Thinking about self-hosting an ebook library? Here are the open source software you can consider.
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.
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.
… 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.
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.
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.
In addition to Calibre-Web there is also Calibre Web Automated.
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.
Oooo, I didn’t know that. That’s fancy
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.
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).
I do the same. It is not perfect for it but it works and it is already running. I’m not sure I would recommend it for anyone not looking for audiobooks
I tried Calibre web and Kogma.
Calibre is just bad software at this point, it’s clunky and not really designed as a server.
Kogma was fine, but a web only interface made it hit or miss. The big selling point for me with audio bookshelf was the ability to download local copies.
