Honestly, I’m personally not just after a self hosting solution, I’m mostly trying to replace US services and companies. As part of that, I’ve started using Jellyfin and I think it’s great but the book library part is a bit clunky.
I think I’ve got three use cases:
- Research papers
- Textbooks
- Novels / Non-fiction
I’m okay with three separate setups for these too. I do listen to quite a few audiobooks but they’re currently independent and I’m happy to keep it that way. I’m happy to hear integrated solutions, or suggestions for an audio book library, but this post is focused on the above list.
The main device I’d do most of my reading on is an iPhone but I’d also be wanting to open up the research papers and textbooks on my MacBook. I’d want to be able to add research papers from the iPhone, or at least a light weight way to list them to quickly add later.
Note taking and highlighting isn’t an issue, I’ve started using markdown for this. Syncing how much of the book I’ve read is. Ideally between devices but on the one device would work too.
I figure I’ll have to drop some of my aims here but I thought I’d see if anyone knows of decent setups to try. Neither Jellyfin or Calibre seem amazing but maybe I could just configure them better.
Since there is a mandated image here I’m starting to wonder if I’m really in the wrong place, but I put textbook cover there
I think BookLore ticks all your boxes. It has opds as well as kobo syncing. You can also read via the built-in reader on the web to keep things synced. It supports separate libraries so you can keep your textbooks and research papers separate.
It’s being pretty actively developed with new features every few weeks. I’ve been very pleased with it after trying half a dozen other alternatives that were never quite smooth enough.
I’ve been happy with Calibre Web and downloading to the official reader apps, but I’m open to try new things.
What strikes me as odd is why starting a Java software in this day and age. Java in the server is the COBOL of the 2000s, mostly used for legacy software.
The devs are also pretty responsive to bug reports!
I will say that they themselves have mentioned that there is kind of a limit in library size because the project is meant to serve “small to modest personal libraries” but I think it was ranked as a few thousand, so that won’t be a problem for most people I think.
A few thousand means ?
I have 11000 ebooks on Calibre and am looking at alternatives.
I believe the numbers I saw were about 3-5k, so it might not handle your collection well. However, I encourage you to check their github to confirm rather than just go off my vague recollection alone.