A few years ago, we were in the process of moving several states away. I took a long look at the endless piles of books, bookcases, and a garage full of boxes of books. I had so many books that there was no room under the bed, I had no space on my bedside table, and even had a few stacks (1800’s library style) scattered around the floors. I wondered if it was time to reassess my book collection.

Going Digital

I’d spent way too much money on CD’s since high school and finally realized it was time to rip my collection and put it on an iPod. I’m a late-adopter when it comes to digital media so it was a tough call to even consider digital books. I love the feel of a paper book in my hands. I love that I can toss and turn on a couch or a bed to read from any position. I like being able to write in the margins and use bookmarks (my Spock bookmark being my favorite).

I have to give credit to Amazon’s Kindle for making it possible for me to like eReading. Holding the 2nd generation Kindle in my hands with e-Ink wasn’t the same as holding a book but it was good enough. I love having an entire library of books in my hand. I liked the weight. I liked the screen. I liked that it sync’d my bookmarks across my phone and Kindle.

So I chose to go digital with my books.

In truth, the real deciding factor was a question of “weight.” The shipping company we used to move our stuff charged by the pound. Guess what weighed the most of nearly all our possessions?

Calibre eBook Manager

So now I had all of these eBooks and some I wanted to read on my Kindle, others on my iPad using Apple’s iBook, and still others I wanted to view right on my laptop. Little did I know that the eBook formats were orders of magnitude more confusing than simple paperback or hardbacks.

Enter Calibre, a free downloadable app for Mac and Windows that not only catalogs and organizes your eBooks but also can convert books to nearly any format possible. You can download it here: Calibre Download

Best Calibre Features

Three of my favorite Calibre features are:

Format Conversion
Calibre can convert to and from nearly any eBook format including ePub, Mobi, PDF, Rich Text, and even AWS. I’ve been able to convert all formats back and forth in a matter of seconds. Super handy when you want to read a book on a different device than the format you have. I’ve also been able to convert my own writing work into eBooks using Calibre.

Library Metadata
Calibre can manage your eBook file’s metadata like book covers, title, author, publisher, series information, summary, reviews & ratings, and published date. It’s great to see your book titles right in your favorite reader and Calibre makes it easy to do this. There’s even an automated metadata tool that will download the information right off the Internet for you. Works great.

Kindle Side-Loading
One of my favorite features is the ability for Calibre to recognize when my Kindle is attached. It shows as a device in the Calibre menu and you can choose any books in your Calibre library to sync to your Kindle device for reading. Calibre also supports the Amazon email loading option as well making it very easy to get books onto your Kindle in the correct format.

I love Calibre and honestly can’t believe it’s free. It’s a tremendous value. Calibre’s author does take donations though and I’ve donated several times. I’d pay $50+ dollars for an application this useful.