I would like to start managing ebooks and manga properly. I don’t have many, but I plan on increasing my collection. My requirements are not so strict, I don’t mind getting the books/manga myself, but I am also curious about setting up LazyLibrarian at one point, is it worth it? (I already have other *arrs installed on my server). I had similar thoughts about Suwayomi.
My confusion starts from the accessories around all this: Calibre, CalibreWeb/Automated, Komga, Kavita, Audiobookshelf, etc. Does having a Kindle as reading device limits my possibilities to use any of these? Is setting up e.g. both CalibreWeb and Kavita redundant?
I guess my question is how is everyone using these services for their own library :)
I went through essentially the same thing a couple months ago. Tried Calibre (and Calibre server) since everyone recommended it.
Really disliked it. Calibre is great for converting ebooks, but has shit management and webserving capabilities.
I ended up with Kavita and am super happy. On the web client, both management and actual reading are a pleasure. Any phone/tablet client supporting OPDS works perfectly to read/download your manga/books from the server.
And a select few clients go a step further, supporting Kavita’s API, which allows for 2-way sync (effectively, syncing reading progress between all your devices).
Do you have any client recommendations? I’ve tried Kavita and I liked the web app, but having a dedicated 2-way syncing client would be nice!
For manga, I’ve found Mihon to be nicest, by far, and it supports the API. For books, I am currently “stuck” on koreader on Android (which “only” supports OPDS-PS). I do most of my reading on a reMarkable currently, and that has no supporting client. Writing one is on my to-do list, but it’s a bit daunting of a task…
Ebooks: I use Calibre locally and Calibre-web on the server (read-only metadata db, I overwrite with the Calibre version as tagging, etc is far easier on desktop).
You can connect Koreader to Calibre-web and until maybe a fortnight ago you could jailbreak a Kindle and use Koreader instead of the default software. Now you’ll need to manually move files over, or use the email-to-Kindle option (probably a bad idea, but I expect Amazon can tell if you’ve side loaded pirated content anyway). Nowadays I buy from not-Amazon sources, strip any DRM and send it over.
Manga/comics/graphic novels: I use Kavita on the server and I use comictagger on desktop to fix the metadata.
I’m happy to use different set ups for the different types as they’re quite different experiences and specialist tools work better.
Where do you get DRM free ebooks for sale?
None of the books I’ve bought from kobo.com have DRM.
Just to be clear, I’m pretty sure that they don’t have a no-DRM-across-the-board policy, though, so if you’re going there for DRM-free ebooks, you probably want to pay attention to what you’re buying.
checks
Yeah, they have a specific category for DRM-free ebooks:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/drm-free
I’ll also add that independent of their store, I rather like their hardware e-readers, have used them in the past, and if I wasn’t trying to put a cap on how many electronic devices I haul around and wanted a dedicated e-reader, the Kobo devices would probably be pretty high on my list. When I used them, I just loaded my own content onto them with Calibre, not stuff from the Kobo store.