I hope, this is the right forum to post my question here:
I used to use Calibre for many, many years just for converting the files for my e-reader and afterwards deleted the file from Calibre. Since the amount of my ebooks is steadily increasing I started nearly a year ago to use Calibre as an ebook-management-tool as well and I really love it.
Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages. I mainly use the epub-and mobi-format and I really dislike the azw-format as it tends to regularly freezes my reader. Due to another issue I converted each ebook into an additional rtf-file as well, but I detected, that in some novels the converting-process deleted all paragraphs.
To keep a long story short: Currently I store each novel in 4 formats (epub, mobi, rtf, doc) and I'd like to reduce the amount as the time for backups and the needed storage space increases considerably, too.
So here comes my question: Is there anybody here who uses Calibre as well and how many and which formats do you prefer? Do you happen to have problems with Calibre (ebook-file broken or something like that)?
Hi Kaissa, a while ago I used calibre to convert azw, mobi, rtf, pdf and occasional doc and similar to epub. That was during a time when several ebook stores closed, so I needed to save my purchases to my own device. I chose to only convert to epub since there are more apps for this format both for Apple devices and in case you use some of the pc platforms. I was also afraid that Amazon was going to ’close’ so I began to back up these ebooks as well, converted to epub. I have an external harddrive which I use as my digital library (1TB). I have thousands of books on that harddrive and I have only filled a couple of percent of this. I cannot recall any particular issue with converting, except that pdf files do not convert well, and DRMd files can be a problem.
Hi Maia, thank you so much for explaining how you are handling Calibre and telling me about your experiences with it!
Maybe it's little bit paranoid, but I am really worried about losing just one of my precious ebooks due to a computer bug. I thought storing different formats would minimize the risk, but didn't consider the possible disadvantages (quick increasing storage space required and time-consuming backups).
Currently I think about storing only epub- and mobi-formats. Even if one of them "develops" a bug, then there always would be the other one. To hold 4 formats available is kind of exaggerated, isn't it?
Thanks again, I really appreciate your view on this.