle (on both the Extraction and Anthology
  Status tabs) to turn off the "Updated N of M books" popup after a run.

Fixed

• A book with a fandom recovered from fanfiction.net would lose it from Tags the moment
  FanFicFare's own "Update Calibre Metadata from Saved Metadata Column" action ran — FFF has no
  fanfiction.net-specific config, so it reads the fandom from a different metadata key than it
  does for AO3. Verified fixed directly against FanFicFare's own Tags-computation logic.
• A title page whose chapter count was reported as "n/?" (final count not yet known) could crash
  Calibre outright when writing to an integer custom column.
• Some title pages (e.g. from fichub.net) use a plain <p>Label: value</p> layout instead of
  FanFicFare's own <b>Label:</b> value layout; these were previously invisible to extraction
  entirely, silently dropping every field past title and author.
• An EPUB with more than one <dc:source> tag in its metadata (as WebToEpub produces — one per
  chapter, plus the cover image) could pick up the cover image URL as the story URL instead of
  the actual story.
• genre now also contributes to the Tags composite when directly updating standard Calibre
  metadata (previously only used for the Saved Metadata column).

v0.1.0-beta

Initial public beta release.

Added

• Save all extracted metadata — writes recovered metadata into a Saved Metadata custom
  column in FanFicFare's own native format, ready for FFF's "Update Calibre Metadata from Saved
  Metadata Column" action.
• Update standard Calibre metadata — writes directly to Title, Author, Tags, Series and
  Comments using FanFicFare's default AO3 field-composition rules, no FFF round trip required.
• Update custom columns — a configurable mapping from recovered metadata fields to your own
  custom columns.
• Extract story status from anthology — a separate action for epubmerge-bundled anthology
  EPUBs (e.g. a downloaded AO3 series), recovering each individual fic's own completion status
  instead of just the bundle's single aggregate status, and writing a per-fic breakdown into a
  column you choose.
• Toolbar dropdown for quick access to both actions plus settings, without needing to select
  books first.
• Preview dialog before any writes, with per-book opt-out, for every mode above.