The popularity of eBooks is increasing and you may be amassing a digital library on your PC perhaps for desktop perusal or for transferral over to a dedicated eReader. At the moment the eBook market is slightly fragmented with competing formats and platforms making it difficult to keep a consistent, compatible collection together. This is where Calibre steps in, allowing you to take control of your eBooks and not only manage them effectively, but also alter, edit, read and create them, as well as getting them onto your eReader of choice.
Calibre is developed as an open source project which is definitely a benefit when it comes to being flexible. It is able to turn text documents and other sources into common eBook formats, which will allow you to build your own readable catalogue of books. You can easily point the software at your current collection by accessing the setup wizard, which will run automatically the first time you use the software and it will work in tandem with any other program, making alterations to your collection as you go along.
The layout of the Calibre software is relatively simple to understand. Books are listed with information about release date, author and publisher arranged sensibly, while highlighting a particular volume will allow you to see a larger amount of information on the right of the screen. If you want to replace this generic setup with something a little more modern, you can click the cover browser icon located in the bottom right of the Calibre interface and this will bring up the cover art for each of the titles in your collection. This apes something like iTunes and will definitely appeal to those who like a simplified, visually engaging style of user interface.
The conversion capability of Calibre is one of the main reasons for its worthiness as a piece of eBook software. You can swap texts between common formats and in most tests it is smoother and with better results than other similar utilities. Everything from PDF to EPUB files can be handled via the integrated reader, which is convenient, as is the ability to pull in news from your favourite sources and convert it to an eBook format.
Widespread software support is great, but what most eBook fans will be looking for its hardware compatibility for their Kindle or Nook. A decent selection of eReaders are supported and there is an extensive list online, but you can also save direct to an USB memory stick, which is an added convenience for sharing titles you have created. As well as supporting standalone readers, the Calibre software is also compatible with smartphones running Android and the Apple iPhone and iPad.
The main point at which Calibre falls from its pedestal is speed of operation. It is a bit of a resource hog, particularly if you are running it on an older PC or a netbook with limited memory and processing power. It is relatively stable, although freezing is not completely uncommon, but these are the sacrifices you must make for what is otherwise an exemplary program.