watervole | Computer software for e-books. I love Calibre!

I love my e-book reader. It's a Sony PRS T1 and it works very well for me. However the software that comes with it for using on your computer is atrocious. It works well enough when you only have 10 or 20 books, but when you have more than 100 it simply can't cope.

It's alphabetical sorting is flawed. It has no search facility. It has no way of correcting faulty data. I can't change the covers on books. There is no way of checking whether I have the same books on the reader as I have on the computer. It also has a bug in the software that means it tries to autosync everytime I plug in my e-book reader to charge. In short, it's a horrible piece of software and quite stressful to use.

I decided to try using Calibre instead. I hit some initial problems. If you use Chrome, you can't get Calibre to function properly after downloading it, you just get an error message. This can be resolved by using Internet Explorer to download Calibre – that's the only thing I've used Internet Explorer for this whole year.

Getting it to work with the Sony e-book reader presented some initial problems as well. Fortunately, there's a good forum for Calibre and people there are very helpful.

The solution is firstly to disable the Sony e-book reader software for the computer by changing the name of it to something else – this stops it automatically loading when an e-book reader is connected.
Secondly, always connect the ebook reader BEFORE starting Calibre. Give it about a minute to convince it that it really can't find the Sony computer programme, and then it will work happily with Calibre.

This may sound like effort, but it's worth it. Calibre does everything that the Sony software cannot. It's also easy to use and has a wonderfully clear and short user manual. It's helping me to enjoy all my ebooks all over again. I don't have lots of books with a blank cover any more (and no text to say what the title is...). I can sort and easily find books. I can get metadata from Amazon and Google books. 'Alfre' the author of Idylls of the King has now been corrected to 'Alfred, Lord Tennyson'. Robert A. Heinlein is now one author instead of three. I have covers for my fan novels. I can delete books I don't want. I can compare what I have on my reader and computer without writing out a list by hand...

Try Calibre - you'll love it!

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That's interesting. When I bought my ebook reader I was told not to use the software, so I wondered just what was so bad about it.

The thing I like about Calibre is that it works on Windows and was in the Ubuntu repository, so I can use it on either computer.

I tried Calibre, but I found two things frustrating about it:
1) the EPUB creation was less than desirable (I can't remember exactly what was wrong with it... possibly that it couldn't combine multiple HTML files (e.g. chapters) into one EPUB file).
2) One can only save/export books by author, not anything else. Since I wanted to use my ebook reader to read fanfic as well as more mainstream works, and I prefer to organize fanfic by fandom rather than by author, I didn't like the way Calibre did it.

But me being a software engineer, I ended up rolling my own solution, which had an initial high level of effort, but after I got it all working, it's very easy to add new books or fanfic, and easy to sync with the ebook.

Though I haven't used my ebook reader for a while, because I am having a lot of fun listening to audiobooks/podfic/radio-plays on my mp3 player while doing crochet.

1) I've never had problems making ePubs, but Sigil is a good way to combine files into an ebook, which Calibre can handle.

2) You could try the tags features and the tag browers. I find that extremely helpful for grouping books on a subject with unrelated authors, such as all my RPG books have a tag for the system - SR4, D&D and so on, and i can easily convert, save, sent to device etc on the books associated by a tag.

I really do not want to go to the effort of putting thousands of ebooks (current count, 1105) and fanfic (current count, 2098) into Calibre by hand. I am quite content with the system I have.

Sounds like Sigil might solve a question I have about how to put morris dance notation into my ebook. I'll have to go and look and see if it's idiot proof (I'd only want to use it for the one thing, so don't want a big learning curve)

Gulp. That looks like it has lots of useful things, but looks like more than I'm capable of learning while I have tennis elbow. I'm using voice dictation software for most things at the moment (like this entry).
Is it a program you use regularly?
If I were to give you the files, could you put them into EPUB format for me?

It's something I've done only a very little with - fixing broken conversions (all text centred, ugh) rather then create whole books, but I can have a go if you wish; probably be a weekend when I get a chance to have a proper go.

If you have a system, stick with it definitely.

Thanks, there's no immediate rush. What I want to do is to take the PDFs of the dances on this website, and put them all into one file so that I can read them easily on my e-book reader.I've got them all printed off and and in a folder, but it's getting very heavy to carry around when I have tennis elbow.

http://anonymousmorris.co.uk/dances/dances.html

I use Calibre (Firefox and a Kindle) and I've had no problems at all. I can plug the Kindle in, unplug it, do it again, in any order. Maybe you need to uninstall the Sony software (although it may do other things you want).

You should alo try: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Other-Christmas-Carol-ebook/dp/B006GPK4YU/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1322818899&sr=1-3 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Other-Christmas-Carol-ebook/dp/B006GPK4YU/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1322818899&sr=1-3)

I read part of your book when you asked me to test whether it worked on the Sony, but in all honesty, it didn't grab me.

You can't post that! ;-)

Fair enough.

I did self-publish it, because no publisher would get past the first part. It is a book that changes tone half-way through.

I had no trouble using Calibre to organise the books on my e-reader - I don't recall having to disable software. Agree with you about the convenience of having proper covers to identify books - and I am having fun creating covers for the fanfic on mine (and, in some cases, the Guttenberg texts).

Agree that it's a useful program.

Me too. Calibre + Firefox and Kindle. It works a treat. I've also been able to convert some pre-kindle ebooks from pdf to mobi to read on my kindle. I have upwards of 380 books on it now and still no problems.

I agree, I found Calibre fantastic when I used my ebook reader. I've since moved on to an iPad, which doesn't need it as Apple's software is fine. For once.

I don't like the Kindle software, it's not flexible enough, and will buy an Apple product (which uses EPUB) for preference, which is not like me.

The Sony software is particularly aggressive about seizing control, hence the need to suppress it.

I use and adore Calibre (i have never had a problem downloading it with Chrome)

I currently use it with my iPad - it converts and sends the books to iTunes, to be loaded by the standard mechanism. It works beautifully for me.

Before that I had a Sony ebook reader, I had no problems with the Sony software because I never installed it, having had an Cybook Bookeen before (which, sadly, didn't stand up well to being sat on), so i second the advice to simply uninstall the Sony software entirely if you can.

Computer software for e-books. I love Calibre!

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Calibre + iPad