[texasnightowl]

I've only barely played with Calibre...probably less than an hour total time, though I have used the command line ebook-convert successfully. However, I've done basically no conversions of any kind since September. I had some technical issues on my primary desktop...hardware followed by Win 7 install followed by adding a Windows Home Server and I've just about got things back where I want them or need them and can start playing with ebooks again.

That said, I've followed some discussions here and in particular about being able to tag books for organization and I am coming around to that concept. So I want to give Calibre a proper try.

So, those of you who have been using Calibre for a while and love it:

what tips or advice would you give to people/new users?
what do you wish you had known about it when you started?
what are your best practices? your workflow with your books?

Let's say someone is starting with a couple hundred Amazon .azw files (which will be dedrmed) and several hundred files from Fictionwise - combination of .lit, .prc, ereader, and a few .epub even - which will also have drm stripped.

Once the DRM is stripped, what are your processing and converstion steps?
Once the books are imported to Calibre, do you keep or delete the original files or the drm stripped but unprocess files? Do you convert to only the format you need (in my case .mobi for Kindle 1) or do you plan for the future and convert to epub or other too?

So, please chime in. I may not actually get started until January since I'll be travelling over the holidays, but this is my next "project" since my home server is up and streams movies and music to my PS3.