KooBits – A Simple But Cool Digital Shelf For Your Collection Of eBooks

Things are really on the upswing for those who like their eBooks. We have a host of digital eBook readers jostling for space. There's the iPad with its shoulder to the door and we have always had quite a few software readers since the early days. I still love the the press smell of a new book and the charm of turning a page. But I also believe that eBooks have two things going for them – convenience and availability. If you are missing the 'charm' bit, here's KooBits for you.
KooBits is a collection manager for all the eBooks you have scattered on your computer. Think of it as a centralized library for organizing and managing your eBooks. That it's a free download isn't the only charming bit about it. Apart from being an eBook manager, KooBits is a lot more.


KooBits is available for both Windows and Mac. It's a mere 12.3MB download. The only other requirement for this freeware is that you have Adobe Air installed. One of the benefits of Adobe AIR is immediately apparent in KooBits rich glossy look.
The slick interface is the first appealing tug that will make you feel like putting up all your eBooks on its shelves.

Organizing Your eBook Shelf

KooBits can open popular eBook formats like PDF, EPUB, XML, HTML, KBJ, and more (that includes animation).
Importing all your eBooks and creating your shelf is a browse and add operation. If you have them all in one folder, it makes your task that much easier. The cover thumbnails are large enough for you to glance through your collection without squinting at the titles. You can rearrange the order of the books with a drag 'n drop.

The library has three default categories. If your reading interests are spread across the board, you can create your own categories. In fact it's an organizational tip because KooBits does not have a feature to add tags or any other form of filter. The new categories fall below the three default categories. You can even give them a choice of icons.

KooBits lacks the feature to add more to each book's description. Clicking on the title and then View info doesn't give you any scope to add your own information.

KooBits has a list view (List Mode) which is more mundane when compared with the neatness of the Shelf Mode.

Populate Your Book Shelf With Free eBook Downloads

Even if you don't have a great collection of eBooks, and the shelves are lying vacant, KooBits gives you a couple of options to fill them up.
The Bookstore is where you can head to for downloading paid and free titles. Get the free account registration done first. If you don't want to shell out the dollars, check out the free titles that are available across the genres. With a single click you can download a free book to your library. Free books are in the public domain and you can find a lot of titles on online book resources like Project Gutenberg.

The Drop Box is like a daily mail service which 'drops' a random free book (according to the genres you specify during the account sign-up) into your KooBits account. Each eBook delivered to your Drop Box is only available for free on that day.

What KooBits lacks is a search tool for wading through all available titles.

Reading eBooks On The Viewer

You don't have to use an external program to read the collection of eBook titles you have been saving up. The Viewer is the tool for the job. There's plenty to like about it: a multi-colored Highlighter, a Stamp tool for symbolic annotations on eBooks, and a Crop Image button for extracting content from any eBook and saving it on the Scrapbook. All extracted content is stored in the Scrapbook on the sidebar.
You can set up the reading screen with a few options like Scrolling, Flipping, and Sliding.

Should You Put All Your eBooks On KooBits?

Why not? Even though KooBits still has some bits missing, the sum of its parts is still appealing. There's no search feature yet. Filters to handle a large collection aren't in place. An automatic pinging of Amazon to access a book's information would have been really handy. The viewer does not have a zoom. But then you might not miss these features right now as the basic functions serve adequately and slickly.
Download KooBits 4.0 and let us know if the eBook collection manager holds an appeal for you.