PDF files are one of the most used formats for sharing all kinds of documents, including, of course, books. However, when it comes to reading those PDFs on mobile devices or in e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle, the reality is that they do not look as good, or are not compatible with the apps that manage our eBook libraries.
This can be solved by converting the PDF to eBook either to the popular EPUB format that is compatible with almost all readers, to MOBI, or to proprietary formats such as Amazon’s AZW3 for Kindle or Sony’s BbeB.
Caliber, the solution for everything
If converting PDF files to ePub or any other electronic book format is something you do or plan to do frequently, then what you need to do is download and install Caliber. This manager of ebooks serves everything and is extremely easy to use.
You can download Caliber for Windows, Linux or macOS from the official website. The installation is extremely simple and once you start the program for the first time you only need to do a couple of extra clicks to convert your PDFs.
First you must click on Add books to add the PDFs to your Caliber library. Select all you want from your disk and once done that, all will appear listed with title, author, date and other details.
In the list select the PDF or the PDFs that you want to convert and click on the Convert books icon. This will open a new window with multiple options to edit the document metadata and select the output format to convert.
To the right of the window if you click on the Output Format menu you can choose to convert to EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and many more. When you have chosen, simply click on OK.
Once Caliber finishes the operations you just have to click on the book in the list to see the description on the right and get details about the different formats in which your book is now available.
If you click on Click to open , Caliber will take you to the folder where all the versions of your ebook are located. From there you can copy the book to another folder, device or send it online.
If you want to send a PDF to your Kindle or another device, you do not need to convert it manually, Caliber automatically does it to the correct format when you manage your library of ebooks with the program.
Other alternatives online
If you do not want to download a program like Caliber, you can use something like Nimbooks to organize ebooks, comics and magazines in the cloud. Nimbookssupports PDF files and can convert them to the appropriate format when you want to see them in your ebook reader.
If you want a free and easy to use online tool to convert PDF you can try Online ePub converter . From there you can upload your PDF files from your disk, or use the ones with Dropbox or Google Drive. You can convert to EPUB, AZW, MOBI and more.
An alternative similar to the previous one is To ePub , this also lets you convert PDF to EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 and more, easy and fast. The difference between this and Caliber is that with the latter you do not need to upload your PDFs to anyone’s cloud in case it is a sensitive document.
Adapt the PDF format to an e-book reader
However, all the mentioned solutions are only responsible for converting one format to another so that it can be read by an app or device, what it does not do is give it precisely the best format, and those who have read a PDF on a Kindle know that they tend to be uncomfortable, especially if the document has several columns.
There is a tool called k2pdfopt that tries to solve that problem. What k2pdfopt does is transform the text within the PDF and adapt it to the type of screen on which it is going to look , whether it is a reader such as the Kindle or a Smartphone.
The version does not have the best interface in the world, in fact only the Windows version has a graphical interface. The versions for macOS and Linux work from the terminal. But its usefulness is undeniable.
