Remove all images during individual/mass conversion

[JSWolf]

The problem is that there is no automatic solution that will work in all cases. It's best to do it by hand. It won't take all that long.

Thing is, if you remove the cover image, your thumbnails won't work.

[theducks]

Rather than DESTROY your books.
Reduce the size of the covers that get embedded.
Use the Resize Cover Plugin: Then Embed the new metadata: Then Send the book (again) to your device. AFAIK, as long as the Send Template remains the same, the book is just updated (replaced) and the notes and stuff remain .
OBVIOUSLY TEST THIS on some book you don't care if the notes are lost.

OTOH if you choose to destroy, Bret gave you the REGEX to remove ALL images from CONVERSIONS. THERE IS NOTHING that Calibre has to fix directly, books on the device. Convert/Edit then replace (with all the ramifications of that upon annotations)

Seriously: You need to do some housekeeping on that device.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Seriously: You need to do some housekeeping on that device.

I agree that some housekeeping needs to be done.

Given that you are suing Calibre, if you've not fixed where the eBooks are being sent to on your Kindle, you may have a number of useless subdirectories. Plus, when you delete your eBooks using the Kindle to delete the eBooks, you'll have leftover files. Plus, if there are any read books on your Kindle, they should go. And if you have eBooks that have been on there for some time and not read, remove them until you are ready to read them.

[Brett Merkey]

@ original poster:

...Once again, what does Calibre runs search&replace on? Source book (in that case <img.*?> would work for epub, html) or some internal representation (in which case <img.*?> would work for everything)?

It seems clear from that statement that you have not bothered to test that or any of the other suggestions offered by the experience of others here. One can conclude that your space situation cannot really be so desperate.