How I manage my e-books with Calibre

Page created: 2024-07-20
Updated: 2025-08-18

I manage my e-books and transfer them to my Kindle PaperWhite e-book reader with Calibre. My e-book library is available to any (Unix-like) computer on my home network that can run SSHFS.

Getting Calibre

For Windows, the download at https://calibre-ebook.com/ is the way to go.

For Linux, I use a repo for my distro. Currently:

Slackware Linux: https://slackbuilds.org/repository/15.0/office/calibre-bin/

Arch Linux: https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/calibre/

See also my page on Removing DRM from e-books.

Customize Calibre!

One of Calibre’s many awesome features is that it is very customizable.

Book list double-click behavior

I read e-books on an e-ink reader and I read PDFs with a web browser. Instead of opening the e-book for reading, I want double-clicks to edit the cell under my cursor.

  • Open Preferences

  • Find Advanced > Tweaks

  • Search for "double" in the tweak list

  • It will find the item ID: doubleclick_on_library_view

Here’s my settings:

# Control behavior of the book list

doubleclick_on_library_view = 'edit_cell'

enter_key_behavior = 'do_nothing'

horizontal_scrolling_per_column = False

vertical_scrolling_per_row = False

Customize columns

You can edit columns and even add your own. Here’s what I have:

Authors
Title
Series
Rating
Tags
Publisher
Published
Modified
From (I added this!)

I use the Rating column for my ratings. If there’s no rating, I haven’t read the book yet.

I am a tag zealot and immediately delete any tags from books I’ve imported. I use only my own tags.

The From column is my own personal addition. I try to write the origin of the book (I read about it in a book review or blog, a friend recommended it, etc.).

Shared network library (via SSHFS)

My basement computer has my main file share(s). To make my Calibre library work across computers, I’ve tried a couple different methods, but my new favorite is stupid simple.

I’ve got this Bash function that mounts the remote directory via SSHFS and then launches Calibre. It unmounts when I exit Calibre. (The terminal window stays open while I’m using Calibre, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.)

Here’s the Bash function. Obviously, you’ll need to change these paths to suit you:

$ type ebooks
ebooks is a function
ebooks ()
{
    dir="/home/dave/calibre_library"
    echo "Mounting ebook library (phobos) on $dir..."
    sshfs dave@phobos:/mnt/extssd/calibre_library/ $dir
    echo "Mounted. Opening Calibre..."
    calibre
    echo "Unmounting..."
    fusermount3 -u $dir
    echo "Done."
}

That function lives in my .bashrc. I have Calibre pointed at /home/dave/calibre_library as the default, so it opens right up with all of my books available from the basement computer. I love it.

Kobo

Calibre works perfectly with my Kobo Clara BW e-reader. It sees which books are on the reader and automatically converts books to ePub when I transfer them. No complaints!

OLD: Kindle PaperWhite

Note that I deleted my Amazon account and left its entire ecosystem: Amazon Customer 1998-2024 and am now using a Kobo e-reader (see above).

I’ve been using Amazon e-ink Kindles for a long time. My first did not have a backlight, but it did have physical keyboards buttons at the bottom. I miss the hardware page turning controls.

Calibre does a beautiful job of showing me what’s installed on the Kindle (far better than the device itself) and transfering books to and from it.

I don’t bother with the email method anymore. I just look it up to the PC with a USB cable. Nice that Calibre also has the device "eject" feature.