I’ve picked up an eink Android tablet, which is awesome. However I have plenty of ebooks I’ve purchased over the years on places such as Humble, and I was wondering whether there was a self hosted solution like Plex/Emby/Jellyfin but designed for ebooks.
I’ve seen Calibre but it doesn’t seem to be quite the same thing, and running a sync is a bit clunky for the spouse factor.
Is there anything that would index the books, show a bookshelf and allow me to read them, with offline support?
Preferably with an Android app for reading with, and the reader handling eink rather than scrolling.
Calibre
What about Calibre databse but Calibre-web for a daily use?
This.
We each have an account. Login to the web interface. Choose the desired book. Click send. The epub is emailed to our Kindle.
Running calibre-web off a docker instance. Library is on my NAS.
I use the Window client to add books, handle conversions, and manage things since I have specialized plugins. You can read via the web app as well, but I prefer my ancient Paperwhite.
The epub is emailed to our Kindle.
Amazon have been making this harder and harder. Originally you could define an allowlist of senders, and any emails from those senders would go to the Kindle. Then they changed it so you have to click a link in an email to approve it. Now, you have to go to Amazon, find the Kindle content page (which is well hidden), and click a button to approve it.
If you know a workaround for that then I’d love to hear it.
I vaguely remember what you’re referring to and being pretty frustrated about it. I can’t remember exactly what changed regarding clicking an emailed link. I simply don’t experience that any longer. Either Amazon stopped or I changed some setting somewhere that I’m not recalling off hand… 😬
Currently, I have calibre-web (and the windows client) set to use my email’s SMTP credentials. I then set the “sender” to an Amazon approved email. In my case, the email isn’t actually real. I just use a forwarder.
Make sure you add that sender email to the Amazon personal document approved email list.
The most recent bump I’ve had with Amazon is that they no longer accept mobi files. It’s no big deal though since they accept epubs without an issue.
Jellyfin has ebook support and allows you to download them for offline reading, which I reccommend because the ebook viewer is very basic
I can confirm and I do use this feature of jellyfin. It works great. The reader is unusable. I use Librera for reading. It’s great, free, and open source.
So my flow is biblio, mam, library Genesis, Anna’s. Then to jellyfin folder that it reads automatically. Then I can download that to any device connected to the jellyfin server. Local is easy, abroad through tailscale.
I’ll give it a go. Thanks!
AudiobookShelf does more than audiobooks. You can do epubs, etc.
I shill audiobookshelf every chance I get.
https://wiki.kavitareader.com/en/faq/external-readers
I keep not getting to it, so can’t vouch for it, but Kavita looks like it’s worth trying.
I use Kavita. I have some minor complaints but in general it works.
I haven’t tried others though, so can’t say if it’s the best or not.
Calibre does all the management and conversion/reading/other but you have to do the initial work of cataloging them.
Afaik it won’t download covers. Maybe it does now, idk.
I wasn’t aware of a good reader app, and it required me to use the web view. Unless there is one that I missed?
I run calibre off my desktop. You can enable the Calibre content server and it can serve up your books for download (or provide a web reader).
If you have an Android device, you can use something like Moon Reader (or any other reading app that supports epub or Pdf) to download content from the Calibre content server.
With respect to covers and metadata, Calibre can tag and fill in this info as well - out of the box it will scrape information from Amazon.
I’ve used Ubooquity on and off for this. It has some nice features, but isn’t open source.
So not a solution you’re asking for but the remarkable e-ink tablet has a great set of apps for mobile devices and computers. It hosts your books in the cloud so you’ll always have access to stuff anywhere with internet. Automatically syncs across devices. Pretty slick.
Yeah. An eInk device that can run an Android file browser and just grab eBook files off the local network is a fantastic solution.
I have an Onyx Boox tablet and use ubooquity as an ebook OPDS server on my unraid box at home, it has an online reader that’s pretty good, but I just download the ebook file to local storage and use the much better reader built into the system. I’m a slow reader so I dont have to do it often.
I haven’t really found a third party reader that is e-ink optimised and can seamlessly integrate an OPDS server. I’d like to find one, particularly if it has syncing between devices as I also use a foldy phone as my main device so it seems some use as a reader sometimes.
I also self host a huge archive of manga in Komga, and access that on the tablet and phone via a tachiyomi fork, it handles e-ink optimisation pretty well. It also doesn’t sync between devices but if I use the komga web reader it does, it’s just a bit power hungry on the Boox and has no offline functionality so I just manually keep in sync which isn’t that hard.
Same, have a boox, getting a second boox, and really wish I had a better option to track location across devices. KOReader is a nice reader experience, but browsing books sucks. I use a blend of moon reader and the built in app depending on my mood, but neither feels as good as maple reader on my iPad, and nothing I’ve found can really sync my location.
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. Calibre is great for managing it on a personal machine, but I want something that I can use on the web and then, with a click, send a book to a Kindle or whatever.
Calibre Content Server
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server.htmlOr Calibre-Web
https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-webYeah, based on OP saying low WAF, I’m guessing maybe he didn’t set up the content server? Ours is great, and I can read on my phone or 2-in-1.
Syncthing and KoReader. I also have a few android eink devices and this system works great for me. When I need a better interface for organizing/editing metadata of files I use calibre which also has some plugins to help free your files from proprietary epub readers.
Jellyfin can do books with a plugin
The reader itself leaves a lot to be desired though. There’s literally no UI besides the arrow keys and no way to configure font rendering etc. It’s cool that the functionality is there, but it needs work.
I’m a JF developer and personally use Kavita for my books 🤣
On android there is a client for it, called Jellybook, but I have never used it. Maybe that has better UI than the official app.
I think kavita works fairly well. It doesn’t have an app, but it comes with a built-in OPDS server, so you can just plug the link into any app that supports it and access all your book. For eink devices I recommend koreader. For other devices you may prefer an app with a less confusing UI, but that’s a matter of preference. Alternatively the kavita webclient has a reader as well.
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Kavita
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Komga
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Calibre-web
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Audiobookshelf with ePub plugin
Those are the main ones I know about. I only use Kavita and I like it, but it’s not perfect so you should try them all.
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Koreader has a plugin to sync with calibre local server and its a REALLY good ereader software
