If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve been working on keeping up with the methods for editing the author and title that the Kindle displays on the Home screen. As soon as I’ve nailed down a particular method, someone emails me with a particular book that doesn’t work with the current method. I’m 99.9% sure I’ve nailed down a method that will work in all scenarios on a Windows machine.

Sorry, but this is Windows-only for now.

The Problem

There are often cases when the title and/or author information displayed on the Kindle’s Home screen are either incorrect or are not what you want to see. For example, if you email a file to your Kindle for conversion, Amazon changes the author of the file to your email address and the title to the name of the file.

If you want to change the information you see on the Kindle’s Home screen, you’ll have to rely on third-party tools. There isn’t a way to do it from within the Kindle.

The Solution

The easiest way that I’ve found to change what is displayed on your Kindle Home screen is to use a tool called Mobi2Mobi GUI. This application allows you to read and change the metadata that is contained within a Kindle’s book file. The metadata contains the book’s title, author, and other information. By using Mobi2Mobi GUI, you can easily access that information and change it if you wish.

Here’s how.

Step 1: Get Mobi2Mobi

The first thing you’ll need is a copy of Tommy Persson’s excellent Mobi2Mobi application. You can download that at the MobiPerl website. (The link is in the Download section. Download from the Releases link, not the zipped source.)

Once you’ve downloaded MobiPerl, unzip Mobi2Mobi.exe into the directory of your choice. The MobiPerl download includes many other tools, but all you need is Mobi2Mobi.exe.

Step 2: Get Mobi2Mobi GUI

You will also need a copy of Mobi2Mobi GUI. This is a Windows application that automates the use of Mobi2Mobi.exe. You can download Mobi2Mobi GUI from the MobilRead forums. Download the latest version, but make sure you don’t get the file that ends in GPL. That’s the source code and not the actual application.

Unzip Mobi2Mobi_GUI.exe to the directory of your choice. There are several files in the Zip file, but you only need Mobi2Mobi_GUI.exe.

Note: In my original post on this, I said that you need to also install ActivePerl. As it turns out, that step is not necessary because the Perl libraries needed by Mobi2Mobi are built into the Mobi2Mobi.exe application.

Step 3: Get the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

You will need to download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. You can get it here. You need this because Mobi2Mobi GUI was written as a .NET Framework application.

Step 4: Run it!

Now that you’ve installed all of the necessary plumbing, you’re ready to run Mobi2Mobi GUI. Go ahead and double-click on Mobi2Mobi_GUI.exe and you’ll see the window shown below.

Setting Mobi2Mobi Configuration

The first thing you need to do in Mobi2Mobi GUI is click Set Dir to the right of the Mobi2Mobi Dir box and select the folder where you put Mobi2Mobi.exe. Then click Set Dir to the right of the Book Directory box and select the directory where the books that you’ll be editing are located. When you have done this, it will look like the following.

In my situation, Mobi2Mobi.exe is located in c:\mobi2mobi and I am copying my Kindle books that I am going to be editing into the c:\KindleBooks folder.

Notice also that Use Win32 is checked.  This is simply an indicator that Mobi2Mobi GUI is going to use the self-contained Mobi2Mobi.exe instead of using ActivePerl. (If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it. It’s not important.)

Opening a Book

After you’ve configured the location of Mobi2Mobi and your book directory (which only has to be done once), you’re ready to open a book. Click the Open File button and Mobi2Mobi GUI will display the contents of the folder you specified in the Book Directory text box. Select the book file that you want to edit. (If the file is a book downloaded from the Kindle Store, you’ll need to change the file extension from .azw to .prc first. More on Kindle Store books later.) Once you’ve opened the file, you’ll see the book’s information displayed in Mobi2Mobi GUI as shown below.

Editing Metadata

To edit the book’s metadata, enter the new information in the appropriate text box and then check the box to the right of the text box. (If you don’t check the box, it won’t work.) For example, if I want to change the author of the book you see in the figure above, I would enter the new author name in the Author text box and then check the box to the right of that text box. Once you’ve entered in all the correct information, click the Convert button (on the far right side of the dialog) to save the file with the correct information. The book is saved with a .mobi file extension using the name entered in the Output File text box and is stored in the folder specified in the Book Directory text box.

Warning! If you check the box next to a particular field and then change the data for that field, it won’t work. You must change the data before you check the box.

All that seems simple enough, right? Wrong! If you’re editing the metadata for an unprotected book you downloaded from the Internet, you can simply enter the correct information and be done with it. However, if you’re working with a book you purchased from the Kindle Store, there are a couple of changes to the procedure.

Editing Metadata for Kindle Store Books

Before you can open a book purchased from the Kindle Store in Mobi2Mobi GUI, you first have to change the file extension from .azw to .prc. (If you can’t see the file extension, you may need to follow the steps documented here.) Once you’ve changed the file extension to .prc, you can open the file in Mobi2Mobi GUI.

After you’ve opened your Kindle Store book in Mobi2Mobi GUI, you’ll follow the same steps outline above to change the author of the book. However, if you want to change the title, you’ll need to use the exth type and exth data fields in Mobi2Mobi GUI.

Click the exth type dropdown and set it to updatedtitle. After doing that, enter the title that you want to show on the Kindle’s Home screen in the exth data field. Finally, check the box to the
right of the exth data field so that Mobi2Mobi GUI will write your change to the new file and then click Convert. (When you do this, Mobi2Mobi GUI will ignore the title that is entered into the Book Title field.)

Copying the New File to Your Kindle

When you click Convert, Mobi2Mobi GUI will generate a new file using the name you specific in the Output File text box. The new file will have a .mobi file extension. To copy that file to your Kindle, simply plug the Kindle into your computer using a USB cable and copy the .mobi file that Mobi2Mobi GUI created into the documents folder on your Kindle’s main memory or on an SD card. You should then see the book listed on your Kindle’s Home screen with the new information that you entered.

Update: This information has been permanently copied to this page.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Kindle Tips.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.