David Coverston
by David Coverston
Membership Manager
Orlando Chapter STC
Do you want to read some books in the one of the new ebook formats, but don’t want to buy another machine? Do you like sticking your hands on the screen you are reading from? If you answered yes to the first question and no to the second question, then I have a solution for you: Calibre.
Calibre is an ebook reader from Kovid Goyal, and runs on Windows XP through 7, as well as Apples and Linux machines. But it is more than that. It is a free and open source e-book library management application. Calibre allows you to organize your ebook collection, as well as convert ebooks to other formats. It supports a number of ebook readers, including the Kindle, Sony, and Nook readers. Calibre provides:
- Ebook library management
- Ebook conversion
- Synchronizing to ebook reader devices
- Downloading news from the web and converting it into ebooks
Calibre is has three main parts: The graphical user interface, the command line (CLI) utilities, and the ebook reader.
The GUI is the typical way you will manage your book collection. All of Calibre’s functionality is available through the GUI, except for the command line utilities, of course. Click the Add books button to import your books into the library, then browse to the location where you store them, and click Add. Calibre imports them and displays the cover, along with information about the ebook. You can customize tags and covers, which is handy if the book doesn’t come with any.
Calibre can convert a number of formats, making this a very useful tool. It has a batch convert function as well. Supported formats include:
- Mobi
- Lit
- PRC
- ePub
- ODT
- HTML
- CBR
- CBZ
- RTF
- TXT
Calibre can also download news from a variety of sources. Hundreds of sources worldwide, including both free and paid content are supported. I haven’t used this function yet, so I can’t comment on how useful it might be. Actually, there are a lot of bells and whistles with this program that I want to explore.
Download Calibre from http://calibre-ebook.com/ . Double-click the .msi file to install it. At 42MB, it will take a few minutes to download and install.
Help for Calibre is available on the web site, which opens when you click the Help button. Calibre will automatically check to see if you have the latest version running, but doesn’t it automatically download and install new versions. I appreciate having that choice.
Calibre is not an editing tool. If you want to edit ebooks, you will need to use an editing tool. Stay tuned. Maybe that will be my next column.
David,
I just wanted to say how much I appreciated this article. My Dad just got a Kindle today, and I was helping him look into ebook conversion tools. This was exactly what I was looking for!