this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Thinking about self-hosting an ebook library? Here are the open source software you can consider.

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[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've been using calibre since around 2009 and it is an incredible piece of software. For handling ebooks, specially for eBook readers and file formats, it has no equal. Unfortunately it is built around the idea of installing it into one computer and connecting your eBook to it. Which makes it a bit clunky in my opinion nowadays.

Maybe calibre web fixes that, I need to check it one day. For actual books I think it falls between that and booklore.

All the other options seem to be more indicated to comics and manga, which is another aspect I've been noticing calibre does not do such a great job. I think I'll have to keep two different ones, one for reading from a tablet comics and such and another for ebooks to send to the reader.

[–] d13@programming.dev 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

There's a docker that essentially sets up a web VNC for Calibre. I do this for file conversion, DRM removal (only books I buy), etc.

Then I use Calibre-web for the OPDS server and nice web UI.

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

Hmm so how does the workflow look like for you? Is the calibre web tied up to the DB of that calibre VNC? Do you manually add the books to calibre over the VNC? Then is calibre web allowed to make changes to the DB or does it have read only access? as far as I understand calibre is not recommended to have multiple sources of changes to the DB as it can end up corrupted or something? (At least it can't resolve conflicts I think)

As a solution it seems like it could work, but it feels like over complicated to get around the limitations of calibre.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 points 5 hours ago

I find it very confusing to get a good workflow with it + calibre.

I sync all of my books (and use readarr for organization or occasionally grabbing books from dead authors) via syncthing. Then calibre web won't ingest any new books I copy to the folder, so I have to go to desktop calibre to add them manually, then it will sync the database and calibre-web has a built-in task for scanning any database changes so then the book will show up.

Seems like a clunky method and I would think I am doing it wrong, but I haven't found a way for calibre to scan books already organized in folders in its book directory.