Thoughts on Calibre (ebook software)

March 3, 2013 Uncategorized

Today I thought I’d blog about Calibre, the free ebook manager that works with most ebook devices. It is surprisingly useful software, completely free, and yet many readers I speak to don’t know about it.

Calibre is free ebook software that manages your ebooks, allows you to share them if you choose, and best of all lets you link up your ereader to easily update and install books. It supports most ereaders on the market.

For the readers, load your ebooks in, and you can then convert them to any format you like. It also supports multiple devices so you could have a nook and Kindle on the same Calibre device.

I like Calibre because it means you don’t lose your ebooks if you change or upgrade your device, and even better you aren’t limited as you are with Amazon Kindle to the one install per computer (e.g. when there were four students in the house buying Amazon books in the house, but only one could read them on the PC…). It is also useful if you have two incompatible devices, and want to swap books between them.

For the writers? Well as well as the above, it is an extremely powerful ebook creation tool, and an easy way to turn your drafts or essays into ebooks easily if you want to work on them on the train. It can quickly and simply convert .rtf files into .mobi and .epub among other ebook formats, making it possible for anyone to create their own ebooks.

While you don’t have to share your books, some options, like editing covers in metadata, will automatically look online, which is annoying if you are using it to work on drafts and don’t want google to get wind of what you’re writing – or accidentally. I’ve chatted online to more than one fanfic writer who uses it to produce ebook versions of their fic for fans, and it is an easy way to create ebook versions of family records or stories for younger family members.

As an ebook manager it is very good, but for actually reading the ebooks I have to say I prefer Adobe Digital Editions and Mobipocket Reader to Calibre’s inbuilt display. That said, its real strength is the cross-platform support and you can use your e-reader of choice to read whatever books you have. It is also, as I mentioned, free.

For more information, click the link below to view Calibre’s own site:

http://www.calibre-ebook.com