[Lady Fitzgerald]

I suspect the reason Kovid is sighing is he has heard the complaint about calibre copying books to its own library so many times, he's tired of it. Calibre doesn't just catalogue your files; it manages your books. The traditional folder/filename tree system of organizing files is grossly inadequate since books can be classified in more than one genre, in series, etc., so Kovid has come up with a way to organize BOOKS (not files) that utilizes metadata (tags) for sorting, searches, etc. Calibre will do anything you could mucking around in your files, only better. There is no reason for you to ever go into the calibre library folder for anything. If you need a list of your ebooks to put into a Word or Excel file, calibre will do that. You can also get a list in e-book form. Calibre will put your books on your e-book reader for you. If you want to look at your book on your computer, it will open it for you. You can set it to use its own reader or, by setting the file association, your computer reader software of choice. It will convert books from one e-book format to another. There is no reason to ever go directly to the file itself.

Could Kovid have just linked calibre to existing user files? Maybe, but he didn't and it doesn't really matter. Calibre works well with its present system, well enough it has around a million users. I can understand new users feeling uncomfortable trusting calibre to make a copy of their files and not keep the originals. An easy way to deal with that is just go ahead and keep your originals wherever you want, organized however you want. It's not really needed because if you ever decide to abandon calibre for another program, you can save your books to one or more folders with whatever filename structure you want using the Save to Disk feature. In essence, you would be recreating your original files, though the odds are the filename structure would be more consistant than originally. I'll admit that I'm keeping my original files in a folder "just in case" (hey, I'm old and paranoid) but I have yet to go into them to access a book once I've put it in calibre. There is absolutely no reason to go into calibre's library folder(s). In fact, you will probably muck things up if you make any changes to anything. I keep my calibre folders hidden so I (or anyone else) won't accidentally (or otherwise) mess with them. Calibre is able to find them just fine.

One huge avantage to calibre is it is still under development and will be for some time to come. Improvements are constantly being made with updates coming out almost weekly. It's not necessary to upgrade every time if you are happy with how the version you are using is working. Kovid accepts suggestions for improvements and often implements them. The calibre forum here is very active with many knowledgeable users willing to jump in and help you. They have helped me many a time once I gently reminded them I need simple instructions since I know very little about computers. Calibre is a large, complex program that is user cutomizeable so it does have a bit of a steep learning curve so give it a chance. You can't learn much about it just playing with it for 30 minutes or even an hour or two.

Calibre is free (even though donations are requested) so it can't hurt to give it a serious workout to see what all it can do for you. Believe me, if I could find a better program than calibre (free or otherwise), I would be all over it like stink on skunk. Hasn't happened yet (and I do look; I checked out the ones mentioned in this thread). Kovid is young so he is not likely to retire anytime soon, abandoning the program, but even if he did, there are enough people who have been involved in the development, someone is bound to pick up the ball and run with it.