Moving "My Digital Editions" folder

Question

I am trying to move the "My Digital Editions" folder from the default location under "My Documents". When I do so, I have to add my ebooks back to the library (which is OK), but Digital Editions also then adds a "My Digital Editions" folder with a manifest.xml file back under "My Documents".
Is there anyway to change the default location of this "My Digital Editions" folder?

Answer 1

Kudos to robervanbregt (#33) for providing the symbolic link pointer. I just want to suggest to all the frustrated people above that symbolic links can provide users with a tremendous amount of flexibility in where they store their stuff and can help with all the problems described above, and more, so people shouldn't ignore them just because they sound a bit tricky in facty they aren't too hard to manage at all.
For mac users there is a good little utility called SymbolicLinker that makes it really easy to create symbolic links with just a right click on the folder name. I recommend it. Something like symbolic links have been in windows since Vista - see #28 from Anders for the manual instructions; there is at least one tool (Symlinker) out there that attempts to make it easier, but I've never used it so windows users may have to shop around and experiment until they get one that they like.
Anyway, with symbolic links you can place your Digital Editions folder anywhere you like - secondar hard drive, usb drive, even on a network drive, or in your Dropbox folder. You will still need a symlink file sitting within your Documents folder called "Digital Editions" on a mac (or "My Digital Editions" on windows). That symlink file is tiny, and you can forget about it once you've put it in place.
So this helps if all you want to do is store your books and the index on perhaps a secondary harddrive, or a usb drive, or in Dropbox. However it seems that some people want to hide the Digital Editions folder away somewhere and file their actual books somewhere else. That can be done.
When you download a non-DMR ePub, download it straight to its final destination, and use the add item command in ADE. The file will stay exactly where you put it. No problem.
If you've bought a DRM-protected file, it will appear in the form of a .acsm file that ADE will run and download the ePub file, which will end up in the digital editions folder (which as we've already seen, can be placed anywhere on your system by using a symbolic link). However if you want to go one step further and put your ePub in a separate folder somewhere else, that does need a manual step. Copy the ePub and put the copy where you want it to be finally. This could take all of ten seconds, but if you want to make it quicker, create another symbolic link to the final destination of the file and place it inside the Digital Editions folder. Then you don't have to spend time navigating to the final destination: just copy the file, click on the link and paste the file. Then add the book to your library selecting the version in the new location, and delete the version in the old (Digital Editions) location. Not too hard, unless you download more than a few DRM books a day. (Note you can select multiple books at one time to add them, but I haven't found a way to delete them in a batch.)
True, users shouldn't have to do stuff like this - applications should be designed to meet users' needs, and ADE falls short in this area, as well as in others. But it's not actually a big deal to set up a manageable alternative system that allows you full choice where to put things. And right now I don't know of another application that can help me manage both DRM and non-DRM files the way I want to.
My approach is: on my desktop computer (where I usually buy things) I put everything in a single folder on Dropbox, symlinked from the mandatory Document folder location. I use that Dropbox folder also as my download folder for non-DRM files, so everything is together. On my laptop, I also use ATE but without symlinking to dropbox - I use the default folder location so that the manifest.xml files don't get mixed up, as I have a different but overlapping set of books in each library. However there are no actual books in the default folder on my laptop, they all stay in the Dropbox folder, of course.  This also makes adding a book to Aldiko in my Android very easy. I just navigate to the dropbox folder from the Aldiko file function, go to my digital editions folder and select the file for import.
BTW What's this in the ADE help page about using a USB drive or emailing the file to yourself?  Does anyone actually do that in the 21st century?