Does anyone know of a self hosting option for hosting ebooks? I keep hoping there is an open source library type app where I could add my ebooks and host them for myself and others.
I use Kavita to host ebooks and manga for myself. It’s still work in progress, so do expect changes, though I haven’t had huge issues on the stable releases so far. Besides Tachiyomi for comics/manga there aren’t any native reading apps yet, so you will have to use the webinterface for the time being.
Another option often mentioned is Calibre Web, though I haven’t used that myself.
I’ll throw in my vote for Kavita. Works great. I read a lot on my phone so I just saved the app shortcut to my home screen from Firefox.
I honestly prefer Kavita even though I do not download comics or manga. Their reader is so nice, specially with the themes. 0 issues on my end except for indexing, which the dev promptly fixed after I reported the issue.
I use Moon+ Reader pro on my android, and on my iOS I simply make a “webapp” of the website.
Caliber is great, but if you have audiobooks, auidiobookshelf has gotten pretty decent at hosting ebooks too
Calibre is great but it’s not a server based program, it’s just a desktop client. There is Calibre-web which you can host which kinda turns it into a server but it does that by exposing a website you connect to that shows you the Calibre interface via VNC, so it’s a bit hackey.
I haven’t tried it but https://www.kavitareader.com/ might be a good alternative if you end up not liking Calibre.
That’s not what calibre-web does. As per the GitHub page:
Calibre-Web is a web app that offers a clean and intuitive interface for browsing, reading, and downloading eBooks using a valid Calibre database.
There is no VNC involved.
There’s a Calibre container, I believe by LinuxServer.io, that comes with this VNC setup for serving calibre in a browser window. Probably what was meant here.
Calibre-web is basically a nice UI for a file server over the calibre library.
Labors reader looks really great. Just wish it had an iOS/android app. I’ll definitely keep it in mind.
I’ve been playing with Audiobookshelf and it does do books as well.
Audiobookshelf is quite nice too. The ebook reader isn’t quite there yet, but it develops very fast. Also apps for Android and iOS
Check out the docker version of calibre if you’re into that https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/calibre-web
To clarify, calibre-web is not “the docker version of calibre”, it’s a separate project that provides a nice web frontend for an existing calibre database.
So if I understand correctly, I would spin up a Calibre docker (a la https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/calibre) and then spin up a separate Calibre-web docker and point it to the first one?
I believe you can, but I just copied the calibre books and database from my PC and run it from calibre-web without maintaining any link to calibre.
It’s not perfect but it works well enough.
I use Komga (https://github.com/gotson/komga) and it’s pretty cool
Take a look at Calibre-Web (github.com/janeczku/calibre-we…) which I’ve been using for what you ask for quite a while now. As the name suggests it can also take advantage of a pre-existing Calibre eBook Database.
Takes advantage of = requires.
