Whether you own the top-selling Amazon Kindle or any other ereader, calibre is an amazing book management software you can use. Since its launch in August 2009, about 829,548 users have downloaded this organizational software. It’s cool because every morning you can get the New York Times and The Onion for example. Calibre pulls them in and then coverts them to a format readable in your ebook reader. It is perfect for that hour-long commute.
Specifically, Calibre currently supports:
Amazon Kindle 1/2/DX
Sony Reader PRS 300/500/505/600/700/900
Barnes & Noble Nook
Cybook Gen 3/Opus
Longshine ShineBook
Ectaco Jetbook
BeBook/BeBook Mini
Irex Illiad/DR1000
Foxit eSlick
iPhone
Various Android phones
You can also use the “save to disk” function with any other ereader that exports itself as a USB disk.
In addition to helping you keep track and organize your books, it also lets you get news from many websites, convert them into the correct format for your ereader, and then automatically transfers the file. Right now, the beta version of Calibre supports the Kindle DX, but for others ereaders the regular version works fine. You can get the beta version at http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/downloads/betas/. Just beware however, that this version has all of the risks that beta builds usually carry.
Calibre supports the conversion of several input and output formats. It can covert the following list to every output format.
Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC**, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT
Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, TCR, TXT
** PRC is a generic format; Calibre supports PRC files with TextRead and MOBIBook headers
The best formats to convert are LIT, MOBI, EPUB, HTML, PRC, RTF, PDB, TXT, PDF
While EPUB is listed under the best formats to convert, you should be aware of this: because most purchased EPUB books have DRM, Calibre won’t open them. You can still use Calibre however, to store and transfer these books to your ereader. In order to do this, you must authorize your device on a Windows machine using Adobe Digital Editions. Once you do this, EPUB books transferred using Calibre will work just fine.
Calibre is under constant development by the author, and you can donate cash to offer a way to say thanks. If you want to have a feature added to calibre, you can either “create a patch by hacking on Calibre and send it to the author for review” or open a ticket on the Calibre website. It is definitely worth checking out and for the cost (free) there is nothing to lose. Instead, you’ll simply be making your Kindle or Nook a more accessible gadget.