this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
23 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

38707 readers
677 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I assumed everyone was using Calibre, but recent searches suggest that isn't always the case

top 29 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Honest question. Why host them? Finishing one book can take a while and they are incredibly small.

I just use calibre and sync with my e reader and phone occasionally.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

For me (I use Kavita) it’s because I want to be able to just pick up whatever device is in front of me at the moment and pick up the book where I last left off even if it was on another device

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Syncing progress seems like a very good reason for hosting. I didn't think of that.

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Because I have a really cool library and it should all be kept in a centralised place

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I do the same thing. I’ve tried Kavita and Audiobookshelf and ended up just keeping the books on a network share and then accessing them through Calibre. I am sideloading to a Kindle though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You can use calibre-web to send to your Kindle email. They will appear in the Kindle as "Documents"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Download whenever I feel like it. Share them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

This is the right answer. I have dockerized Calibre and Calibre-Web for initial intake, then use Calibre-Web's OPDS feed with my Moon+ Android app for reading on my tablet/phone.

Calibre handles type conversions, metadata sync, and file organization.

Calibre-Web works well for browser reading on my PC.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Same here. My Kobo Libre 2 syncs with it over Wifi. It's nice.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Does it work for ePUBs too or just audio books?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yup. It's got built in browser based text reader and an audio player.

FYI, readarr needs separate instances for audio and text. Wasn't worth the hassle for me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

I use Kavita and KavitaEmail to organize and have a frontend for my books, and the latter to email them to my kindle if it's not on there yet. My kavita container is stopped most of the time because I already know what I'm going to read next and just need it up to sync or send new books.

Used to just have my library I exported from Amazon and ebooks com on a single folder on my NAS, kavita helped clean it up a bit.

I also tried audiobookshelf but mostly for audiobooks and podcasts and didnt quite fit my workflow I already had and liked using kavita and Antennapod.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Academics focused, but Zotero indexing a large cloud storage drive.

Let's things organized by subject, tag, author, title, or whatever else I want. Also keeps my notes all in one place. Huge huge proponent and it's open source!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Never heard of Zotero before, it seems to be quite capable

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

The best thing is adding the metadata of a book by ISBN. That or simply search it on worldcat.org and adding by the browser extension.

Phenomenal citations manager.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Calibre for my Kobo, Librera FD on my phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm just here to lurk and see what others say, as I've used Calibre in the past and it didn't really do the job I was hoping it would.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Same. My organization scheme heavily relies on calibres custom columns and export schemas though so it would be hard for me to switch anyway.

The only 2 things I dislike about calibre are the lack of a server based version and the inability to assign a book to multiple series

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I just want something that looks good, can link works by authors and shared universes and can sync reading progress across devices.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I tried Kavita but it didn't have the features I needed. I ended up just throwing them on Nextcloud and using Nextcloud sync onto my reader (Box Air 3c)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

What features did you need?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I am using Calibre-Web mostly - but I have run into issues with thumbnail generation after my collection hit around 500000 books. I am just over 600000 now, but a large swathe don't have thumbnails unless I do a manual metadata search. I should probably look for an alternative, but at this point I CBF.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Over half a million books? I'm so envious!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why lol? The library interface is great and it can manage multiple users. I haven't used it for book hosting, but I am trying to keep an eye out

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I know, it's just the fact that I use it for pretty much all of my media that I find kinda funny. Goes to show, it's really an amazing program tho.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yep, Jellyfin is super underrated.