In iBooks on 10.10, books can have series metadata as shown in the image.
What metadata do I need to add to an external epub (i.e. not from ibook store) so that it can be displayed as a series?
booksitunesmacosmetadata
In iBooks on 10.10, books can have series metadata as shown in the image.
What metadata do I need to add to an external epub (i.e. not from ibook store) so that it can be displayed as a series?
Best Answer
I made it, but it's quite a bit tricky.
Summary:
You have to change the Books.plist file in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books for the books you want to have in a series, and also you have to add rows in the BKSeries-*.sqlite database on ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Documents/BKSeriesDatabase for them and the series.
Here's how I did it:
The database has 4 tables: ZBKSERIESCHECK, ZBKSERIESITEM, Z_PRIMARYKEY and Z_METADATA. I only changed the first three tables. The "series" is treated just like a book in these tables.
Add the books and the series in table ZBKSERIESCHECK. The table has 5 columns.
This is the table with the data I added.
The zAdamId I used are from Calibre, so I asume that you can use any number. Keep in mind that those numbers have to be different from the series/books you purchased.
The row with the zAdamId "1" is my series, the others are the books.
Add the relationships within books and series in the table ZBKSERIESITEM. This table has 16 columns.
Adjust table Z_PRIMARYKEY.
I found that this table has only two rows. One for each of the previous tables.
Here you have to change the Z_MAX column to the MAX(*) value of the Z_PK in each of the previous tables. For instance, in my DB, for the table ZBKSERIESCHECK (BKSeriesCheck) the MAX(*) of the column Z_PK is "22".
Save the changes.
Open the Books.plist file. Look for each of the books of the series and add these keys:
Save the file. Close iBooks (if you didn't close it from the beginning). Kill the com.apple.BKAgentService process. Start iBooks. You should be able to see your series.
Notes
Those columns I didn't name, I just left them empty and it didn't affect the end result.
I think it's waaay to difficult to put all your books and series properly when you have a lot of them. Hope to see someday something that do all this auto-magically.
This is my first post. I hope everybody finds it useful.