EPubMetadataEditor 1.9

EPubMetadataEditor allows you to edit and add metadata to your EPUB electronic books in a simple and efficient way. This free and open-source tool will offer you the possibility of changing some of the most relevant information contained in a book’s OPF file. Besides, you can link the program to your favorite e-book viewer, so that you can open your books and search for new metadata without leaving the program.

All the editable information appears in the program's one-screen interface. In fact, EPubMetadataEditor will read all the information contained in the OPF file and will show it to you conveniently tagged in editable boxes. Some of the data you can edit or key in are the title, the creator, the series, a description of the book, the publisher, or the language. The “creator” can be the author, the editor, the illustrator, or the translator, though you will only be allowed to include a maximum of two names. Names can be typed in as they appear on the cover, and then you can tell the program to file them as “Surname, Name” for classification purposes. Regrettably, not all the tags that you may find in your OPF file can be edited using this tool: some essential fields (e.g. the subject) are not available for editing, even when they are present in the EPUB metadata file. However, you are given the possibility of opening and editing this OPF file using the Wordpad-like simple editor provided, though you will need to be able to read and understand XML to do this. All changes performed using the program’s interface will be reflected in the OPF file when saved, and also the other way around (provided that the edited element also appears in the program’s interface).

You can also open and edit a book’s NCX file. Also known as the XML “Navigation Center” of the book, this file contains not only the table of contents but also any other element marked as navigable according to the DAISY standard (this standard was devised to help persons with disabilities to better move around an electronic book). The TOC can be viewed – but not changed – at any time, and the whole book can be opened and read by linking the corresponding button to your favorite e-book reader/viewer’s executable file.

Finally, this simple and straightforward metadata editor gives you the possibility to make some basic changes to various EPUB books at once using its batch capabilities. Thus, you can use the information in the “File as” fields to fill in the names of the two creators, or you can tell the program to auto-generate the “File as” information using the data in the Creator fields. Though not the most comprehensive metadata editor out there, this open-source application is simple enough to keep your EPUB collection neatly organized in a very simple and easy way.