Calibre vs eXtreme Books Manager

Last updated: October 21, 2023
Calibre and eXtreme Books Manager are software applications designed to manage personal book collections, but they have distinct differences in terms of their features, user interface, and platform compatibility. One key difference lies in their focus and functionality. Calibre is a comprehensive e-book management tool that specializes in digital books. It offers a wide range of features for organizing, converting, and transferring e-books across various devices and formats. Calibre supports a vast array of e-book formats, provides advanced metadata management, and offers tools for editing e-book content. It also offers features like customizable views, library management, and integration with e-book readers. On the other hand, eXtreme Books Manager primarily focuses on managing physical book collections. It provides features for cataloging physical books, scanning barcodes for easy data entry, and organizing books by categories. eXtreme Books Manager offers streamlined functionality optimized for managing physical books efficiently.

Another notable difference between Calibre and eXtreme Books Manager lies in their user interface and design choices. Calibre provides a comprehensive and feature-rich interface, with a variety of tools and options for organizing and managing e-books. It offers customizable views, allowing users to choose how they want to display their e-book collection. Calibre's interface can be more complex due to its extensive features, but it provides a wealth of functionality for users who require advanced e-book management. On the other hand, eXtreme Books Manager offers a straightforward and no-frills interface focused on managing physical books. It provides a simple and efficient way to enter book details, with basic options for viewing and sorting books. eXtreme Books Manager's interface is optimized for speed and ease of use when working with physical book collections.

In terms of platform compatibility, Calibre and eXtreme Books Manager differ in their support. Calibre is a cross-platform application available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It offers consistent functionality and features across different platforms, allowing users to manage their e-books on various operating systems. Calibre's cross-platform compatibility makes it suitable for users who have diverse devices and prefer a unified experience across them. On the other hand, eXtreme Books Manager is primarily designed for Windows but offers limited compatibility with other platforms through the use of virtual machines or emulation software. While eXtreme Books Manager can be used on non-Windows systems, the experience may not be as seamless as on a native Windows environment.
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Calibre
calibre is an open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories: Library Management, E-book conversion, Syncing to e-book reader devices, Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form, Comprehensive e-book viewer, Content server for online access to your book collection
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eXtreme Books Manager
eXtreme Books Manager is probably the most advanced Book, eBook, AudioBook collection manager around. It can import all Book Information from many specialized websites. Just write the Book Title or Scan the ISBN Barcode!
Calibre vs eXtreme Books Manager in our news:

2023. Calibre 7.0 adds innovative notes feature, audio EPUB support



Kovid Goyal, the creator of Calibre, has unveiled Calibre 7.0, the latest stable release of the widely acclaimed cross-platform, open-source e-book management software. With this update, users gain the capability to store notes enriched with links, images, and formatted text for elements such as authors, series, publishers, and tags. Calibre 7.0 revolutionizes the e-book landscape by introducing support for "Audio EPUB" books, featuring pre-recorded voices reading the text, although the developer acknowledges potential issues with this feature on Linux systems due to patented codecs. Additionally, the release addresses a longstanding user request by allowing seamless storage and management of "data" files associated with a book, making the process of adding extra data files straightforward through a simple selection and right-click action.


2023. Calibre improves metadata editor



Calibre has released a new version 6.17, which brings several new features and enhancements. One notable addition is the support for WOFF format fonts and CID keyed fonts in font subsetting, resulting in further reduction of file sizes. Additionally, when data files are present, the book details now include a convenient link to open the data files folder. The template language has been upgraded with various functions that allow users to query the extra files associated with a book. In the Edit book feature, users can now compress images in the WEBP format. The comments editor has also been improved, offering buttons to easily create links to data files and folders when inserting a link. Furthermore, users can now display the id, formats, and path columns through Preferences, allowing for more customization. A new button has been added to the trash bin, enabling users to easily clear its contents. Lastly, the metadata editor now utilizes a dedicated editor with a preview option for custom columns that store Markdown formatted text.


2023. Calibre now allows to read books aloud with more voices



New Calibre's update brings more voices to Read Aloud feature. It works only on Windows because uses Microsoft speech subsystem. When Read aloud is speaking, you can make the control bar translucent so that words under the bar are visible. There is a number of other new features. Spell check dialog now allows Up and Down arrow keys to work regardless of focus. Edit book feature now allows automatic fixing of various simple CSS errors. And File browser allows using keyboard shortcuts to re-order the spine. Also from the library you can now open the book folder easily. Add by ISBN feature now allows adding using identifiers other than ISBN as well. The update is bundled Qt to 6.4 this means calibre on macOS is now only supported on Big Sur and newer.


2022. Ebook catalog software Calibre 6.3 fine-tunes full text search



In several updated Calibre developers added some new improvements and bug fixes for full-text search, introduced in version 6. They added a button to re-index a book - useful if the book's contents have been changed outside calibre. Search queries start supporting quoting using "docstrings" for easier escaping. The search now ignores soft hyphens when extracting searchable text from books (though you will have to re-index your library to take advantage of this). The e-book viewer now allows searching for nearby words using a new "Nearby words" search mode. New fts_search and fts_index commands allow to perform full text searching from the command line.


2022. Calibre 6.0 now has text to speech and full text search



Calibre has recently released a significant update to its ebook management software, introducing several noteworthy features. The standout feature is Full Text Search, which offers the option to index your entire library, enabling you to search for specific words or phrases throughout your collection. To utilize this feature, simply click on the FT button located to the left of the search bar, allowing you to initiate the library indexing process. Once indexing is complete, you can perform searches within your library. Another prominent addition is the Read Aloud feature, which leverages your computer's default voice assistant, including Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, to read any ebook in your library. Furthermore, you have the flexibility to adjust the playback speed, catering to your preferred pace. Additionally, Calibre now provides support for Apple Silicon CPU architectures without the need for Rosetta translation. This enhancement is particularly significant, as the app is now optimized for Apple laptops and the Apple Studio computer, equipped with the M1 and M2 chips, respectively.


2021. Calibre added support for the 11th Gen Kindle Paperwhite 5



Ebook management software Calibre has just added support for the brand new Kindle Paperwhite and you can now manage your e-readers collection when having it plugged into your PC or MAC. Furthermore, this release adds support for EPUB 3 landmarks in the Set Semantics tool under the Edit Book component and moves the option that allows Calibre to recognize numbers when sorting from Preferences > Tweaks to Preferences > Behavior. Calibre is one of the best ebook management software in the world, millions of users use the program. It can do some powerful stuff, such as fetch missing metadata on ebooks that you downloaded from the internet, such as book covers. It has an ebook viewer, which can edit titles, can download magazines from the internet and import your collection of books from your PC right to the e-reader, at the click of a button. Calibre


2020. Calibre 5 adds highlighting to ebook viewer



Cross-platform eBook management, reading, and editing software Calibre saw a new release. There has been a lot of work on the calibre E-book viewer. It now supports Highlighting. The highlights can be colors, underlines, strikethrough, etc. and have added notes. All highlights can be both stored in EPUB files for easy sharing and centrally in the calibre library for easy browsing. Additionally, the E-book viewer now supports both vertical and right-to-left text. calibre has also moved to using Python 3. This is because Python 2 was end-of-lifed this year. This should be completely transparent to calibre users, the only caveat being that some third party calibre plugins have not yet been ported to Python 3 and therefore will not work in calibre 5


2019. Calibre 4.0 improves Content server



The new version of popular ebook management software Calibre is making its Content server ever more capable. It has gained the ability to Edit metadata, Add/remove books and even Convert books to and from all the formats calibre itself supports. It is now a full fledged interface to your calibre libraries. Besides, the new version is built on the new web browser engine Qt WebEngine. The change to use Qt WebEngine has entailed a complete rewrite of various parts of calibre, including the E-book viewer, PDF Output, Book details etc. Every attempt has been made to preserve features and functionality in a backwards compatible way, see below for a list of some known incompatibilities.


2019. Calibre adds support for the Nook Glowlight Plus 7.8



Calibre has just announced that they have official support for the new Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight Plus. This means when you plug the e-reader into your PC via the USB cable, it will now be recognized. This new is good news for anyone who uses the software and has their own collection of ebooks, comics, magazines or newspapers they want to read on their Nook.


2018. Calibre added support for the Kindle Paperwhite 4



The popular ebook management program, Calibre, has introduced support for the new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 4. As a result, the program can now recognize your Paperwhite device, enabling you to seamlessly transfer a wide range of content such as documentation, ebooks, manga, PDF files, and more directly to your Paperwhite. In addition, Calibre has introduced new features including metadata plugboards, which allow you to define plugboards that modify comments metadata, and a convenient keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+M) in the E-book viewer for easily toggling between paged and flow mode. Calibre is compatible with Windows, MAC, and Linux operating systems. With its comprehensive metadata support, Calibre makes it simple to fix any issues with ebooks downloaded from the internet, such as incorrect author information or missing cover art, with just a few clicks of a button.


2017. calibre 3.0 improves Content server



The latest release of the ebook catalog software, Calibre 3, is now available. One of the most prominent additions is a completely revamped calibre Content server. This enhanced server enables users to wirelessly browse their calibre book collection on modern smartphones and tablets, and even read books directly within the phone's browser. Notably, the books are stored in offline storage on the device, eliminating the need for a continuously active internet connection or the Calibre software running in the background. Additionally, Calibre 3 now offers native support for high-resolution (Retina) screens and allows the installation of various icon themes to cater to different preferences. It also introduces the capability to convert supported book formats into Microsoft Word (DOCX) files. Furthermore, users can seamlessly transition between Word documents and e-book formats, enabling greater flexibility and convenience.


2014. Calibre 2.0 gets ebook editor



Kovid Goyal has recently launched the latest version of his ebook manager, Calibre 2.0. The standout feature of this update is the inclusion of an e-book editor that supports editing EPUB and AZW3 (Kindle) formats, equipped with a range of powerful tools and features specifically designed to simplify the editing process. Moreover, the software now features a "Compare Books" tool, allowing users to easily view and highlight all the differences between two books side by side. While calibre has previously supported connectivity with Android devices on various operating systems, this capability has been extended to macOS as well. Users can now effortlessly connect their Android phones or tablets to calibre on macOS, just as they could on Windows and Linux. Additionally, users now have the ability to define simple rules to display emblems (small icons) next to book covers in the cover grid. For example, a heart emblem can be assigned to books highly rated by the user, or a tick mark can be applied to indicate books that have been read. Another notable addition is the "Mark Books" tool, which allows users to temporarily mark books with a pushpin icon. These marks are automatically cleared upon restarting calibre.


2013. Calibre 1.0 is available for download



WoW! Seven years after it was first released, the free ebook management software Calibre has reached version 1.0. According to the author (Kovid Goyal), lots of new features have been added to the library organizer in this new version — a grid view of book covers, a new faster database backend, the ability to convert Microsoft Word files, tools to make changes to ebooks without needing to do a full conversion, full support for font embedding and subsetting,  an easy to use tool to edit the Table of Contents in ebooks, rewritten PDF Output engine, new tool "Polish books" that allows you to perform various automated cleanup actions on ebooks.


2013. Calibre Server - access your book collection via the Internet



Probably you didn't know it, but Calibre includes the inbuilt web server - Calibre Content Server for remote library management. Besides it can download and send you the books by email. The Calibre server makes your ebooks available to the gadgets within your home or office wireless network. And if you can set up port forwarding on your router - you access your library from a remote location. You can set a password to restrict access. By default access is unrestricted. The content server lets you see the whole Calibre database on your device, which is great, although if you have a lot of books in your library - it can be slow and you have to keep hitting the “Next” button to advance to the next group of books hour after hour. Using this approach you are using the device to choose the books to download. This approach is effective if you’re just browsing your Calibre database looking for a book to download to your mobile device. But if you wish to use the search power of Calibre to locate books that meet specific criteria to download, then Calibre Server is useless. ***


2012. Calibre DRM removal plugins for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, PDF, EPUB and other ebooks



DRM (Digital rights management) is a technology for access control that is used by ebook publishers and inhibits uses of ebooks that were not desired or foreseen by the content provider. When you buy an e-book with DRM you don't really own it but just have a permission to use it in a manner dictated to you by the seller. DRM limits what you can do with e-books you have "bought". Often people who buy books with DRM are unaware of the extent of these restrictions. These restrictions prevent you from reformating the e-book to your liking, including making stylistic changes like adjusting the font sizes, although there is software that empowers you to do such things for non DRM books. People are often surprised that an e-book they have bought in a particular format cannot be converted to another format if the e-book has DRM. So if you have an Amazon Kindle and buy a EPUB book sold by Barnes and Nobles, you should know that if that e-book has DRM you will not be able to read it on your Kindle. ***


2012. Book library software Calibre gets a modern new look



The latest iteration of the e-library organizer, calibre 0.9, introduces a fresh and modern aesthetic. The interface has undergone visual enhancements such as focus highlighting, gradients, and rounded corners, providing a more contemporary look and feel. Notably, the E-book viewer has been updated with a new "paged" mode, enabling the text to be split into pages, allowing for multiple pages to be displayed simultaneously on the screen. Furthermore, calibre now offers wireless and USB connectivity to Android devices. In particular, modern Android devices often utilize the "MTP" protocol when connected via USB, and calibre now supports this protocol on Windows (Vista and newer) and Linux platforms. Another noteworthy addition is the introduction of calibre Portable, which enables the calibre library and settings to be kept alongside the calibre program. This allows users to store the entire package on a USB stick for convenient portability. Moreover, calibre's conversion engine now provides comprehensive support for Amazon's KF8 format. Users can convert KF8 books to other formats and vice versa. To convert to KF8, simply set the output format to AZW3 in the calibre conversion dialog.


2011. Video: Calibre Tutorial about its features and interface


Kovid Goyal, the creator of the popular home library management software Calibre created this video tutorial called "How to use Calibre - a look at its features and user interface". It shows some tips of how to optimize your usage of the program user interface. The main window interface consists of four areas: the book list (shows the books in your library), library browser sidebar (allows to browse your collection by various categories like series, publishers, rating...), book detail view (shows the book cover, formats available, comments..) and the upper search bar (allows to find books in your calibre collections). The user interface areas can be risized and hidden. You can also rearrange/hide columns in the book list. Watch the video about this robust library management software. ***


2011. Book management program Calibre integrates with book websites



The latest release of the book manager, calibre 0.8, introduces a convenient new feature that enables users to search through numerous web stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and more, to locate e-book editions of their desired books. The search results are intelligently sorted by price, allowing users to easily identify the most affordable edition to add to their collection. This feature, along with the rest of calibre, operates on a plugin-based system, promising the addition of new stores in the future. In addition, when downloading covers for a specific book, calibre now retrieves covers from all available online sources, providing users with the flexibility to choose their preferred cover instead of having one automatically assigned. Furthermore, users can now utilize the Bulk metadata edit tool to perform search and replace operations within their calibre library's book list. Additionally, when exporting books from the calibre library, it is possible to construct complex file names using book metadata. The introduction of Virtual columns offers the ability to incorporate custom metadata fields and automatically populate them from calibre. This allows for the creation of columns such as ISBN or formats to display the various file formats a book possesses.


2010. Personal library software Calibre improved mobile device support



Kovid Goyal has unveiled the latest version of his library organizer, Calibre 0.7. This update introduces various enhancements, including improvements to the user interface, performance, and better integration with device drivers. Notably, when connecting to devices, Calibre now caches metadata obtained from the files on the device. As a result, subsequent connections will allow Calibre to rapidly generate the list of books stored on the device. This feature proves invaluable for users who maintain extensive collections of books on their devices. Additionally, an experimental driver has been introduced for the iPad, enabling users to connect their iPad to their computer while Calibre is running. This driver operates in conjunction with iTunes, necessitating the presence of iTunes on the computer and proper iPad configuration within the application. The conversion engine now provides support for unicode characters in RTF Input documents and automatically converts ligatures for PDF input documents. Furthermore, the e-book viewer has been enhanced with built-in dictionary lookup functionality. Generating a catalog of all books within the Calibre library has been made easier with the option to simply click the arrow next to the convert button. The resulting catalog can be created in multiple formats, including XML, CSV, EPUB, and MOBI, with potential for additional formats in the future through the use of plugins.


2010. Use Calibre with Nook e-reader to manage your e-library



If you have a huge ebook library on your Nook and not all of these ebooks were purchased from Barnes & Noble directly, so you probably have rather challenging task of managing those books, since Barnes & Noble doesn't manage titles purchased from other stores. But now you have a solution.  The new version of the popular library management software Calibre (v.0.6.27) added support of Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader device. Calibre can now connect to Nook on Windows, OS X and Linux. It scans the e-reader and adds ebooks to your digital library. Or, vice versa, you can send ebooks from your computer e-library to Nook. The software can also convert ebooks to/from EPUB and PDB, the two e-book formats supported by the Nook. Nook integration is realized via add-on driver. ***