Ultimate Guide: Converting Your Digital Books Using Calibre

How to Convert eBooks with Calibre

Posted by Ada Wang on 5/4/2023 2:39:24 PM.

If you want to transfer the e-books to other devices or convert e-books to other format, just use the best ebook manager & converter— Calibre.Calibre is a freeware which can convert e-books from one format to another with ease.

Question 1 What input formats does Calibre support?

Calibre supports the following input formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT.

Question 2 What output formats does Calibre support?

The supported output formats include EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, SNB, TCR, TXT.

Step 1: Download & install Calibre .

Tips:

Step 2: After successfully installing the best ebook converter–Calibre , launch it.

This is the main interface of the Calibre ebook converter.

Step 3: Add your ebooks to library.

You can either drag and drop the books to the Calibre main interface or click “Add books” and then navigate to the folder stored your ebooks to add ebooks to Calibre. When you add a new book, it will appear at the top of the list of books.

A ebook converting window will pop, choose your Output format and set the output books, it’s easy and user-friendly.

The output is list all the book types, like ePUB,FBZ,HTMLZ,LIT,LRF,MOBI,PDB,PDF,TEXT etc

After configuring the conversion settings, click ‘OK’ to start the conversion process. The pop-up window will close and the conversion process will begin.

If you’re not paying close attention, you may not notice any immediate changes to the main window, and may be unsure when the conversion process will be finished.

To monitor the progress of the conversion, look at the bottom-right corner of the screen. You will see a ‘Jobs: 1‘ status, which indicates that the conversion job is in progress.”

When the conversion process is complete, the status will change to ‘Jobs: 0‘.

You may notice that there is now a section labeled ‘Formats: EPUB, PDF‘. These are the different file types for the converted book.

Step 5: To locate the converted files, click ‘Click to open‘. This will open the folder where the converted files are saved.”

Note:

If the the above notification pops up during the conversion, it means that book will be DRM protected. In this case, you will have to install calibre DRM removal plugins to strip DRM from the books. And then add those drm free books to calibre again to convert formats.

If you want drm-removing much easier, here I highly recommend a powerful calibre alternative – Epubor Ultimate -- all-in-one tool that combines drm removal with formats converter.

Download Epubor Ultimate for free

If you’ve downloaded Epubor Ultimate, read and get benefits from the following guides.

How to use Epubor Ultimate to remove ebook drm?

Kindle DRM Removal
Sony / Kobo / Google EPUB & PDF DRM Removal (ADE DRM Removal)
Nook DRM Removal

Pro step 6: send ebook to device with Calibre

Once the books has converted successfully, connect the device to your computer and right click the book. From there, hover over ‘Send to Device‘ and select ‘Send to Main Memory‘.

![author](https://www.epubor.com/images/uppic/1-22-2013 12-03-06 AM.png)

Ada Wang works for Epubor and writes articles for a collection of blogs such as ebookconverter.blogspot.com.

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20 Comments

Glen

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

12/28/2012 21:08:00

Garbage this software does absolutely nothing, drag and drop does not work, does not find anything other than the bs guide which does not even open

Epubor.Fors

Re:Glen

12/29/2012 00:37:49

If you meet trouble in using this freeware Calibre, you can try another software which is made by us, download it here: http://www.epubor.com/ultimate-download.htm

sucre

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

02/17/2013 15:41:49

really helpful (software plus article)

just one

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

08/4/2013 02:11:41

still one of the worst converters, but highly praised. The results archived mostly differ that much compared to the originals, I always wonder what crap poeple nowadays. If a converter can’t keep the textflow on mixed pages (single / multicolumn) which each second best worldprocesser is able to, the best thing to do is to better not mention it, since poeple get disappointed reading books forward beackward each 3 or 4 pages. And Calibre is one of the poorest ones if it comes to this discipline … still.

epubor.ada

Re:just one

08/5/2013 02:01:46

Hi, there

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hopefully you will find a much better solution.

Regards.

Nagraj.N

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

08/4/2013 10:19:31

Not able to read PDB file in Calibre nor convert it.
Thank you for your help.

epubor.ada

Re:Nagraj.N

08/5/2013 01:56:56

Hi, Nagraj

Does calibre show anything like “DRM protected” or other info?

If that PDB is purchased from eReader, it is likely to be DRM protected, which will have to be DRM stripped before the conversion.

Refer to this post for more details:
www.epubor.com/how-to-convert-pdb-to-pdf.html

kat

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

10/19/2013 00:27:07

hi….. i just downloaded some books from torrent but they will not load into my calibre. i have them on my desktop, drug them over to the kindle, but they don’t show up when i start it. how could i convert them? i have an older kindle and can’t find many books at my library.
thanks!

Jonny Greenwood

Re:kat

10/21/2013 01:59:51

What’s the format of your downloaded books?

Lucy

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

05/22/2014 13:45:59

Hello I converted files from pdf to mobi but they look weird on my kindle, the line ends in the middle of the screen, the spacing is alright two lines in a row and then there’s a huge space beneath them. It’s very uncomfortable to read this way, is there any optimal setting which I could use that would make the text appear as if on a page in a regular book?

cleverblonde

Re:How to convert ebooks with Calibre - The best e-book converter

08/9/2014 20:59:45

Calibre is an amazing piece of software, it is a powerful conversion tool that allows you complete control over the output of your book. That being said, I understand that some people may have trouble getting started with all the options in the conversion process. I suggest you check out the wealth of “How to’s” and “Tips and Tricks” online. Calibre’s site has a downloadable manual along with online step by step instructions, another site to check out is the MobileRead Forums. I was overwhelmed myself at first, however, I can assure you that if you put some time into learning the program you will come to appreciate how much it really kicks Arse! Btw, pdf’s are really difficult to convert correctly because the are basically an image file.

Dagrsen

Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre - The Best e-book Converter

12/16/2014 11:34:58

One must remember that Calibre is like a Swiss army knife. It’s for this reason that it gets the praise it receives. Yes, it does a great job of converting HTML/CSS to a number of other formats. The sky is the limit when there is some understanding of those two presentation languages. Yet another downside to conversions is that when handling PDF’s just about any other software, short of the uber expensive Acrobat, falls short of formatting & converting the Post script. Recent years Adobe has created an even deeper chasm due to the features it has added to the proprietary source code.

Robin

Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre - The Best e-book Converter

03/30/2015 08:45:12

Hi,
Me and my friend are working on a little project, Converter central, a tool for converting many different things such as units and clothes. We have recently been considering to add a similar feature as you are describing for converting PDFs and other eBook formats, but in a much more lightweight version with only the most basic options. I wanted to ask you in person, which formats do you feel are the most relevant to convert between? And is there any particular option you think is more useful? I respect totally if you don’t have time to give any feedback, and that’s fine, but if you do I’d love to hear your thoughts :)

Dora Stallworth

Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre - The Best e-book Converter

04/8/2015 09:33:33

I have tardive dystonia. I read a good deal. I enjoy boosting a productI use.
If you would like me to critique an item or book I would like the distraction.
Thank You
Dora

Loanemu.com

Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre - The Best e-book Converter

05/29/2015 08:18:09

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Quetesh

Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre - The Best e-book Converter

10/11/2016 20:16:03

Calibre is currently best SW for eBook conversion and management, but it is not for everyone and some advanced knowledge of eBook formats structure is needed.
If you can’t get expected result than it is not SW for you - you have to dive deep into settings to get better result, and i fixed some pretty messed up PDFs. In most cases bad result means that the source is s***, not that SW is bad.

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Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre - The Best e-book Converter

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Epubor

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09/20/2017 15:35:16

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Carol

Re:How to Convert eBooks with Calibre

10/1/2023 07:51:06

Uploaded ebook, images did
Not download, images did not convert. , how to convert to html for images to show

Epubor

Re:Carol

10/7/2023 10:45:54

Hello, thanks for your message

May I ask where you purchased and downloaded your ebooks?

Best regards,
Epubor Team

Tech Renaissance

Ultimate Guide: Converting Your Digital Books Using Calibre