I’m looking to expand into having a online library and looking for some real world experiences and opinions. Ideally, looking for someone that worked well with docker and the various arrs.
Calibre Web Automated is what I use. Works well.
Recommendations on self hosting ebooks
Submitted 1 day ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
Comments
irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 day ago BruisedMoose@piefed.social 1 day ago
Another vote for CWA. It’s been a year and I can fully remember my reasons for not going with something else, but I tried several and nothing was quite as complete for what I needed.
I also don’t want or need much for automation. I want to curate my library, there are few authors I’d want to monitor and grab everything from. Then from a metadata front, CWA lets me easily search for and cherry pick bits of metadata.
kevingoes@feddit.online 1 day ago
I’ve been using Grimmory(previously Booklore) and have been very happy with it. It integrates well with Hardcover and Kobo ereaders (with some minor software modifications).
I don’t currently have an automated solution for downloading ebooks.
TheFerventLion@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Seconding this! I’ve been quite happy with the community over at Grimmory as well as the changes. I’ve also taken a peak at BookOrbit, another fork off Booklore, which seems less resource intensive, but the metadata migration (stuff like hardcover ids, other auxiliary fields) seemed a tad more work than I wanted.
oxomoxo@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
a_fancy_kiwi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve been pretty happy with Kavita as the server. You can read the books directly from the web app but if you think you might end up in an area with no signal, you can download the book from Kavita, and use a separate eReader app to read the file locally.
glizzyguzzler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago I’ve got BookOrbit and Audiobookshelf both going. They both can be hosted securely (locked down compose file with read-only, non-root user, etc.) and use Postgres as their DBs, both key features.
I added in BookOrbit to try since it has kobo sync and koreader sync that Audiobookshelf lacks.
I moved books from Audiobookshelf to get BookOrbit going and there was a learning curve to get the UI to do it optimally for me, but I eventually got it to work for me. BookOrbit has the ability to write metadata to the files themselves, which most things lack. Very nice for portability.
There’s a folder BookOrbit imports from and you can set it to populate metadata automatically - seems strongly built for an automated library system.
Both have been very stable. I’d say BookOrbit is the better one - and it supports audiobooks too. Audiobookshelf handles multiple libraries (like books and comics) in a clunky way (have to switch between them like they’re completely different silo’d libraries - much like how Calibre handles them). BookOrbit has them separated but easy to see they exist and you can mix and match them in a collection or something. Better way to handle it.
I use the desktop application Calibre to convert books as needed, but BookOrbit will automatically generate kobo epubs from epubs when syncing so I need not worry about kepub prep.
Lastly, I chose BookOrbit to try over others because Grimmory needs a ton of RAM, Kavita had features behind a paywall, some other one is comic-focused, and the Calibre web iterations give off the vibe of a lot of tapes the inside to make them work; I had big doubts Calibre Web Auto would be able to be run non-root and read-only. Chose Audiobookshelf originally because of the Calibre mess and other options didn’t exist or were much less established.
- irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 day ago
BookOrbit
Never heard of it. Looks pretty sharp.
teslekova@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
AI psychosis! That’s very sad. Seeing it more and more these days. Hope they get better.
dieTasse@feddit.org 1 day ago There is a plugin for koreader to get books from audiobookshelf, I have it, i can check what was it tomorrow.
- glizzyguzzler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
I have seent that in my searches [github.com/naleo/audiobookshelf.koplugin], but I decided to go for something that has it natively since sometimes the plugins get björked by updates (from my experience with gnome and its plugins)
But I will say, Audiobookshelf is superior for its purpose: audiobooks and podcasts. If I wanted that first I’d slap the plugin on to be happy with books/comics and kobos, but I wanted book/comics first so I chose a diff path - abs ain’t bad!
whysofurious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago Going a bit against the common suggestions here but my “workflow” is like this:
- I download books through Z-Library, I tried in the past lazylibrarian and readarr/bookshelf, but I always ended up spending a lot of time on refining the search for non-english books, which was just way easier in Z-Library.
- I tag/update metadata of books using Calibre of my laptop. I prefer to manually do that because while it took a few days to do it for my whole library, I don’t really add books in such a high number that I can justify automating it or having a Calibre container on my homeserver. (I know Calibre Web Automated will do this, but see below). I use Hardcover to track my readings, so Calibre with the hardcover plugin makes it easy to find ids or HC editions for integrations with other apps I use.
- After moving between Kavita, CWA and Booklore, I set up on Komga for library management. I found Komga’s koreader sync way more stable and mature than the other options. I am a bit annoyed by the fact that (as in Kavita) each book/series folder is a series, but at the end of the day the pros outweighs the cons for me. I can manage custom reading lists or series, so it’s not really an issue personally.
MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 1 day ago I’m very happy with Kavita running in Docker. I’ve used it through the Web UI and KOReader on both phone and Kobo. All work great. I manually download books and fix the metadata on them though so YMMV.
Mordikan@kbin.earth 1 day ago Readarr was orphaned, so most people switched to using LazyLibrarian. LL is kind of difficult to work with and you'll typically see a lot of failures in the logs for various things. Instead, you could use Shelfmark which fulfills the same general purpose but is more straightforward.
For browsing/reading, most people using Calibre-Web. You can write a simple bash script to random periodic imports via calibredb. Just point the output directory of Shelfmark to the input directory for that command.
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We’ll that’s a shame to hear that readarr was abandoned.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Chaptarr is a thoroughly re-worked fork of Readarr. It’s been working nicely for me. Not released publicly yet, but it’s going to be soon.
OriginalJay@lemmy.federate.lol 1 day ago
There is a fork of Readarr that works pretty well:
roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Chaptarr is a thoroughly re-worked fork of Readarr. It’s been working nicely for me. Not released publicly yet, but it’s going to be soon.
- dieTasse@feddit.org 1 day ago
I just use Audiobookshelf because i dont want to have two apps for books 😀
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Could look at mirroring Project Gutenberg.
dihutenosa@piefed.social 1 day ago
Kiwix has the whole Gutenberg as a downloadable dataset. Search is basic, tho.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Now wondering if there are alternatives that are similar to Gutenberg but for countries with more relaxed public domain laws. Like Orwell is public domain in the UK but not the US and Gutenberg doesn’t have it.
I run Calibre-Web in Docker (linuxserver.io image) and read on a Kobo. My desktop Calibre library on my laptop is the source of truth; Syncthing replicates it to the server where Calibre-Web serves it, and the Kobo pulls books over Kobo Sync