Calibre Quick Start Guide
By: John Schember
Copyright © 2010, 2011, 2012 John Schember
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Installing calibre
The Main Library Window, aka The GUI
Common Tasks
Task 1: Organizing
Task 2: Conversion
2.1: Background
2.2: Why are there different e-book formats?
2.3: Conversion basics
2.4: More robust conversion
2.5: Limitations of conversion
2.6: PDBs: they are not all created equal
2.7: DRM: the bane of conversion
Task 3: Downloading News
Task 4: Interacting with e-book readers
4.1: Putting an e-book on your e-book reader
4.2: E-book reader optional configuration
Task 5: The e-book viewer
Where to get help
Introduction
Calibre is an open source e-book management tool. Simply put, calibre allows you to organize your e-book collection, convert e-books to various formats, and interact with your e-book reader, all in an intuitive and friendly manner. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, and 7 as well as Apple's OS X (and various flavors of Linux). It was created by Kovid Goyal, who still leads its development. A number people around the world, including myself, contribute to calibre's development. Throughout this guide and the online docs you will see 'calibre' instead of 'Calibre'. That's how Kovid named his program, so that's what we call it.
The purpose of calibre is to simplify management of your e-book collection. It does this in several ways:
Calibre organizes your collection as a database so you can find the book you want when you need it. Calibre easily handles any size of collection, with a variety of tools to manipulate e-book metadata title, author, rating, etc..
Calibre converts between multiple e-book formats.
Calibre supports a growing number of e-book readers, including Kindle, Sony, Nook, and many others.
Calibre is composed of three functional groups:
The graphical user interface (GUI). This is the typical mode of interacting with your database. All of calibre's principal functionality is available through the GUI.
A collection of command line (CLI) utilities for advanced calibre operations. For example, the command line tools are used by the ManyBooks service to convert on an as-needed basis.
An e-book reading application accessed from the GUI.
Installing calibre
The installation processes starts by downloading the installer for your operating system. Run the installer; when it finishes, launch calibre. You will now be greeted with a welcome wizard, which will help you initially configure calibre. The first page of the wizard allows you to change the storage location for your e-books.
If this is your first time using calibre, the storage location should not be an existing e-book collection, but a new empty directory for calibre's exclusive use. Calibre manages the e-books you give it in its own way. Think of the storage location directory as a black box. You don't do anything with it it manages the contents of the storage location directory for you. If you have used calibre in the past and are installing a new version, or if you have moved your library, then it's okay to indicate a directory with existing calibre library. calibre is smart enough to know to use an existing library when it sees one.
Click 'next' to be presented with an e-book reader selection. If your device is not listed, or if you intend to use more than one e-book reader, don't panic just choose 'default'. This selection provides some conversion optimization for formats requiring fixed sizes. Click 'next' and then 'finish'.
Congratulations, you've successfully installed and configured calibre! If at any time you want to run the welcome wizard again, click the downward facing arrow to the right of the Preferences button (looks like a set of three gears) in the top tool bar, then select 'Run welcome wizard'.
The Main Library Window, aka the GUI
Once the welcome wizard finishes you will be presented with the main application window. There are a few components I would like to bring to your attention. The central piece is the main book list. This takes up the majority of the window and displays the books in a table. Just above the main book list you will see the search area (more on this later)
and above that, the tool bar. When you connect a supported e-book reader a Reader icon will appear next to the Books icon in the tool bar. You can switch between viewing books in your Library and books on your e-book reader by clicking on their respective icons.
The panel along the right of the window shows details about the currently selected book, including its cover. If you double click anywhere in the detail area (including on the book cover) another window will open exposing more information about the book.
At the bottom right of the window there are three icons and the word Jobs:
The curved arrow activates the cover flow view. Cover flow displays the book covers in a fashion similar to how a juke box lays out albums. The selected book is in the center while the neighboring covers are shown at an angle. You can navigate though the book covers with the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. Click the curved arrow icon again to hide the cover flow view.