I decided to start using Calibreas my main ebook management program. I've been using it for online content from publications like the Economist and The New Yorker for a while now, but it's become increasingly difficult to manage my entire e-book library, having acquired several hundred books from Amazon over the course of the last 5 years since the original Kindle came out.
While I love the Kindle for travel and being being able to read outdoors, its interface leaves much to be desired for organizing one's content. So, I decided this morning to switch over to Calibre to manage my needs; I think it has matured and become fast enough now to be useful for everyday use. The trick, however, is to get Amazon's DRM (.azw) into Calibre. It turns out, there's a very easy way now with Calibre's built-in plugin system and the plugins here:
I followed these instructions after downloading the actual tools from this page:
https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal-tools-for-ebooks/
Then it was a matter of going into my Kindle Reader for the PC, and (rather irritatingly) individually clicking download on all my ebooks, and dropping the .azw files from "Libraries -> Documents -> My Kindle Content" into Calibre. A metadata and cover art update later, my e-book library is complete:
My Calibre library, after import and metadata addition