Calibre – e-book Management Software

Calibre is an open source complete e-library solution. It offers library management, format conversion, news feeds to ebook conversion as well as e-book reader sync features.

Calibre is primarily an e-book cataloging program. It manages your e-book collection for you. It’s designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e. a single entry in the database that may correspond to ebooks in several formats. It also supports conversion from a dozen different e-book formats to LRF and EPUB. A graphical interface to the conversion software can be accessed easily by just clicking the “Convert E-books” button.

Calibre has a modular device driver design that makes adding support for different e-reader devices easy. Syncing supports updating metadata on the device from metadata in the library and the creation of collections on the device based on the tags defined in the library view. If an book has more than one format available, Calibre automatically chooses the best format when uploading to the device.

Calibre can automatically fetch news from a number of websites/RSS feeds, format the news into a e-book and upload to a connected device. There is support for generating LRF/EPUB e-books. The e-books include the *full* versions of the articles, not just the summaries.

Calibre has also a built-in e-book viewer that can display all the major e-book formats.

Key Features

• Content server – allows you to access your Calibre libraries and read books directly in a browser on your favorite mobile phone or tablet device.
• e-book editor capable of editing books in the EPUB and AZW3 (Kindle) formats, with many powerful tools and features. The editor shows you the HTML and CSS that is used internally inside the book files, with a live preview that updates as you make changes. It also contains various automated tools to perform common cleanup and fixing tasks.
• Library management:
  • Designed around the concept of the logical book.
  • Sort books by:
    • Title.
    • Author.
    • Date.
    • Publisher.
    • Rating.
    • Size.
    • Series.
  • Supports extra searchale metadata:
    • Tags.
    • Comments.
• Supports the conversion of many input formats to many output formats.
• Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT.
• Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, SNB, TCR, TXT.
• Syncing to e-book reader devices.
• Fetch news from websites and RSS fees:
  • Over 300 hundreds news sources.
  • Plugin based.
• Viewer:
  • Displays all major ebook formats.
  • Table of Contents.
  • Full screen mode.
  • Bookmarks.
  • CSS.
  • Reference mode.
  • Printing.
  • Searching.
  • Dictionary lookup.
  • Copying test and images.
  • Customization of rendering.
  • Embedded fonts.
  • Highly customizable.
• Grid view of book covers.
• Virtual libraries.
• Conversion of of all e-book formats to Microsoft Word documents. Supports conversion of text styles, images, lists, tables, embedded fonts, etc.
• Full support for font embedding.
• Easy to use tool to edit the Table of Contents.
• Tool to upgrade books from EPUB 2 to EPUB 3.
• Support for high resolution (Retina screens).
• Tool to easily export and import all Calibre data — books, settings and plugins.
• Reports tool that shows a summary of files, images, words, characters and styles used in the book.
• Random cover generation algorithm, which generates covers using many different color schemes and cover styles.
• Support for installing different icon themes.

Website: calibre-ebook.com
Support: User Manual
Developer: Calibre Team
License: GNU GPL v3

Calibre is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Related Software

Read our verdict in the software roundup.

Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category. This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form.