Can anybody suggest a nice, “Mac-assed” Mac app that handles ePub / PDF / etc. without all the nonsense about the Apple Bookstore?
I have Searching in Apple Book Store turned off in Preferences/Advanced, so while the store is listed in the left-hand panel, I generally don’t see references to the Apple Book Store.
There is Adobe Digital Editions, but I am not a fan of it. Books is the lesser evil, for me. I really wish they’d add a meta data field editable by users to control author sorting.
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I’ve used Clearview. It works well, I had no problems with it, but personally, I prefer Books even though hardly any of my books were purchased in the Apple Book Store.
I use the open source Calibre quite a bit. It is good at converting formats e.g. if I want to read one of my ePub files on my Kindle. Has a library function as well.
It depends on whether or not you’re looking for a Mac only app or need an iOS version as well. I’ve been using Clearview X, which I prefer to Apple Books when it comes to things like editing book information, library organization, sidebar customization, etc. And yes, when it comes to not trying to sell me things. I’ve had to resort to using Books recently it because I’m in the middle of something that requires me to read and annotate the same epubs and PDFs on both my Mac and my iPad, and it’s really the only app that will let me do that. (Well, there’s MarginNote, but I find the UI borderline hostile even though there’s a ton to like about the app itself. And I’ve given up on Readwise Reader ever leaving private beta.)
Apple Books doesn’t need to turn into Calibre, but it would be nice if its functionality included things like tags, more metadata fields, more robust sorting, etc.
It would be lovely if Apple deigned to provide media management apps that weren’t primarily storefronts in the way that say, Pages or Notes aren’t storefronts.
Don’t give them ideas. 
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Paid templates? 
After all, Microsoft already does that!
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Shhhhh …
Although in fairness to Microsoft, Office wasn’t built with the end of being a template storefront in mind.
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