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How Calibre can help authors organize their research and convert their books before uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

author calibre

I love Calibre. I love it so much I wrote a book on it. As an author, what’s not to like? It’s free. I should probably say that again. It’s free (very important for the cash strapped author). It can do so much like organizing your books, it is an ebook converter and you can read books on it and did I mention it’s free? Calibre is a powerful tool in an author’s arsenal. It can save you time in more than one way.

If you have found this article you are probably an author or know someone who is and you want to know how the software can help you so I’m going to break this down into two sections, ebook organization and converting ebooks.

Ebook organization

Say you have 50 ebooks and 50 paperbacks that you simply must have to research your book. Your house is also rammed to the rafters and you only have a small corridor leading through your house where you navigate piles of books threatening to topple like several mini versions of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You could find the books you need but it would take a few days, a hat with a torch on it, some provisions and possibly a bag of breadcrumbs so you can find your way out again.

No fear, this is all in the past. While you are researching your book, catalog every book you need into Calibre. This goes for ebooks and paperbacks you own but it could also include books you don’t own but you find. For example, if you find an article and you can’t download it why not catalog it and put the link to it in the description. If you saw the book in a second-hand bookshop, type in the description where you saw it so you don’t forget. Voila, when you are searching for it in Calibre you only have to look in the description for the address or click in the description to take you to the article you need on the web.

Calibre is easy to use but if you run into trouble then please check out my ebook or paperback A Simpler Guide to Calibre: How to organize, edit and convert your eBooks using free software for readers, writers, students and researchers for any eReader.

Converting ebooks

I use Calibre to convert ebooks for research and to convert my ebooks for upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

The two ways I convert for research are to change the articles I find to an easy-read format (converting from PDF to MOBI means that I can alter the text size for more comfortable reading) and I also download several blogs using the news gathering feature and then send them to my Kindle as ebooks in my nattily titled Writerly News edition. The first is more specific for research for books I am writing at a given moment and the second more for keeping me in touch with the author/publishing world.

The other reason I use the ebook converter side to Calibre is for uploading to KDP. I have tried uploading a Word file directly but KDP mangles the formatting. The resulting Kindle ebook ignores the styles I painstakingly created and sticks its nose up at other little formatting tricks I spend hours over to give the book a more premium feel. So what do I do? I add the docx file to Calibre. I convert the docx to MOBI and then I export on to my hard drive for uploading to KDP. Simple.

Please stay tuned for other ways to get the most out of Calibre.

Thanks for dropping by.

Final - CALIBRE EBOOKNow for the obligatory mention of my relevant book:

A Simpler Guide to Calibre: How to organize, edit and convert your eBooks using free software for readers, writers, students and researchers for any eReader.

Buy from Amazon:

eBook | Paperback

In countries where Kindle Match is available the Kindle eBook is free with the purchase of the paperback. Please see Amazon terms and conditions for their Kindle Match program.

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