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.

    • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.caEnglish
      91·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        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.

        • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          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.

  • scholar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    241·
    9 months ago

    Jellyfin has ebook support and allows you to download them for offline reading, which I reccommend because the ebook viewer is very basic

    • PanaX@lemmy.mlEnglish
      19·
      9 months ago

      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.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      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.

  • uzay@infosec.pubEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • Molecular0079@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • RBG@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        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.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
    6·
    9 months ago

    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.

  • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • frazorth@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      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?

      • bluefishcanteen@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        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.

    • cdombroski@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      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.

  • Smokeydope@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    Koreader has a plugin to sync with calibre local server and its a REALLY good ereader software

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    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]

  • Ark-5@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    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.