Discussion on:

Calibre: A free, open source ebook management solution that truly delivers

I didn't have room for this in the article, but you can also use Calibre to convert a document from one format to another. For example, if you have a non-copyright DRM-free or public domain book in ePub format and you want to convert it to .mobi format and send it to your Kindle, Calibre will assist you in this process. It is pretty straight forward. Add your .epub document to the Calbire library, right click on the title and select Convert Books from the pop-up menu. A submenu with options will come up, they're pretty self-explanatory. You can select Convert Individually or Bulk Convert. Select Convert Individually and a new screen will come up and you can select a bunch of options to fine-tune the output. Select your options (the defaults will generally be fine, you'll want to change the output format to your desired destination format) and click OK. You can also convert from .mobi to .epub and from and to about a dozen other formats. It is very flexible and powerful.

Once the conversion is done, send it either to your Kindle address and then log into your Kindle account on Amazon to send it to your device - or e-mail it or copy it via USB to your non-Kindle device as described above. (You can also transfer via USB to a Kindle, bypassing sending the document(s) to Amazon's servers first and the step to send it from Amazon to your device wirelessly).

The thing I like is that it opens up your device to allow you to populate it with content you control more directly. That is a huge limitation with Kindle as a device or an app. It gives you more granular control over what is in your library and where you obtain that content. This is a user-empowering application, and I think we need more ladders that help users climb over the boundaries of the walled gardens their device and platform manufacturers have erected. I think Calibre is a great triumph for the concepts of fair-use.

Thanks for the tip to this application. I do some reading on Android (phone) and I have wanted to be able to get more things in as epubs. Project Gutenberg has a lot of books from around a hundred years ago that I still want to read. they usually come in as plain text or HTML. Use of an epub is more convenient on the reader I have installed. I will definitly plan in installing Calibra.

More articles like this please.

Time is behind a paywall - so the magazine I created above actually had excerpts/summaries of the actual articles but did not offer the full article - this is an example of the kind of little frustrations you might encounter with Calibre. It isn't going to help you get a subscription for free if the online site requires authentication - and it isn't going to be a match for digital subscriptions that add enhanced or interactive features to their online editions. For what it offers to do, though - it is the best solution I've been able to find.

I use Calibre to organize pdfs, word documents, and books on my computer and from there my ereader (a nook in my case). Works very well. If you download a freebook, it helps search for covers and summary information. Excellent program. I don't use it much as an ereader, but have used the conversion functions. My experience with both operations is as described in this article.

I haven't tried this method of content delivery yet. Would Calibre be a good tool to get my feet wet, or does it assume the user is familiar with e-published content and knows the basics?

While Calibre is a great tool for the user experienced with eDocument formats - it does require some basic familiarity with the various formats and where and when they are appropriate depending on your e-reader platform of choice. It assumes you understand the difference between ePub, Mobi and other digital document formats. My gut feeling is that it might be a little overwhelming if you're just starting to expose yourself to the world of eReading - it is a pretty powerful tool.

On the other hand, if you're involved in a technical industry like I.T. and you understand the basic concepts of file formats and compatibility - it shouldn't take you a lot of effort to get up to speed, and Calibre does offer all of the basics that will allow you to download, organize, convert and read a variety of inexpensive e-format documents for a variety of digital devices - plus it is a full fledged eReader platform for your desktop PC. You could inexpensively get your feet wet, copy documents to your Android or iPhone handset and save some money while deciding if your usage justified buying a Kindle, Nook or tablet.

Provided that you're technically adept - it isn't the most complex application platform to jump into.

I'd suggest you give it a try, and if you have any questions, go ahead and post here and I'll do what I can to help you out.

For some reason, I just received the e-mail alert this morning regarding your post of ten days ago. Any chance you could elaborate on the differences between the file formats, or point me toward a good resource?

This will be strictly a desktop PC experiment; I don't have an Android or iPhone, and I suspect the start-up costs for those will be more than purchasing one of the $79 Kindle currently being advertised.

If you plan on reading on a Kindle - that solves a big part of the problem. You'll be using the .mobi format if you create, convert or transfer documents from Calibre to your Kindle. Kindle uses a format called .azw, which is a modified .mobi format.

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI

As far as I can tell, the details are all technical and probably transparent to the end user.

.epub is the most common OPEN format for eBooks. ePub can support DRM encrypted books (you have to enter the credit number you used to purchase the book in order to unlock it, in every case I've encountered). Barnes & Nobel has been behind ePub since the start. Kindle does not support ePub as of this time.

Almost every platform out there supports epub *except* the Kindle. You can read more at the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats

With all that said, there is a reason why Kindle is the dominant reader and why Kindle can ignore the growing momentum behind .ePub (at least, at the present time).

Amazon will allow you to send .PDF documents to your Kindle via .usb, WiFi or Whispernet (depending on which is applicable). But .PDF doesn't publish as well as you would hope on most Kindle devices. I've got a Kindle DX (the big ol' honkin' sized one) and it is still difficult to manage PDF documents on it. You can't resize the font and pages don't reformat right when you rotate from portrait to landscape and there are other inconveniences. I had a couple of tech books that included digital versions on .PDF. I sent them to my Kindle and found them nearly unusable. Best case scenario, it is far less enjoyable and far more limited to read a PDF format document on a Kindle, and Amazon only officially supports Kindle .azw or PDF at this time. You're better off in many cases converting from .PDF to .mobi to send and read on your Kindle device (remember, .azw and .mobi are interchangeable. .AZW is Kindle's version of .mobi.)

Confused yet? Don't worry, once you get a device, set up Calibre, and start sending files around, it'll make sense to you in no time. It doesn't matter much if you go with a Nook, Kindle or most other brands of eReaders - Calibre should be able to help you get documents to the device from alternate sources. Basically, if you're going to go with some other brand than Kindle or Nook, do your research before you buy.

I swap a lot of books with my father, and he haunts the used book stores for bargains for us. If he ever kicks off, I probably go digital within a year. Until then, I suspect we'll continue to kill trees.