DRM or No DRM?
Another crucial aspect of Calibre is the
ability to convert books, as we've seen. Indeed, this was the primary intention
of the software and it works incredibly well. By clicking on the book that you've
imported, you can select the Convert Books option.
To the left of the resultant window will be
an option to select the input. To the right, you can select the output format.
Kindle, for example, uses Mobi, so if you want to convert a book that you've
found on the web for use on a Kindle, you would select this option.
The window also lets you hardwire in some
information from the title, author, publisher, tags and so on. The list of
options running down the left-hand side of the screen also let you ensure the
conversion works well.
You can alter the look and feel, changing
the fonts and justification, for example. Heuristic processing scans the books
for common patterns and fixes them so it will unwrap lines or detect and mark
up unformatted chapters of delete blank lines between paragraphs.
You can set up the page, work with the
structure and auto-generate a table of contents. You can search and replace
text and look at the options for conversion (in the case of MOBI, selecting
whether the file type is new, old or both) and you can debug. When complete,
you tap 'OK' and the conversion is completed, ready to be exported to the
device of choice.
When
complete, you tap 'OK' and the conversion is completed, ready to be exported to
the device of choice.
Finally, you can remove digital rights
management. By doing this, you enable the book to be read on any device. Using
a PC to remove DRM for a Kindle, for example, you need to have Calibre and
Kindle installed on your computer and then download a plug-in called Apprentice
Alf (goo.gl/uzcXi).
Unzip Apprentice Alf and open the Calibre
folder. Launch Calibre and select 'Preferences'. Select 'Plug-ins' from the
window that opens and then select "load plug- in from file". Find the
Calibre folder from Apprentice Alf and open the DeDRM_calibre_plugin folder
within it. Look for the zip file DeDRM_plugin and select it before re-launching
Calibre.
Now any books that you buy for Kindle can
be stripped of DRM and used on other devices such as the Nook. All you have to
do is convert the Kindle ebook into the correct format for your book.
As you can see, Calibre is a very handy
tool and essential for anyone who loves reading but wants to make organization
of their books far easier. Calibre allows you to take control of your own
purchases and downloads, letting them be read on any device that you own for
full flexibility. Best of all, you do not need to pay a penny to use the
software, since it is freely available and open source. Book lovers just cannot
do without it.
What Can I Convert?
Calibre allows you to use a wide variety of
eBook formats. You can, for example, input files of the following types: CBZ,
CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, KF8, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF,
PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ.
You can output as: AZW3, EPUB, FB2, KF8,
OEB, UT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ.
Although you will notice that PDF is
included in the list of inputs, it is actually a horrible format to convert
from, since you will find that Calibre cannot support complex, multi- column
and image-based documents; you cannot extract vector images and tables nor
convert links and tables of contents. The developer of Calibre advises against
converting PDFs, although in version 0.9, outputting to PDF is better.
The
developer of Calibre advises against converting PDFs, although in version 0.9,
outputting to PDF is better.
Files can be converted to and from Amazon's
latest KF8 format using the AZW3 option, and there's support for Android phones
and tablets via the MTP file transfer protocol, which allows you to connect a
phone or tablet to a PC running Vista or later or to Linux and transfer files
from Calibre to the device.
Edit Metadata
When you load a book into Calibre, the
metadata may well be rather messy. In this case, you can edit it to tidy it up.
No matter which computer you're using, the same options are available to you
and we'll look at these from the top.
The title is an obvious one. You can change
this as well as the author name (the latter having a drop- down menu in case
you're inputting many books from the same writer). You can also add a series if
your book is part of one. In green, to the right of this data, will be the sort
data that will be used to manage your books. This, again, can be altered if you
wish. Finally, there's a number option so you can, for instance, tell Calibre
the placing of the book in a series.
Calibre also allows a single book entry to
have many different formats associated with it. Our example here shows that we
have the book in both an EPUB and a MOBI format. The latter has enabled us to
read the book on our Kindle. In the top right of the Edit Metadata window, you
can manage these formats. New formats can be added, existing formats can be
deleted and Calibre can set the metadata and cover for the book entry from the
metadata in one of the formats.
Calibre
also allows a single book entry to have many different formats associated with
it.
If you want to change the cover because
it's not what you're after or if one does not exist, then you can do so by
going to the Change Cover section and selecting Browse. The cover can be
removed and you can use the trim option to ensure the cover fits perfectly.
Covers can be downloaded too. Selecting this will perform a search on Google,
Amazon and the Open Library and when a match is found, it will display. This
makes for far easier sorting. Generate cover is a feature that you should use
only if you cannot find another cover. It will place the Calibre logo on the
cover, which at least looks better than having no cover at all.
Below these options are more chances to
refine your entry. There's a ratings option so that you can help to make life
easier for yourself when going back to your library to assess the value of each
of the books within it. There are tags that you can add to allow your searching
to be more tailored and there are dates too, not only for when it was published
but for when you added it. The latter is handy if you want to see which books
you have recently obtained and yet perhaps not read.
Finally, you can add the publisher, select
the language of the book and add some comments using the box to the right.
Clicking 'Download Metadata' looks through Google and Amazon.com to find
suitable data that it can automatically add to your book, which saves you
having to keep scouring websites yourself.
It
will place the Calibre logo on the cover, which at least looks better than
having no cover at all.
Calibre app for Android
You can also use the Calibre Companion app
for Android. Costing $3, it will allow you to use Wi-Fi to connect to Calibre
and move books to and from your device. You can browse books and sort them
using the various categories and then use a reader application (unfortunately
not Kindle) to read them.
Go to goo.gl/FEhO3 to download the app or
search for Calibre Companion in Google Play.
