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Frequently Asked Questions

E-book Format Conversion

What formats does calibre support conversion to/from?

calibre supports the conversion of many input formats to many output formats. It can convert every input format in the following list, to every output format.

Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC**, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT

Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, TCR, TXT

** PRC is a generic format, calibre supports PRC files with TextRead and MOBIBook headers

What are the best source formats to convert?

In order of decreasing preference: LIT, MOBI, EPUB, HTML, PRC, RTF, PDB, TXT, PDF

Why does the PDF conversion lose some images/tables?

The PDF conversion tries to extract the text and images from the PDF file and convert them to and HTML based ebook. Some PDF files have images in a format that cannot be extracted (vector images). All tables are also represented as vector diagrams, thus they cannot be extracted.

How do I convert a collection of HTML files in a specific order?

In order to convert a collection of HTML files in a specific oder, you have to create a table of contents file. That is, another HTML file that contains links to all the other files in the desired order. Such a file looks like:

<html>
   <body>
     <h1>Table of Contents</h1>
     <p style="text-indent:0pt">
        <a href="file1.html">First File</a><br/>
        <a href="file2.html">Second File</a><br/>
        .
        .
        .
     </p>
   </body>
</html>

Then just add this HTML file to the GUI and use the convert button to create your ebook.

How do I convert my file containing non-English characters, or smart quotes?

There are two aspects to this problem:
  1. Knowing the encoding of the source file: calibre tries to guess what character encoding your source files use, but often, this is impossible, so you need to tell it what encoding to use. This can be done in the GUI via the Input character encoding field in the Look & Feel section. The command-line tools all have an --input-encoding option.
  2. When adding HTML files to calibre, you may need to tell calibre what encoding the files are in. To do this go to Preferences->Plugins->File Type plugins and customize the HTML2Zip plugin, telling it what encoding your HTML files are in. Now when you add HTML files to calibre they will be correctly processed. HTML files from different sources often have different encodings, so you may have to change this setting repeatedly. A common encoding for many files from the web is cp1252 and I would suggest you try that first. Note that when converting HTML files, leave the input encoding setting mentioned above blank. This is because the HTML2ZIP plugin automatically converts the HTML files to a standard encoding (utf-8).
  3. Embedding fonts: If you are generating an LRF file to read on your SONY Reader, you are limited by the fact that the Reader only supports a few non-English characters in the fonts it comes pre-loaded with. You can work around this problem by embedding a unicode-aware font that supports the character set your file uses into the LRF file. You should embed atleast a serif and a sans-serif font. Be aware that embedding fonts significantly slows down page-turn speed on the reader.

How do I use some of the advanced features of the conversion tools?

You can get help on any individual feature of the converters by mousing over it in the GUI or running ebook-convert dummy.html .epub -h at a terminal. A good place to start is to look at the following demo files that demonstrate some of the advanced features:

Device Integration

What devices does calibre support?

At the moment calibre has full support for the SONY PRS 300/500/505/600/700/900, Barnes & Noble Nook, Cybook Gen 3/Opus, Amazon Kindle 1/2/3/DX/DXG, Entourage Edge, Longshine ShineBook, Ectaco Jetbook, BeBook/BeBook Mini, Irex Illiad/DR1000, Foxit eSlick, PocketBook 360, Italica, eClicto, Iriver Story, Airis dBook, Hanvon N515, Binatone Readme, Teclast K3, SpringDesign Alex, Kobo Reader, various Android phones and the iPhone/iPad. In addition, using the Save to disk function you can use it with any ebook reader that exports itself as a USB disk.

How can I help get my device supported in calibre?

If your device appears as a USB disk to the operating system, adding support for it to calibre is very easy. We just need some information from you:

  • What e-book formats does your device support?
  • Is there a special directory on the device in which all e-book files should be placed?
  • We also need information about your device that calibre will collect automatically. First, if your device supports SD cards, insert them. Then connect your device. In calibre go to Preferences->Advanced and click the “Debug device detection” button. This will create some debug output. Copy it to a file and repeat the process, this time with your device disconnected.
  • Send both the above outputs to us with the other information and we will write a device driver for your device.

Once you send us the output for a particular operating system, support for the device in that operating system will appear in the next release of calibre.

How does calibre manage collections on my SONY reader?

When calibre connects with the reader, it retrieves all collections for the books on the reader. The collections of which books are members are shown on the device view.

When you send a book to the reader, calibre will add the book to collections based on the metadata for that book. By default, collections are created from tags and series. You can control what metadata is used by going to Preferences->Plugins->Device Interface plugins and customizing the SONY device interface plugin. If you remove all values, calibre will not add the book to any collection.

Collection management is largely controlled by the ‘Metadata management’ option found at Preferences->Add/Save->Sending to device. If set to ‘Manual’ (the default), managing collections is left to the user; calibre will not delete already existing collections for a book on your reader when you resend the book to the reader, but calibre will add the book to collections if necessary. To ensure that the collections for a book are based only on current calibre metadata, first delete the books from the reader, then resend the books. You can edit collections directly on the device view by double-clicking or right-clicking in the collections column.

If ‘Metadata management’ is set to ‘Only on send’, then calibre will manage collections more aggressively. Collections will be built using calibre metadata exclusively. Sending a book to the reader will correct the collections for that book so its collections exactly match the book’s metadata, adding and deleting collections as necessary. Editing collections on the device view is not permitted, because collections not in the metadata will be removed automatically.

If ‘Metadata management’ is set to ‘Automatic management’, then calibre will update metadata and collections both when the reader is connected and when books are sent. When calibre detects the reader and generates the list of books on the reader, it will send metadata from the library to the reader for all books on the reader that are in the library (On device is True), adding and removing books from collections as indicated by the metadata and device customization. When a book is sent, calibre corrects the metadata for that book, adding and deleting collections. Manual editing of metadata on the device view is not allowed. Note that this option specifies sending metadata, not books. The book files on the reader are not changed.

In summary, choose ‘manual management’ if you want to manage collections yourself. Collections for a book will never be removed by calibre, but can be removed by you by editing on the device view. Choose ‘Only on send’ if you want calibre to manage collections when you send a book, adding books to and removing books from collections as needed. Choose ‘Automatic management’ if you want calibre to keep collections up to date whenever the reader is connected.

If you use multiple installations of calibre to manage your reader, then option ‘Automatic management’ may not be what you want. Connecting the reader to one library will reset the metadata to what is in that library. Connecting to the other library will reset the metadata to what is in that other library. Metadata in books found in both libraries will be flopped back and forth.

Can I use both calibre and the SONY software to manage my reader?

Yes, you can use both, provided you do not run them at the same time. That is, you should use the following sequence: Connect reader->Use one of the programs->Disconnect reader. Reconnect reader->Use the other program->disconnect reader.

The underlying reason is that the Reader uses a single file to keep track of ‘meta’ information, such as collections, and this is written to by both calibre and the Sony software when either updates something on the Reader. The file will be saved when the Reader is (safely) disconnected, so using one or the other is safe if there’s a disconnection between them, but if you’re not the type to remember this, then the simple answer is to stick to one or the other for the transfer and just export/import from/to the other via the computers hard disk.

If you do need to reset your metadata due to problems caused by using both at the same time, then just delete the media.xml file on the Reader using your PC’s file explorer and it will be recreated after disconnection.

With recent reader iterations, SONY, in all its wisdom has decided to try to force you to use their software. If you install it, it auto-launches whenever you connect the reader. If you don’t want to uninstall it altogether, there are a couple of tricks you can use. The simplest is to simply re-name the executable file that launches the library program. More detail in the forums.

Can I use the collections feature of the SONY reader?

calibre has full support for collections. When you add tags to a book’s metadata, those tags are turned into collections when you upload the book to the SONY reader. Also, the series information is automatically turned into a collection on the reader. Note that the PRS-500 does not support collections for books stored on the SD card. The PRS-505 does.

How do I use calibre with my iPad/iPhone/iTouch?

Over the air

The easiest way to browse your calibre collection on your Apple device (iPad/iPhone/iPod) is by using the free Stanza app, available from the Apple app store. You need at least Stanza version 3.0. Stanza allows you to access your calibre collection wirelessly, over the air.

First perform the following steps in calibre

  • Set the Preferred Output Format in calibre to EPUB (The output format can be set under Preferences->General)
  • Set the output profile to iPad (this will work for iPhone/iPods as well), under Preferences->Conversion->Page Setup
  • Convert the books you want to read on your iPhone to EPUB format by selecting them and clicking the Convert button.
  • Turn on the Content Server in calibre‘s preferences and leave calibre running.

Install the free Stanza reader app on your iPad/iPhone/iTouch using iTunes.

Now you should be able to access your books on your iPhone by opening Stanza. Go to “Get Books” and then click the “Shared” tab. Under Shared you will see an entry “Books in calibre”. If you don’t, make sure your iPad/iPhone is connected using the WiFi network in your house, not 3G. If the calibre catalog is still not detected in Stanza, you can add it manually in Stanza. To do this, click the “Shared” tab, then click the “Edit” button and then click “Add book source” to add a new book source. In the Add Book Source screen enter whatever name you like and in the URL field, enter the following:

http://192.168.1.2:8080/

Replace 192.168.1.2 with the local IP address of the computer running calibre. If you have changed the port the calibre content server is running on, you will have to change 8080 as well to the new port. The local IP address is the IP address you computer is assigned on your home network. A quick Google search will tell you how to find out your local IP address. Now click “Save” and you are done.

If you get timeout errors while browsing the calibre catalog in Stanza, try increasing the connection timeout value in the stanza settings. Go to Info->Settings and increase the value of Download Timeout.

With the USB cable

As of calibre version 0.7.0, you can plug your iDevice into the computer using its charging cable, and calibre will detect it and show you a list of books on the device. You can then use the Send to device button to send books directly to iBooks on the device. Note that you must have at least iOS 4 installed on your iPhone/iTouch for this to work.

This method only works on Windows XP and higher and OS X 10.5 and higher. Linux is not supported (iTunes is not available in linux) and OS X 10.4 is not supported. For more details on how this works, see this forum post.

How do I use calibre with my Android phone?

First install the WordPlayer e-book reading app from the Android Marketplace onto you phone. Then simply plug your phone into the computer with a USB cable. calibre should automatically detect the phone and then you can transfer books to it by clicking the Send to Device button. calibre does not have support for every single androind device out there, so if you would like to have support for your device added, follow the instructions above for getting your device supported in calibre.

Can I access my calibre books using the web browser in my Kindle or other reading device?

calibre has a Content Server that exports the books in calibre as a web page. You can turn it on under Preferences->Content Server. Then just point the web browser on your device to the computer running the Content Server and you will be able to browse your book collection. For example, if the computer running the server has IP address 63.45.128.5, in the browser, you would type:

http://63.45.128.5:8080

Some devices, like the Kindle, do not allow you to access port 8080 (the default port on which the content server runs. In that case, change the port in the calibre Preferences to 80. (On some operating systems, you may not be able to run the server on a port number less than 1024 because of security settings. In this case the simplest solution is to adjust your router to forward requests on port 80 to port 8080).

I get the error message “Failed to start content server: Port 8080 not free on ‘0.0.0.0’”?

The most likely cause of this is your antivirus program. Try temporarily disabling it and see if it does the trick.

Why is my device not detected in linux?

calibre needs your linux kernel to have been setup correctly to detect devices. If your devices are not detected, perform the following tests:

grep SYSFS_DEPRECATED /boot/config-`uname -r`

You should see something like CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2 is not set. Also,

grep CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN /boot/config-`uname -r`

must return CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN=y. If you don’t see either, you have to recompile your kernel with the correct settings.

Library Management

What formats does calibre read metadata from?

calibre reads metadata from the following formats: CHM, LRF, PDF, LIT, RTF, OPF, MOBI, PRC, EPUB, FB2, IMP, RB, HTML. In addition it can write metadata to: LRF, RTF, OPF, EPUB, PDF, MOBI

Where are the book files stored?

When you first run calibre, it will ask you for a folder in which to store your books. Whenever you add a book to calibre, it will copy the book into that folder. Books in the folder are nicely arranged into sub-folders by Author and Title. Metadata about the books is stored in the file metadata.db (which is a sqlite database).

Why doesn’t calibre let me store books in my own directory structure?

The whole point of calibre‘s library management features is that they provide a search and sort based interface for locating books that is much more efficient than any possible directory scheme you could come up with for your collection. Indeed, once you become comfortable using calibre‘s interface to find, sort and browse your collection, you wont ever feel the need to hunt through the files on your disk to find a book again. By managing books in its own directory struture of Author -> Title -> Book files, calibre is able to achieve a high level of reliability and standardization. To illustrate why a search/tagging based interface is superior to folders, consider the following. Suppose your book collection is nicely sorted into folders with the following scheme:

Genre -> Author -> Series -> ReadStatus

Now this makes it very easy to find for example all science fiction books by Isaac Asimov in the Foundation series. But suppose you want to find all unread science fiction books. There’s no easy way to do this with this folder scheme, you would instead need a folder scheme that looks like:

ReadStatus -> Genre -> Author -> Series

In calibre, you would instead use tags to mark genre and read status and then just use a simple search query like tag:scifi and not tag:read. calibre even has a nice graphical interface, so you don’t need to learn its search language instead you can just click on tags to include or exclude them from the search.

Why doesn’t calibre have a column for foo?

calibre is designed to have columns for the most frequently and widely used fields. In addition, you can add any columns you like. Columns can be added via Preferences->Interface. Watch the tutorial UI Power tips to learn how to create your own columns.

How do I move my calibre library from one computer to another?

Simply copy the calibre library folder from the old to the new computer. You can find out what the library folder is by clicking the calibre icon in the toolbar. The very first item is the path to the library folder. Now on the new computer, start calibre for the first time. It will run the Welcome Wizard asking you for the location of the calibre library. Point it to the previously copied folder.

Note that if you are transferring between different types of computers (for example Windows to OS X) then after doing the above you should also go to Preferences->Advanced and click the Check database integrity button. It will warn you about missing files, if any, which you should then transfer by hand.

Content From The Web

My downloaded news content causes the reader to reset.

This is a bug in the SONY firmware. The problem can be mitigated by switching the output format to EPUB in the configuration dialog. Alternatively, you can use the LRF output format and use the SONY software to transfer the files to the reader. The SONY software pre-paginates the LRF file, thereby reducing the number of resets.

I obtained a recipe for a news site as a .py file from somewhere, how do I use it?

Start the Add custom news sources dialog (from the Fetch news menu) and click the Switch to advanced mode button. Delete everything in the box with the recipe source code and copy paste the contents of your .py file into the box. Click Add/update recipe.

I want calibre to download news from my favorite news website.

If you are reasonably proficient with computers, you can teach calibre to download news from any website of your choosing. To learn how to do this see Adding your favorite news website.

Otherwise, you can register a request for a particular news site by adding a comment to this ticket.

Miscellaneous

Why the name calibre?

Take your pick:
  • Convertor And LIBRary for E-books
  • A high calibre product
  • A tribute to the SONY Librie which was the first e-ink based e-book reader
  • My wife chose it ;-)

Why does calibre show only some of my fonts on OS X?

calibre embeds fonts in ebook files it creates. E-book files support embedding only TrueType (.ttf) fonts. Most fonts on OS X systems are in .dfont format, thus they cannot be embedded. calibre shows only TrueType fonts found on your system. You can obtain many TrueType fonts on the web. Simply download the .ttf files and add them to the Library/Fonts directory in your home directory.

calibre is not starting on Windows?

There can be several causes for this:

  • If you get an error about calibre not being able to open a file because it is in use by another program, do the following:

    • Uninstall calibre
    • Reboot your computer
    • Re-install calibre. But do not start calibre from the installation wizard.
    • Temporarily disable your antivirus program (disconnect from the internet before doing so, to be safe)
    • Look inside the folder you chose for your calibre library. If you see a file named metadata.db, delete it.
    • Start calibre
    • From now on you should be able to start calibre normally.

  • If you get an error about a Python function terminating unexpectedly after upgrading calibre, first uninstall calibre, then delete the folders (if they exists) C:\Program Files\Calibre and C:\Program Files\Calibre2. Now re-install and you should be fine.

  • If you get an error in the welcome wizard on an initial run of calibre, try choosing a folder like C:\library as the calibre library (calibre sometimes has trouble with library locations if the path contains non-English characters, or only numbers, etc.)

  • Try running it as Administrator (Right click on the icon and select “Run as Administrator”)

  • Windows Vista: If the folder C:\Users\Your User Name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\calibre exists, delete it. Uninstall calibre. Reboot. Re-install.

  • Any windows version: Try disabling any antivirus program you have running and see if that fixes it. Also try disabling any firewall software that prevents connections to the local computer.

If it still wont launch, start a command prompt (press the windows key and R; then type cmd.exe in the Run dialog that appears). At the command prompt type the following command and press Enter:

calibre-debug -g

Post any output you see in a help message on the Forum.

calibre is not starting on OS X?

One common cause of failures on OS X is the use of accessibility technologies that are incompatible with the graphics toolkit calibre uses. Try turning off VoiceOver if you have it on. Also go to System Preferences->System->Universal Access and turn off the setting for enabling access for assistive devices in all the tabs.

You can obtain debug output about why calibre is not starting by running Console.app. Debug output will be printed to it. If the debug output contains a line that looks like:

Qt: internal: -108: Error ATSUMeasureTextImage text/qfontengine_mac.mm

then the problem is probably a corrupted font cache. You can clear the cache by following these instructions. If that doesn’t solve it, look for a corrupted font file on your system, in ~/Library/Fonts or the like.

My antivirus program claims calibre is a virus/trojan?

Your antivirus program is wrong. calibre is a completely open source product. You can actually browse the source code yourself (or hire someone to do it for you) to verify that it is not a virus. Please report the false identification to whatever company you buy your antivirus software from. If the antivirus program is preventing you from downloading/installing calibre, disable it temporarily, install calibre and then re-enable it.

How do I use purchased EPUB books with calibre?

Most purchased EPUB books have DRM. This prevents calibre from opening them. You can still use calibre to store and transfer them to your e-book reader. First, you must authorize your reader on a windows machine with Adobe Digital Editions. Once this is done, EPUB books transferred with calibre will work fine on your reader. When you purchase an epub book from a website, you will get an ”.acsm” file. This file should be opened with Adobe Digital Editions, which will then download the actual ”.epub” e-book. The e-book file will be stored in the folder “My Digital Editions”, from where you can add it to calibre.

Can I have the comment metadata show up on my reader?

Most readers do not support this. You should complain to the manufacturer about it and hopefully if enough people complain, things will change. In the meantime, you can insert the metadata, including comments into a “Jacket page” at the start of the ebook, by using the option to “Insert metadata as page at start of book” during conversion. The option is found in the Structure Detection section of the conversion settings. Note that for this to have effect you have to convert the book. If your book is already in a format that does not need conversion, you can convert from that format to the same format.

Another alternative is to create a catalog in ebook form containing a listing of all the books in your calibre library, with their metadata. Click the arrow next to the convert button to access the catalog creation tool. And before you ask, no you cannot have the catalog “link directly to” books on your reader.

I want some feature added to calibre. What can I do?

You have two choices:
  1. Create a patch by hacking on calibre and send it to me for review and inclusion. See Development.
  2. Open a ticket (you have to register and login first) and hopefully I will find the time to implement your feature.

Can I include calibre on a CD to be distributed with my product/magazine?

calibre is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 (an open source license). This means that you are free to redistribute calibre as long as you make the source code available. So if you want to put calibre on a CD with your product, you must also put the calibre source code on the CD. The source code is available for download from googlecode.

How do I run calibre from my USB stick?

A portable version of calibre is available at: portableapps.com. However, this is usually out of date. You can also setup your own portable calibre install by following these instructions.

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© Copyright 2008, Kovid Goyal. Last updated on Aug 30, 2010.