EBOOK-META(1)

💖 NAME 💖

ok so this is ebook-meta from calibre — the little command that reads metadata out of your e-books and writes it back in. that's it, that's the whole vibe. ✨

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ebook-meta ebook_file [options]

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

bestie. real talk. this tool Read/Write metadata from/to e-book files. like, you hand it a file, it tells you who wrote it, or you hand it a file plus some flags and it rewrites history. so powerful. 💅

Here's what it can read metadata from, in a big glorious pile:

azw, azw1, azw3, azw4, cb7, cbc, cbr, cbz, chm, docx, epub, fb2, fbz, html, htmlz, imp, kepub, lit, lrf, lrx, mobi, odt, oebzip, opf, pdb, pdf, pml, pmlz, pobi, prc, rar, rb, rtf, snb, tpz, txt, txtz, updb, zip

and here's what it can write metadata to (slightly smaller guest list, still iconic):

azw, azw1, azw3, azw4, docx, epub, fb2, fbz, htmlz, kepub, lrf, mobi, odt, pdb, pdf, prc, rtf, tpz, txtz

okay but here's the catch, and it's a big one: Different file types support different kinds of metadata. If you try to set some metadata on a file type that does not support it, the metadata will be silently ignored. silently!! no error, no warning, just vibes and nothing happens. so if your thing didn't take, that's probably why. 😭

and listen — Whenever you pass arguments to ebook-meta that have spaces in them, enclose the arguments in quotation marks. For example: "/some path/with spaces"

the shell will absolutely betray you otherwise. protect yourself. 🫶

---

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --author-sort — String to be used when sorting by author. If you don't specify it, and the author(s) are specified, it will be auto-generated from the author(s). the tool's got you.
• --authors, -a — Set the authors. Multiple authors should be separated by the & character. Author names should be in the order Firstname Lastname.
• --book-producer, -k — Set the book producer.
• --category — Set the book category.
• --comments, -c — Set the e-book description.
• --cover — Set the cover to the specified file.
• --date, -d — Set the published date.
• --disallow-rendered-cover — For formats like EPUB that use a "default cover" of the first page rendered, disallow such default covers
• --from-opf — Read metadata from the specified OPF file and use it to set metadata in the e-book. Metadata specified on the command line will override metadata read from the OPF file
• --get-cover — Get the cover from the e-book and save it at as the specified file.
• --help, -h — show this help message and exit
• --identifier — Set the identifiers for the book, can be specified multiple times. For example: --identifier uri:https://acme.com --identifier isbn:12345 To remove an identifier, specify no value, --identifier isbn: Note that for EPUB files, an identifier marked as the package identifier cannot be removed. 🚫
• --index, -i — Set the index of the book in this series.
• --isbn — Set the ISBN of the book.
• --language, -l — Set the language.
• --lrf-bookid — Set the BookID in LRF files
• --publisher, -p — Set the e-book publisher.
• --rating, -r — Set the rating. Should be a number between 1 and 5.
• --series, -s — Set the series this e-book belongs to.
• --tags — Set the tags for the book. Should be a comma separated list.
• --title, -t — Set the title.
• --title-sort — The version of the title to be used for sorting. If you don't specify it, and the title is specified, it will be auto-generated from the title.
• --to-opf — Specify the name of an OPF file. The metadata will be written to the OPF file.
• --version — show program's version number and exit

---

👑 Author 👑

Kovid Goyal

💜 Copyright 💜

Kovid Goyal

---

okay that's the whole page, you ate it, go forth and fix your metadata 💖✨

calibre 9.14.0, dated August 28, 2026 — mwah, xoxo, bye bestie 🎀🦋