Thinking about self-hosting an ebook library? Here are the open source software you can consider.
Caliber
What’s the benefit of this over ftp?
Most people don’t know how to use ftp anymore. It’s a pretty limited protocol (and requires 2 open ports to function). It’s hard to integrate with good modern auth solutions. Probably more, that’s off the top of my head.
I personally use Calibre+Calibre-web.
It’s configured as a proxy for the Kobo store, the default store for my e-reader.
That means that when I click the sync button on my Kobo, it downloads anything hosted on my calibre-web server, while still keeping the ability to browse the Kobo store.
I enjoy booklore, was easy to setup. I don’t think its very matureyet though. Just updated last night and an annoying bug where sometimes books wouldn’t show up after import has been fixed, so the upside is active development!
Honestly most of these look to be almost the same so I’m not sure what the key defining features would be.
Also using Booklore with 2 Kobos, works great!
Although annotation syncing isn’t supported yet, I believe there’s a pull request for it already.
Been using booklore for a few months now. It definitely has that new car smell to it while also having lots of small irritating bugs or UX oversights (like moving books from one shelf to another doesn’t actually deselect them so selecting another book and moving it to a different shelf moves every previously selected book to that new shelf). Keep in mind I haven’t added or altered anything in my library in about a month so this could’ve been fixed. I still think it works better than calibre-web which is what I switched from and I definitely think it’s worth a quick setup on docker.
jellyfin has the option to host your books, and with the OPDS plugin you can pull books directly off the server with compatible readers (koreader, moon+, etc), no need to copy things around manually.
Yeah, it was easy to set up the Jellyfin plugin.
I have tried every possible set up, I’ve got to say that the best one so far for me is sychthing + Koreader: dead simple, no databases, synchs annotations and highlights as well, books are simply epub files + metadata.
Aka no dealing with exports, database corruption or stuff like that.
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I needed Kobo/KOreader support, calibre-web handles this nicely. Looking to set up annotation/note sync over the weekend, then it’ll be perfect.
Aren’t ebooks like… Miniscule, file-size wise? Like smaller than mp3s?
Most of my ebooks are large as they are comics. You also have EPUB3 ebooks now, which can contain images and audio in them too (think combined ebook + audiobook). So they can get pretty large.
Some can be very big if they include pictures. (like cookbooks)
However, yes… if it’s just say a fiction book with no pictures, they are kilobytes in size.
In addition to Calibre-Web there is also Calibre Web Automated.
I just set this up last week to finally organize and dedrm my amazon eBook library I downloaded before they disabled that. Working great so far.
FYI, you can still dedrm Amazon books. Even ones you buy today.
Edit: Not going to lie, it’s a lot more complicated now. But it actually works for Amazon borrowed books too (i.e. - Libby library books)
You have to use KindleForPC 2.8.0. You download the books you want, then run an app called KFXKeyExtract28 to pull out all the keys.
You have to have DeDRM installed in calibre and point the plugin to the keyfile that gets generated (you only have to do this once)
Then you can import the books into calibre and everything will work as normal.
https://github.com/Satsuoni/DeDRM_tools/discussions/25
Don’t get discouraged, it works, you just have to figure out the right workflow that you’re comfortable with.
Also, I have no idea why they don’t just update the ReadMe, as it seems like this discussion thread is the only actual place this is documented.
Thank you I appreciate the info I mentally already shifted to not using amazon for ebooks anymore but there are occasional sales I’ll have to get this new method setup soon.
I’ve been using calibre since around 2009 and it is an incredible piece of software. For handling ebooks, specially for eBook readers and file formats, it has no equal. Unfortunately it is built around the idea of installing it into one computer and connecting your eBook to it. Which makes it a bit clunky in my opinion nowadays.
Maybe calibre web fixes that, I need to check it one day. For actual books I think it falls between that and booklore.
All the other options seem to be more indicated to comics and manga, which is another aspect I’ve been noticing calibre does not do such a great job. I think I’ll have to keep two different ones, one for reading from a tablet comics and such and another for ebooks to send to the reader.
… comics and manga, which is another aspect I’ve been noticing calibre does not do such a great job
Absolutely. Calibre is horrible with anything that is fixed format. I recently backed up my entire Kindle library with about 1k manga volumes, expecting to be able to convert from KFX to EPUB format as I have been doing for my regular books for 15+ years. Calibre failed awfully at this. The only thing it’s reasonably good at with comics, is converting to ZIP format. So I had to write a Python script to take the KFX -> ZIP outputs from Calibre and convert them into working EPUB files.
There’s a docker that essentially sets up a web VNC for Calibre. I do this for file conversion, DRM removal (only books I buy), etc.
Then I use Calibre-web for the OPDS server and nice web UI.
I find it very confusing to get a good workflow with it + calibre.
I sync all of my books (and use readarr for organization or occasionally grabbing books from dead authors) via syncthing. Then calibre web won’t ingest any new books I copy to the folder, so I have to go to desktop calibre to add them manually, then it will sync the database and calibre-web has a built-in task for scanning any database changes so then the book will show up.
Seems like a clunky method and I would think I am doing it wrong, but I haven’t found a way for calibre to scan books already organized in folders in its book directory.
You can have calibre auto import from a folder. Though be careful because it deletes them from that folder (you might want to do single direction sync into that folder).
And if you share the db with calibre-web or have some other sync method that works, you should be good to go.
Hmm so how does the workflow look like for you? Is the calibre web tied up to the DB of that calibre VNC? Do you manually add the books to calibre over the VNC? Then is calibre web allowed to make changes to the DB or does it have read only access? as far as I understand calibre is not recommended to have multiple sources of changes to the DB as it can end up corrupted or something? (At least it can’t resolve conflicts I think)
As a solution it seems like it could work, but it feels like over complicated to get around the limitations of calibre.
Yes, they share the database. Yes, I add the books to calibre. I think I have it as read only for calibre-web.
Regarding overcomplication, I admit the initial setup took a while. But I’ve had it running for a couple years now with no major issues.
So… if my SO is buying ebooks from the Kobo store, can they upload to Calibre (etc) and then someone else can download it?
They read a heap of books and want to share them with their family… who are on Kindles, with that DRM nonsense (boooo)
Yep, though with calibre in particular you want to kind of make sure it’s locked down real good. People sniff for the ports it uses, so open calibre-web libraries get found quickly, and then will usually have some attempts at cracking.
I had mine set up as a local-only thing (could only access from my home WiFi), but from experiences with other apps that have similar crawlers, it takes about a week for them to be found. Just make sure everyone’s passwords are decent, or just share one account if it’s people you trust.
Ok, good point.
This would be local only so they can up/download ebooks here and share with the family - when they’re here.
Thanks
The one I’ve enjoyed the most is https://www.audiobookshelf.org/, it may be “focused” on audio books, but works really well for everything. It also supports offline mode (meaning downloading local copies in the app).
it may be “focused” on audio books, but works really well for everything
Huh…didn’t know that. It has a great looking UI.
Wait you use it also for epub/pdf? How does that work, can you connect a client and grab it from there? Can you have both an audiobook and text version of the same book?
You can read using the web client or dedicated apps (android and ios). I feel like the clients work just as good if not better than similar software.
I haven’t tested how it handles two versions (audio/ebook) of the same book, but I have ebooks and audio books and it works well for me.
That’s really cool. After I replied I also remembered you can have multiple libraries in audiobookshelf so even if side-by-side doesn’t work it shouldn’t be an issue.
Unfortunately I love my Readest reading app too much to switch away but it’s nevertheless good to know for other family members.
I’m on calibre web automated but I’m looking to migrate away. Gets tons of features that I’m not using and I can’t keep up with. Also the slop release notes are barely readable. I put up an issue for that, not sure if it’s gonna help.
I just add a book via the web interface now and then and later download it via OPDS. Probably giving Booklore a try.
I did this switch a few months back when Readarr really started to fall apart on me. Booklore has been excellent for my normal ebook library, epub, and a few pdfs. The exception being larger comic files which I find it struggles with. I’ve been using it directly connected via OPDS and it’s syncing service to KOReader, and it’s been awesome.
Overall, I highly recommend Booklore at this point!
I am using booklore for the same reason as you and it works very well. The only feature I’m missing is highlighting, but I can live without it.
