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’ve tried komga and kavita both, but didn’t find them very useful. Nowadays i just copy the files downloaded from nyaa to my kobo, where i read them with koreader. Its possible to sideload it on kindles, but its tricky. Koreader even has OPSD support, in case you want to use kavita/komga. But for most random/weekly reading I use Kotatsu on my tablet/phone, as it has a sync feature (you can even selfhost your own sync server!). For ebooks I also just use my ereader. I have no need for a bulky management system. I hope this helped you somehow. Good luck!
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…
That seems nice, thanks for sharing! I read Kavita has some weird requirements for path organization for it to work correctly, or do I remember wrong? Do you also do metadata editing in Kavita itself?
Haven’t had any issues in that regard, so can’t really say, sorry. I have two folders (Mangas and ebooks) on my NAS, and in Kavita, created a library for each.
You absolutely can edit metadata, although I personally haven’t had the need yet. I use readarr and suwayomi for “obtaining” books and manga, respectively, and what they come up with is usually just fine.
Nice, thanks for the details :) Suwayomi usually obtains png as far as I remember, is Kavita able to read anything that Suwayomi gets, without issues or post-processing needed? Sorry for the many questions^^
I think I have set Suwayomi to download / convert to CZB, not for Kavita specifically, but because a lot of reader apps cannot handle loose images
Thanks, that’s all I needed to know :)
Thanks! Never heard of both, but I will definitely check them out :)
Mihon is the successor to takiyomi. It’s a manga website scrapper. But it also supports some self hosted solutions for reading across devices.
Make sure to add this special repo: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keiyoushi/extensions/repo/index.min.json
Mihon guide here: https://everythingmoe.com/post/mihonguide.html
It really sounds like you’re trying to setup a centralized solution for media consumption and I might be confusing you with my recommendations.
I read on only one device so this works for me. Mihon supports self hosted solutions. ReadEra is just a nice reading client. I manage it with a file explorer and netshare (Solid explorer)
No worries! I was pretty much confused myself from the beginning, so I am definitely open to any workflow :) And I do plan to read on one device only as well. My centralized approach was mostly about saving space on the tablet/reader and a possibly easier management and freedom to move to something else in the future, rather than a strict requirement.
I used to have tachyomi on my eink tablet, so this definitely rings a bell, but I thought the only working solution was Suwayomi.
I will look into Mihon and its support of selfhosted solutions then, seems like a nice combination :)
If you want simplicity I recommend skipping all self hosted solutions. You can set mihon to download X chapters ahead for offline reading and delete chapters as you read. On a kindle I’d recommend save as archive and/or cut tall images (webtoons).
Ebooks take no space.
Stick to calibre on your computer and transfer via netshare using a file browser (android: solid explorer) to copy stuff over. That’s what I do.
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.
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).
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.
Thanks so much for sharing and for such a detailed answer! I understand where you are coming from, I don’t have a tablet so for me an e-ink reader would not be too much (I work on my laptop most of the day and I don’t like reading on the phone, so a device like that is a sweet spot for me).
I tend to mostly read bw manga (webtoons I read it on my laptop usually), but I heard the same about e-ink colored devices (and most generally that you “shouldn’t” read bw on colored eink screen).
For the same reason as yours (mandatory calibre for transferring), I am looking at Onyx Boox e-ink devices, which are basically android tablets but with an eink screen. This gives me the freedom to install whatever app or sync I want, limit my exposure with something like nextdns, remove google stuff as much as I can, and things like that.
In the end I guess it’s a balance between actual functionality and convenience, if a whole pipeline become too hard to manage than doing some parts manually might actually be better.
