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 :)
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?
If you are in germany, thalia lists whether a book has DRM
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.
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.
Pretty much, apart from that I often add them and only fix if necessary, e.g. they’re not going into series properly.
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.
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).