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.
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.
Calibre
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.
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.
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.
❤️
Thank you. Half the battle is learning the correct terminology!
The calibre content server also serves OPDS. Once you have a OPDS server in place you’ll need to point a capable reader at it, but after that syncing and reading happens in the reader.
Calibre-web supports OPDS and uses the Calibre database.
Why not just use files?
Because unfortunately that wouldn’t pass the spouse test.
I mean she could, until she is bored.
Plus this is hopefully a self hosted community, so understands that I don’t mind doing a bit of legwork up front to gain an ease of use later down the line.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
[Thread #496 for this sub, first seen 8th Feb 2024, 18:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot
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.
I know you said “self hosted”, but if you are interested in an Android app, Google Play Books does most of what you want, I think. You can upload your books, and read them on any device (with offline capabilities). But this is the Self Hosted community, so I will show myself out.
Literally the opposite of the point of the whole community there bud
How well does that work on eink displays? I guess I’ll have to try it, but the Kindle app always tries to add animation on Android.
On kindle, if you tap the middle of the screen, then click the little Aa up top, you get formatting options. On reflowable formats, you can go to the more tab and uncheck the animation button. On ones that are fixed pages, it should be one of the only options.
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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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