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I am looking for recommendations for a ebook applications that runs on Windows 8/8.1 . I have many textbooks and other books in pdf format, so preferably one that is easy to maneuver with these files.

What I need: 

1. Conversion between different formats (e.g. _pdf_ to _epub_)
2. Managing my books
3. User friendly reading experience (e.g. _Kindle_ for Windows)

I realize this will require different programs.

Thank you.

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  • Welcome to Software Recommendations! We will need much more information to give good recommendations here. Please take a look at What is required for a question to contain "enough information"? Then please edit your question and see if you can incorporate some of these improvements. It's e.g. unclear what that eBook application should do: Create eBooks? Convert them? Organize them? What specific features do you need? "Something to drive from A to B" could be a bicycle or a truck, or anything in between :)
    – Izzy
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 12:48
  • Can you break this up into multiple questions, each with specific details?
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Sep 27, 2015 at 9:36

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If you are looking to simply manage your ebooks then I would recommend Calibre E-book manager it is simple, powerful cross platform and cross format tool for managing your ebook collection including tools for converting between many formats.

Screenshot: Calibre

Regarding your specific needs:

  1. Conversion - Calibre provides conversion between many differing formats but there can be issues with a) DRM & b) PDFs - the content of a pdf varies depending on the producer and can be simple to convert (PDF contains text & simple layout), difficult (PDF Contains text in near random order and complex layout), or even require OCR (pdf from scanners contain images of pages),
  2. Managing - This is what Calibre was written for.
  3. Reading experience - there are readers for many formats provided within Calibre or installed platform software can be used how user friendly the reader is is subjective, varies between platforms and with installed software.

I hasten to add the I have managed to avoid Windows 8 other than removing it and replacing the Ubuntu in a couple of cases but you should have no problems running Calibre.

If you need to annotate and cross-reference within pdf files, rather than e-books, then Mendeley would possibly be a better fit as it allows you to highlight and cross reference within pdfs.

There is of course nothing to stop you using both.

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  • Steve, thank you for your answer. I am currently trying Calibre, and will later try Mendeley. I ran into a bit of trouble trying the conversion of a large textbook on my windows tablet (it stayed at 1% all night, must have been to much for it to handle), but converting on my much more potent laptop running Ubuntu seems effortless. I'll simply send the epub copy of the book to my tablet later. As for why I am using windows, it is because of OneNote! Yes, the rest of windows is a pain in the behind, but it is a price I am willing to pay :D
    – gbrlrz017
    Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 23:13

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