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 :)
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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?
Ebooks.com has a ton of DRM-free ebooks. They have a whole DRM-free section, plus a search filter, and they clearly display all available formats before purchase. That’s my first stop for ebooks.
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.
I guess I’ve just been lucky then! I’ve stripped DRM off everything else, so I expect theirs would come off using the same tools.
If you are in germany, thalia lists whether a book has DRM
Interesting, thanks! I agree with you about using specific tools for different purposes. Tbf my kindle is a 2018 model put on airplane mode since 2021, maybe I can do something about Koreader.
About comics/manga, didn’t know about comictagger, it seems very good. So your process here is get comics -> comictagger -> upload to server and kavita, correct?
The latest Kindle update broke the jailbreak even if it was installed, so you’ll need to stop updates. You could just leave it in airplane mode, but not being able to use the internet to pull down books from your Calibre-web server means you may as well just send books via Calibre.
I’m planning on getting a Kobo Clara BW when my Kindle dies (it’s currently got holes at the corners and a few dodgy-sounding rattles so soon™). Then I can use Koreader+Calibre-web to download books and sync read state like you can do with Amazon.
So your process here is get comics -> comictagger -> upload to server and kavita, correct?
Pretty much, apart from that I often add them and only fix if necessary, e.g. they’re not going into series properly.
You could just leave it in airplane mode, but not being able to use the internet to pull down books from your Calibre-web server means you may as well just send books via Calibre.
That’s sadly true. I am thinking of waiting for the kindle to die too, but I was looking more at the onyx boox go 6, since I already know I can run whatever I want on there.
Pretty much, apart from that I often add them and only fix if necessary, e.g. they’re not going into series properly.
I see, thanks! Do you mind if I ask you where you can find them with some good metadata? My attempts have been not so good until now…
Most of the manga I have is amateur translated stuff, so the metadata quality varies with release groups.
The graphic novels are generally retail releases, but sometimes I still want to edit to get rid of marketing words (e.g. the title might mention how it’s now a Netflix series or something).
Android tablet phone here.
Manga - Mihon
Ebooks - ReadEra premium
I use calibre on my PC to manage ebooks, but I often download directly on my phone.
I use TTS (Text to speech) to listen to my ebooks. Sometimes I use @Voice to listen to books. It’s better for that.
I would like to start managing ebooks and manga properly.
I guess my question is how is everyone using these services for their own library :)
I moved away from dedicated readers. They’re nice, but I have a tablet, a phone, and a laptop. I don’t need a fourth device with me.
For me, the major selling point for dedicated readers is that they buy eInk: their insane battery life and how they work very well in sunlight or otherwise brightly-lit conditions, so you can read outside.
For comics — I don’t know if you’re only viewing black-and-white manga — my understanding is that color eInk displays have limited contrast compared to the black-and-white ones. I think that if I were viewing anything in color, I’d probably want to use some kind of LED or LCD display.
I will occasionally read content on my Android phone with fbreader. The phone isn’t really a great platform for reading books — just kind of small — but it does a good job of filling the “I’m waiting in a line and need to kill a few minutes”. With an e-reader, you need something like Calibre to transfer books on and off, but with Android, I can just transfer files the way I normally would, via sftp or similar. I don’t have any kind of synchronized system for managing those books spanning multiple devices.
I use an Android tablet sometimes, almost always when I want to cuddle up on a couch or just want a larger display or want to watch videos. Same kind of management/use case. I think I used fbreader to last read an epub thing. I’ve switched among various comics and manga-viewing software, am not particularly tied to any one. There’s a family of manga-viewing software that downloads manga from websites that host it; I can’t recall the most-recent one I’ve used, but in my limited experience, they all work vaguely the same way.
I’ve increasingly been just using GNU/Linux systems for more stuff, as long as space permits; I’d rather limit my Android exposure, as I’d rather be outside the Google ecosystem, and the non-Google non-Apple mobile and tablet world isn’t all that extensive or mature. For laptops, higher power consumption, but also vastly larger battery, and much more capable. On desktop, it’s nice to have a really large screen to read with. For comics — and I haven’t been reading graphic novels or comics in some time, so I’m kind of out of date — I use mcomix. For reading epubs, I use foliate in dark mode. I have, in the past, written some scripts to convert long text files into LaTeX and from thence into pretty-formatted PDFs; I’ll occasionally use those when reading long text files, as I have a bunch of prettification logic that I’ve built into those over the years.
I don’t have any kind of system to synchronize material across devices or track reading in various things. Just hasn’t really come up. If I’m reading something on two different devices, I’ll just be reading two different books at the same time. Probably have some paper books and magazines that I’m working on at the same time too.
