I try to use Calibre, and keep the original files on an external library disk. This has some advantages. I can rate books I’ve read, note where I got them, note topics which I’d like to revisit, note relevant page numbers, and so on. I can also convert epub to mobi and vice-versa, unless dmm interferes. I can’t use it to convert pdf formats to Kindle-compatible pdf formats, but I can note what pre-processing I’v used in a special column.
The downside is that it’s an awful lot of work to type up the relevant info.
There’s also a lot of work just converting web-pages and pdfs to Kindle-compatible mobi or pdf formats.
Between these, I’ve got a backlog of thousands of books and other files to work through, and a lot of rsi trying to.
There’re also pay tools such as Devonthink. I don’t know how they compare to Calibre or if they complement or replace it. And they can be expensive.
Anything which works for you?
Anything which might help me?
I often get advice to not pre-process pdfs, and to not bother with metadata, but I want to be able to find the books I need, and to read them, and to cite them a bit more easily.
… I actually use a spreadsheet. It’s gotten a wee bit large, probably going to convert it to SQL.
Calibre fills the ebook library niche pretty well for people who acquire books from more than just one ebook store. There don’t seem to be many alternatives.
Yes, I have Calibre set up so that I can list books to export or not to export, sideload the 1st set, remove the 2nd, and update collections on my Kindles.
I don’t know if it’s suitable for your needs, but could you email PDFs to Amazon who’ll automatically convert them and email them back directly to your Kindle?
Just saving web-pages for later reading can be a hassle.
If I can configure either the downloader or the importer to find and recognize the important metadata that would also be very helpful: Title, converting to title case. Author, converting any allcaps to capitalize every word. Publisher, using the source url. Processing, naming the download tool.
Dot Epub seems like the easiest solution, but it only saves one page at a time, and it sometimes strips away too much.
EpubPress can save several pages to one book, but it requires extra typing for the titles, and sometimes strips away too much, and fails on the Internet Archive.
GrabMyBooks is a separate App, and harder to use because of it, but is the only one I’ve found to reliably save whole pages on certain sites.
When I used Safari, I used to save as pdf, but had trouble with losing pages, just blank white space on my old e-reader.