I only recently got my first eReader (Amazon’s Kindle) after watching the market for quite a while. One thing that made me hesitant to choose one model was incompatibilities with book formats across devices and other restrictions and features that seemed to trade off. Of course, we could just stick to reading paperback or hardcover books (for all of their technical features) but having many books portable and accessible has already proven worth the cost to me.
Calibre is an ebook management software package and its functions resolve a lot of the concerns from jumping in with one brand. For example, being able to convert from the .epub format to the .mobi format and vice versa allows you to buy ebooks from more places than just where you bought your eReader.
Calibre is available on Windows (installed or portable), Mac OS X, and Linux. It acts as a full ebook management software, like the iTunes for your eBooks, organizing your library and allowing you to search, sort, or tag as you would like. It also facilitates converting eBooks between formats and sending those books to your devices. It also has a “news gathering” aspect to it that compiles a day’s headlines into an ebook and sends it to your device. This could make your eReader an even more perfect companion to your daily commute.
Calibre also includes its own eReader software, allowing you to preview and read your ebooks. Additionally, Calibre facilitates searching for ebooks across multiple vendors and returning the best price in its results.
For a full walkthrough of Calibre’s features, you can watch this video based on version 0.6, though version 0.8.36 just came out a few days ago.
For eReader owners, I highly recommend using the free Calibre software as the perfect complement to your device.