I’m looking to expand into having a online library and looking for some real world experiences and opinions. Ideally, looking for someone that worked well with docker and the various arrs.
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Calibre Web Automated is what I use. Works well.
I think CWA is the most robust option out there. BookLore was vibecoded and behaved in the typical weird/unexpectedly way vibecoded apps tend to. I haven’t tried the Fork of it, but CWA checks nearly all the boxes and is actively developed.
Another vote for CWA. It’s been a year and I can fully remember my reasons for not going with something else, but I tried several and nothing was quite as complete for what I needed.
I also don’t want or need much for automation. I want to curate my library, there are few authors I’d want to monitor and grab everything from. Then from a metadata front, CWA lets me easily search for and cherry pick bits of metadata.
I’ve been pretty happy with Kavita as the server. You can read the books directly from the web app but if you think you might end up in an area with no signal, you can download the book from Kavita, and use a separate eReader app to read the file locally.
I run Calibre-Web in Docker (linuxserver.io image) and read on a Kobo. My desktop Calibre library on my laptop is the source of truth; Syncthing replicates it to the server where Calibre-Web serves it, and the Kobo pulls books over Kobo Sync
I do something similar, except on the Kobo I run KOReader which can interface with Calibre-Web over OPDS
I’m very happy with Kavita running in Docker. I’ve used it through the Web UI and KOReader on both phone and Kobo. All work great. I manually download books and fix the metadata on them though so YMMV.
Readarr was orphaned, so most people switched to using LazyLibrarian. LL is kind of difficult to work with and you’ll typically see a lot of failures in the logs for various things. Instead, you could use Shelfmark which fulfills the same general purpose but is more straightforward.
For browsing/reading, most people use Calibre-Web. You can write a simple bash script to do periodic imports via calibredb. Just point the output directory of Shelfmark to the input directory for that command.
EDIT: I’m not sure if this exists in Headscale, but Tailscale also has Services you can setup so that something like
machine.some-domain.ts.net:8083can be mapped asbooks.some-domain.ts.net. For Kobo Sync or OPDS devices you can just download to local, but if you are just using an Android device, you can stream the book to the device via browser which is very nice.We’ll that’s a shame to hear that readarr was abandoned.
ShelfMark is the go-to option now. It’s also far better than Readarr was and works seamlessly with both Prowlarr and Anna’s Archive.
Chaptarr is a thoroughly re-worked fork of Readarr. It’s been working nicely for me. Not released publicly yet, but it’s going to be soon.
Chaptarr is a thoroughly re-worked fork of Readarr. It’s been working nicely for me. Not released publicly yet, but it’s going to be soon.
Chaptarr is a thoroughly re-worked fork of Readarr. It’s been working nicely for me. Not released publicly yet, but it’s going to be soon.
Going a bit against the common suggestions here but my “workflow” is like this:
- I download books through Z-Library, I tried in the past lazylibrarian and readarr/bookshelf, but I always ended up spending a lot of time on refining the search for non-english books, which was just way easier in Z-Library.
- I tag/update metadata of books using Calibre of my laptop. I prefer to manually do that because while it took a few days to do it for my whole library, I don’t really add books in such a high number that I can justify automating it or having a Calibre container on my homeserver. (I know Calibre Web Automated will do this, but see below). I use Hardcover to track my readings, so Calibre with the hardcover plugin makes it easy to find ids or HC editions for integrations with other apps I use.
- After moving between Kavita, CWA and Booklore, I set up on Komga for library management. I found Komga’s koreader sync way more stable and mature than the other options. I am a bit annoyed by the fact that (as in Kavita) each book/series folder is a series, but at the end of the day the pros outweighs the cons for me. I can manage custom reading lists or series, so it’s not really an issue personally.
Could look at mirroring Project Gutenberg.
Kiwix has the whole Gutenberg as a downloadable dataset. Search is basic, tho.
Now wondering if there are alternatives that are similar to Gutenberg but for countries with more relaxed public domain laws. Like Orwell is public domain in the UK but not the US and Gutenberg doesn’t have it.
I just use Audiobookshelf because i dont want to have two apps for books 😀
I wish ABS synced progress between formats with KOReader!
I’ve seen that but it’s a weird vibe coded app and doesn’t actually work
