Quote:
Originally Posted by louwin
I have about 3000 eBooks in epub AND mobi formats…. Is there any real, good reason to keep both formats?
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Personally, I keep EPUBs only, not counting some PDF exceptions. I generate the MOBI on the fly when sending to device, followed by deleting the MOBI from the calibre library.
I don't do this to save disk space, but to save headaches and apply the KISS principle to avoid some problems: If there is more than one format for the book title, then which is the original format, or which is the best/most-cleaned-up format? When I keep only one EPUB format, or only a PDF format accompanied by an EPUB format, those problems don't exist. Also, there are better tools for cleaning up EPUB than for cleaning up MOBI.
Most of the long-duration conversions I've experienced apply to complex PDFs (often non-fiction, textbooks, computer-related) or old image-based PDFs. In these cases I keep the original PDF along with the mangled EPUB conversion, and if/when necessary read the PDF on iPad rather than PDF or MOBI on Kindle.
@louwin, in your case of obtaining someone else's library and not knowing which format (MOBI or EPUB or whatever) is the best most-cleaned-up format per Title, the only way to find out is to assess all of those formats for a given Title, one by one. Personally I would keep the best format, convert it to EPUB, clean it up if necessary, then discard all the other formats except PDFs in cases where the best formats are problem PDFs. All of this is very time-consuming and may not be worth the time and effort, depending on the quality of formats or metadata.