Free Calibre Quick Start Guide by John Schember Page B

not, it will ask you if you want to auto convert it. Say yes, and it will take care of the conversion and put the book on your reader.
    That’s all there is to it. Doing it is easier than it sounds because all you need to do is select the book you want on your device and click 'Send to device.' Calibre worries about the formats and converting for you.
2.4: More robust conversion
    Auto conversion is the easiest way to go and in most cases will be all you need to do. However, there are a large number of options that allow control over conversion process. Click the 'Convert books' button in the top tool bar. This screen looks very complicated, but realize that the majority of options here are correctly set by default. Most of the options only need to be changed in special cases. There is one option that is very important and may need to be changed. At the top right there is a drop down for 'Output format'. This controls what format the conversion will generate. Kindle owners will select MOBI and Sony and Nook owners will select EPUB.
    In the conversion dialog there are a few things to check before clicking 'OK' to begin the conversion. The first thing you need to do is double check the metadata and make adjustments if necessary. Also, click on the 'Look & Feel' tab on the left side. The 'Remove spacing between paragraphs' option is very popular. It will cause paragraphs to be formatted with an indent at the beginning instead of separating them with a blank line. It makes the result look more like a printed book than the default, which looks more like a web page.
    Next click 'Page Setup'. If you didn’t select your device during the welcome wizard, you can set it here. The input and output profiles provide specialized optimization for your specified device. Be aware that not all formats are affected by the profile.
    That’s it for the basic conversion options. Every option in the conversion dialog has a description of what it does which is displayed when you hover the mouse cursor over it. Look though the options and play with them to produce output that suits your taste. Options set in the conversion dialog are saved on a per book basis. Each time you click convert for a particular book, the options from the last time you converted it will be remembered. However, your changes will not be applied to other books in your library.
    Clicking 'OK' closes the dialog and begins the conversion job. Look at the bottom right of the screen at the “Jobs” indicator. When it spins that means Calibre is working. Clicking it will show what job is being worked on.
    When the conversion is finished the jobs count will drop by one. When the job count drops to zero the indicator will stop spinning. After the conversion is finished click the downward facing arrow to the right of the 'Send to device' button. Select one of the 'Send specific format' options (main memory is usually the best choice). A dialog will appear asking you which format you want to send. Select the format you chose in the conversion options. This allows you to specify what format you want sent to your device. If you don't explicitly select a format and you just click the 'Send to device' button it will send the 'preferred' format based on an internal format preference list which is device specific. 
2.5: Limitations of conversion
    Converting between e-book formats does have some limitations. One limitation of using a tool like Calibre is the inability to edit the e-book content before conversion. Calibre simply moves the existing content and layout from one format to another. Calibre is not a editing tool. If there are typos you wish to correct or layout changes you'd like to make, you will need to use a dedicated editing tool such as Sigil or Book Designer .
    Another issue that often arises during conversion is missing or incomplete formatting. Not all e-book formats support the same formatting, so layout details may be lost when converting from one format to another.