Cross-platform ebook collection

Question

I am searching for a native windows application for book management. The following items are required:

Compatibility

1. Must support PD and MOBI as the base, plus any additional
2. Be able to auto-categorise books by author, genre and age

The following options are what I would like in an ideal solution:

Usability

2. Should allow custom filters to be applied to the book for user
3. Should allow user comments on books
4. Preferably able to rank book rating with some database

Ideal features

5. Mark pages where you are at when reading
6. Allow you to highlight terms/phrases for later review
7. Have ability to edit the font type of the book natively

The process I would like to be able to complete are as follows:

1. Download networking.pdf from some website and add to my library
   2. Create custom filters based on Author or Category
   3. Create custom tags for the book such as how-to or code guides
   4. Create custom rating of the book

Once all the management has been marked on the windows device, I would like to sync this data to an iPhone to allow me to read on the road.

Refer to the following screenshots for Calibre:

It has been quite some time since I have used Calibre (and this was on Linux). Calibre is able to support multiple file types (and converts), custom tagging and also, shared content.

In the initial install of Calibre eBook Management for Windows you are prompted to select a device you would like to share books with:

Furthermore, you are then able to configure content sharing to an iPhone via the initial install:

Lastly you are then able to Connect to iTunes to share your media:

This allows me to also purchase my books in a centralised store, which will aide greatly.

Is anyone aware of an iOS (iPhone) application to pair with this?

Answer 1

Your main question you've already answered yourself: Calibre is the central place to manage your collection of books. With this application, you can:

• manage your books and their Metadata
• edit your books (if necessary)
• tag them for categorization
• convert them to the formats you might need

Calibre is cross-platform, so if one day you want to switch to a different OS, you can take its database along – no work lost, no big migration to be done.

Calibre also comes with a build-in web server to be accessed remotely. You will be able accessing your collection

• by author
• by book title
• by tags
• by search (keywords etc.)

Now remains the client-part. For Android, I can point you to my list of eBook Readers, and name my favorite candidate: Moon+ Reader. This app comes with several network libraries pre-configured, and is able to interface with Calibre – simply configure your Calibre server with it, and you have access to all your books. Moon+ understands a huge amount of formats (including EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and many more). It features bookmarks as well as annotations; with PDF, those annotations (and highlights, markings, etc.) are even stored directly into the document – in addition to its own database for faster access, with other formats those go to its database only.

iOS is not my area of expertise, but the favorite app there IMHO is Stanza. Like Moon+, it supports a wide range of formats, and has lots of customizable features. As I see my eBook server quite frequented by the Stanza user-agent, it should be safe assuming Stanza can be used with Calibre as well (same technology behind). Details on that can be found e.g. with a Google search, a quick glance confirming the fact.