Alfa eBooks Manager is another one of those programs who aren’t leaving a thing for the imagination and people know what the program does right after reading or hearing the program’s name. So yes, Alfa eBooks Manager is a free program that you can use in order to manage your electronic book collection. Program is feature rich, so much so that it might even intimidate some with the sheer amount of options that it offers, but if you decide to stick with Alfa eBooks Manager, you’re gonna end up with the ultimate eBook management tool on your hands, which is definitely worth the effort of figuring out how to use it.
Program interface is intuitively divided into two columns, the most important one of which would be the one on the right side where you are presented with books that you have in your collection. Books can be displayed in several different types of “shelves”, you can choose between 13 different types of shelve templates, from the standard ones, where you only have book thumbnails displayed, to the more advanced ones which actually have wooden book cabinets simulated, like the one that you see above.
Adding books and collection management in Alfa eBooks Manager
Collections can be created, edited and saved as databases. Each collection can be regarded as a database, so you can actually run several digital book collections at once. When you first start the program you’ll be asked if you want to start a new database, open an existing or if you would like to open a template database which is what you can see on the image above. When you start a new book collection this is what you’ll see:
I pointed out the two main options that you can use in order to add books to your collection. First one would be manual addition where you can add books individually to the collection. Second option which makes life easier would be the Scan for books option where you can select a folder which will be deleted and from which, if found, books will be added automatically.
Add books from Amazon, Barns & Noble and Google Books
With Alfa eBooks Manager you can add books from the famous online book sites, like Amazon, Google Books and Barns and Noble. To do this select Add from web and search for books in the window that appears:
What kind of formats does Alfa eBooks Manager support?
Program supports pretty much all the eBook formats that are out there, it even supports audio book formats, be careful when you’re scanning for books, the program might load your music collection as books;). Some of the supported formats would be:
- LRF
- DJVU
- FB2
- CHM
- MP3
- MOBI
Program usage and conclusions
It might take a few moments to find your way around Alfa eBooks Manager, but the same is true for every program out there. All in all this is a great tool, there are also paid versions where you can import Google Libraries, update author image directly from Google search and more, check the main site for more info. The free version should be more than enough, try that first.
