Organizing and reading e-books with Calibre

Converting Books

The third button on the menu is for converting e-books. You can choose the conversion format from the list and set various parameters with the buttons on the left to control the complexity of the conversion process. Many of the settings for converting your books will be based on your own preferences and experience (Figure 6).

Figure 6: The form allows you to convert e-book formats, with numerous parameters to configure the process.

After you confirm your settings, the main window begins to show the conversion process visually. When it's done, the original, along with the converted copy, will appear in the directory with their respective file extensions to identify the formats. On the right of the Calibre main window, you can see both versions in their different formats, which you can then choose with a click. The conversion from EPUB [2] to MOBI [3] worked exceptionally well and without any error messages within seconds in my test.

The reading window, however, showed some significant differences between the two formats. The software did a better job with some of the document properties in EPUB format, perhaps because the heuristic rules worked out better. From a lack of some of the readers, however, I couldn't determine how the files might look on the respective hardware.

Searching

Calibre is able to search the entire web for books (Figure 7). You can use the title, author, or other keywords for the search. To start searching, click the globe icon and Fetch books .

Figure 7: With Calibre, you can search the Internet for analog and digital books.

Double-clicking a book opens it in the browser. The software can display normal print books as easily as e-books. You can also order the book through an online retailer and download it directly.

Searching for books for the first time can yield some overwhelming results. As always when searching over the Internet, the motto is "quality over quantity." In the case of Calibre, this means radically reducing the number of sources, or you end up with an untold numbers of hits on the same book from various vendors.