eReaders for Selfhosted book collections

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨palitu@aussie.zone⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Hi fellow hosters! I really did not know where to ask this question - and i thought you lot are pretty similar to me. If you can think of somewhere else to post this, please let me know!

I am looking for a solution to be able to host my own books (something like calibre i guess), that i can easily push them to a yet-to-be-purchased eReader.

Firstly - What eReader are you using that allows you to add any number of book sources to? i would also like to include my local library subscription, as well as locally hosted and purchased ones.

Secondly - Any hints on hosting a book collection. (Readarr v calibre, etc), where you get books from, removing DRM from eBooks that you buy, that sort of stuff.

thanks!

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Comments

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Yoddel_Hickory@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Kobo ebooks are the best for this, just plug them in a computer and they act as a USB key. Calibre can manage them too. Some models have a SD card slot for a lot more storage too.

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- pete@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Second, I run a fleet of kobos for the family, they alsonwork pretty well with the libraries around the area which the kids love.
  
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  - palitu@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    i have an older Kobo Glo, which does not have the library integration, but i am wanting to do exactly the same as you. get a few to take with us, and use the library borrowing to get books to read.
    
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- roger_fediverse@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Calibre Web has Kobo integration, although I'll admit I haven't been able to make it work so far: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/wiki/Kobo-Integration
  
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- palitu@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  yeah, i have kobo glo currently, need to get some more for an upcoming long trip. thanks for the vote for Kiobo!
  
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Fermiverse@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I use a pocketbook since years now.

crisp display

eats every format you throw at it

also bluetooth on board for listening to audiobooks or music. Means no mobile necesarry when going to the beach

water resistant models, read in the bathtube

send to pocketbook to receive ebooks via mail

KOReader compatible with calibre to connect to your selfhosted server

connection to onleihe or libby
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- iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Ooh. Those price points are pretty solid. If you had to pick one for daily use, including travel, would you go InkPad 4 or one of the eras?
  
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  - Fermiverse@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    We (3) use Touch HD 3 since several years now. As an upgrade (larger screen and side holding) we just ordered one Era in silver (16gb).
    
    I started with a pocketbook 360, a 5 inch side holding reader. It is nice to see that the go back to another side holder version again, the 360 was, because of this, my favourite.
    
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drz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Kobo with KOreader is a great option. KOreader can connect to your WiFi and you can rsync your library to the device.

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Daaric@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I do have an Onyx Boox tablet, the Note 2 plus to be specific, and I do run Calibre and calibre-web on my home server.
Though I don’t actually use calibre-web at all, and the full flat calibre only to organise the collection. Usually I just copy the files to my tablet manually, but I do leverage the built-in RSS reader in Calibre to create my own epub “newspaper” periodically, which is synced to the tablet by Synching.
I have also used to have (actually still have it, but not use it) an old Kobo touch with Koreader, and I intended to download the books wirelessly using the calibre-web, but honestly, I just copied it over an USB anyway…
If I think about it, I could simply sync my whole library over Synching.

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leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have a Kobo Clara which I installed (free, open source) KOReader on. I also have Calibre installed on a desktop machine with the db for that located on my server (which is in my home, not a VPS). Having the db there means it can also serve the Calibre-web install which is also on the server.

When I first set this up I used Calibre on my desktop to connect over wifi to my Kobo and pushed everything I had straight onto it in one go. Now, as I add new individual books to Calibre, I use the OPDS connection on my Kobo to connect to Calibre-web and pull the new book to my Kobo from there. This means I can access my collection wherever I am in the world.

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- LaggyKar@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  What’s the pro of KOReader compared to the stock reader?
  
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  - leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The ability to easily connect with Caliber mainly. But also its much more privacy respecting.
    
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ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I use FBReader on a couple of Android 8" tablets and my phone, it’ll connect to a calibre library and stores/syncs progress on Gdrive or Dropbox (wish that was more open). But its a great reader app.

I docker calibre/calibre-web/openbooks as follows and pull my books from usenet where someone has more than likely broken the DRM. I’m just going to say, I own every book I read on paper, I just can’t stand paper books and there’s no way to convince these publishing co’s to send me the ebook for the physical book.

When you use this, go into the Calibre app and set up the auto-import to the Data volume that is shared by the containers. Then when you download a book, you can just press cancel to save, as the book will be autoimpored from the temp folder in Openbooks by Calibre and deleted from the Data volume.

version: "2.1"
services:
  calibre:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre:latest
    container_name: calibre
    environment:
      - PUID=0
      - PGID=0
      - TZ=America/Denver
    security_opt:
      - seccomp=unconfined
    volumes:
      - ./data:/config
    ports:
      - 7080:8080
      - 7081:8081
    restart: unless-stopped
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true

  calibre-web:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:latest
    container_name: calibre-web
    environment:
      - PUID=0
      - PGID=0
      - TZ=America/Denver
      - DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-calibre #optional
    volumes:
      - ./data/web-config:/config
      - ./data/:/books
#      - ./data/Calibre\ Library:/books
    ports:
      - 7083:8083
    restart: unless-stopped
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true

  openbooks:
    ports:
      - 7082:80
    volumes:
      - './data/:/books'
    restart: unless-stopped
    container_name: OpenBooks
#    command: --persist
    command: --name sodfappsdldjudls --persist
    environment:
      - BASE_PATH=/
    image: evanbuss/openbooks:latest
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true

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xcjs@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m using a combination of:

The Boox Palma reader, though they have larger tablets if you prefer. I’m not sure about the others, but the Palma runs Android with the Play Store.

Kavita to host my ebooks online.

FolderSync with SFTP to sync all of my books ahead of time to my SD card.

Moon Reader to add my Kavita server’s OPDS feed as an online catalog if I need to grab something manually.
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uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Bouncing off of this, what e-book server exists that a clients sync progress back to the server (i.e. Amazon’s whispersync)?

I primarily read on one device, but occasionally I pull up my phone when I don’t have my e-reader and it’s really handy to have to progress always up to date.

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- palitu@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  that would be good to know!
  
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- Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Ubooquity does this if you use the web reader across multiple devices, not sure about any third party apps or e-reader integration though.
  
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- RicoBerto@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I use Kavita for my comic book collection, and recently added some books into it as well. Syncs well across devices. I don’t really read books as I have so much time to listen to them instead but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work for someone who does.
  
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  - uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I understand that Kavita only offers reading through a web interface, so it would make sense that reading progress is synchronized since you are always reading directly from the server.
    
    What I’m referring to is a client and server that synchronizes offline reading progress (When a connection can be made), especially one that works on an e-reader device.
    
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- B0rax@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  As there are currently bo other suggestions: I know that Audiobookshelf has support for non-audio books as well and it will sync progress. I have not used this functionality and don’t know how good it works for ebooks.
  
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redballooon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have done this with calibre and a Kindle, worked fine.

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ForeverClueless@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have a Kobo and use calibre to manage my books. I don't sync online it's just plug and remove what I have read and upload my next lot of books that I want to read. My Kobo currently has around 300+ books on it at the moment so I can read whatever I feel like it. Doesn't help your syncing between different devices but I guess you could us Dropbox or something like that to link up your phone, tablet etc.

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keyez@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have a 1st gen kindle paperwhite and use

github.com/Kareadita/Kavita & github.com/Kareadita/KavitaEmail

The latter allows me to configure an action in the former to email epubs to my kindle and I’ve been using that for the last year or so.

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Zedd00@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’ve owned nearly every version of the nook, and haven’t had a problem getting stuff onto it.

For hosting my collection, I use vaemendis.net/ubooquity/ it has a built in reader that saves states, but I primarily download to my nook and read with moon reader +.

There’s a docker compose and env file in github.com/zedd00/…/docker-compose.yml that have my entire setup.

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Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have a Boox tablet (an older Note3) for the actual reading, I run readarr as a downloader/manager and use Ubooquity as the server. If you arent a massive nerd I’d probably suggest a kobo reader over an android reader.

I dont tend to “stream” the books from the server, because there is no point, they are tiny files, so i use the ubooquity webui to download the file to the device when needed. though even that is unnecessary as I can just vpn into the server itself and pull the files, or have them all sync automatically when on wifi since it is just an android device so i can run whatever apps I want to do that, I just use ubooquity as I used to use its web ui reader to keep in sync between multiple devices but stopped reading on my phone as I preferred the e-ink display. could also just dump them to a usb-c disk and move them manually.

I might soon replace ubooquity alltogether and just have Readarr put the files into nextcloud or something directly and have that sync with the tablet when on wifi.

The source for the titles themselves is the usual suspects, public trackers, usenet etc.

I’ve used calibre in the past to convert and de-drm books for a kindle I used previously, but I never actually needed any of its other features like re-formatting or editing metadata so I stopped using it as soon as I replaced the kindle with the Boox reader.

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- palitu@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  thanks. i will look at readarr and ubooquity as the server side.
  
  I have seen some books i acquired as over 100mb, typically with kids books. not sure why, but there you have it.
  
  I think i will skip the tablet, due to battery life, i love the weeks of use of my current kobo Glo.
  
  thanks
  
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  - Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I do get about 2 weeks out of my Boox tablet usually, but that is with all the radios turned off, no light and using the built in reader app that puts it into a super low power state as opposed to third party reader apps that burn through battery like nothing else.
    
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Grey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I got a remarkable way back in grad school when it was the only real option for full size reader that could handle PDFs so I could use it to read and annotate scientific papers which don’t handle conversion well. Now there’s a bunch of products that can do it. But for the remarkable 1 at least, you upload books into the remarkable app and it’ll auto download onto the device over wifi, so no need to plug it in. However, everything goes through the remarkable server so defeats the underlying principles of self hosting lol

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Silejonu@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Kobo devices are easy to install KOReader on.

You should also ask yourself what kind of books you want to read. Black and white comic books, for instance, can be read on an e-reader, as long as the screen is big enough.

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