This app is my secret weapon for supercharging my e-reader

It’s easy to own an e-reader and only buy books from its on-device store. In fact, companies like Amazon, who both sell the Kindle and operate the Kindle Store where you can purchase books for it, prefer things that way. You’ll find similar experiences in plenty of e-readers — it’s not unusual — but it doesn’t reflect what owning a book is like in real life.

If you get your books from anywhere other than one of these built-in stores, or you ever need to move your library from one e-reader to another, you’ll need to turn to software to help manage your collection. You can use apps like Adobe Digital Editions (you might already own digital books that use that system’s DRM) but Calibre is the standard, and it’s open-source to boot. Calibre can edit your books, convert them to other formats, read your books, and even load them onto your e-reader if it’s connected. Here are the basics to get you started so you can use Calibre to get books on your e-reader.

Calibre is open-source, and rough around the edges

The app can do a lot, obtusely

Calibre

Calibre is an eBook management app that can organize your library, convert books into other file types, and load books on to your e-reader.

Calibre has some of the handmade charm that you’ll find in open-source software in the sense that it’s less stylish and more utilitarian, but it’s capable of quite alot. The layout of the app should be familiar if you’re used to the layout of Microsoft’s productivity software. The top menu bar shows you the main things you can do in the app, like:

• Add books to your library /from folders, archived files, and more
• Edit the metadata of a book
• Convert books between different formats
• View and read books you have saved to your library
• Fetch news articles to load on your e-reader
• Get books to download to your device
• Export book from your Calibre library
• Delete books from your library

On top of those features, you can also download community-developed plugins to extend the utility of Calibre even further, if you need to make more serious changes to your books that the app doesn’t support out-of-the-box. In general, though, iTunes is the right visual reference for how Calibre works. And the beauty of the app is that it’s not designed to work with a specific e-reader, it’s supposed to be able to work with all of them.

How to add books to Calibre

Download the app and collect your files

To start, you’ll want to add books to your Calibre library. You can download Windows, macOS, or Linux versions of the app directly from Calibre’s website. Install it however you normally install an app on your computer. On a Mac, it’s as simple as dragging an executable into my Applications folder.

Then, once you’re ready to add books to your Calibre library:

1. Open Calibre.
2. Click on Add books to open your operating system’s file explorer and start selecting files to add.
3. Click on Open in the bottom right-hand corner.
4. Alternatively, select the drop-down menu for other ways to add books.

For an even simpler way to add books, you can also drag and drop ebook files directly into your open Calibre window to automatically add them to your library.

How to convert books in Calibre

Turn EPUB into AZW3 and much more

With your books uploaded, you can start converting them so they can be read on whatever device you need them to be read on. Calibre can convert files to a variety of different formats (provided your books are DRM-free), including EPUB, AZW3, PDF, MOBI and more. You can dig into the formatting when you convert if you want to make sure that everything looks correct, but at least in converting my small book collection, I haven’t found anything weird moving files to EPUB.

To start converting your own books:

1. Open Calibre.
2. Select one or multiple books.
3. Click on Convert books (you can select other conversion options from the drop-down menu).
4. Select the output file type from the right-hand drop-down menu.
5. Click on Okay in the bottom right-hand menu.

The book or books you selected will start to be converted by Calibre. Once they’re done, they should be available in your library, ready to be loaded on to whatever e-reader you want to move them to. You can also just read them directly in Calibre if you prefer that.

How to add books to your e-reader with Calibre

Connect over USB and start packing in books

Calibre is compatible with most if not all e-readers, though you might need to enable file transfers on your device or agree to let the app access your e-reader before you can actually start transferring books. Technically, if your e-reader can be mounted on your computer like a hard drive, you don’t need software to load it on there. Any old file can be dragged and dropped in there, but Calibre does give you a bit more control.

To add books to your e-reader:

1. Open Calibre.
2. Plug in your e-reader via USB.
3. Click Agree to let Calibre access your e-reader.
4. Select the book or books you want to add.
5. Click on Send to device.

At that point Calibre will start moving books to your e-reader and should let you know if there are any issues. Once the app is finished, your library is ported, and you can eject your e-reader from the dropdown menu next to “Send to device.”

Try to treat your ebooks like your personal library

You can own digital things too

Digital ownership is a mess, but if you’ve purchased an eBook and want to make it easier for you to read somewhere else, it should be within your right to store it somewhere else and convert it to a different format if you need to. Ultimately, that’s all Calibre does, and it makes it much easier to do than it would be otherwise.

If you’re considering switching to a new device for reading, say moving from a Kindle to a Kobo, Calibre is the simplest way to make that transition happen. If you’re interested in other e-readers, Pocket-lint has collected a list of some of the best options to consider.