Calibre for ebooks, and looking into komga for manga and comics. Audiobookshelf for audiobooks.
I've been running calibre forever. It just works. The only thing I find a little cumbersome is adding books, as I add them to a local calibre library, mount my server's calibre library folder and then use the copy to other library function in calibre. Probably not the best way to do it.
For audiobooks I had regularly been scouring the internet for solutions because the ones I had never worked that well for me, until one time suddenly Audiobookshelf popped up. It's simply amazing.
I use calibre and calibre-web. I have the DeDRM and ACSM plug-ins installed in calibre so I can buy a book from ebooks.com or wherever, drop the acsm file in my auto import folder, then just download the drm stripped epub from calibre-web and import to the Books app on my iPad.
As a few people have pointed out, Kavita is a solid one. I ultimately used it because it saves your spot in the book server-side instead of with the browser (like calibre-web) so you can pick up where you left off on different devices.
Also has a pretty good PWA for your phone if you want to read on there.
I wouldn't consider myself a power user on ebook servers by any means, but I spun up Kavita a few weeks back and it definitely handles everything I need it to so far. Feels better to use than calibre IMO too.
@midas I have a weird problem with the android app losing my place in the book regularly. I finally just went to downloading the book with audiobookshelf and then using a different audio book player on android.
If you're just looking for ebooks Calibre/Calibre-Web will do the job. I wanted a good audiobook player too so I went with Audiobookshelf as it does that and a few other things. You could also go with Jellyfin as I've read it can do epub, but I have no experience with it.
I highly recommend AudioBookShelf . It's mostly geared towards audiobooks/podcasts, but it has a decent reader built into it. That being said, it's not without it's flaws, like some document file types aren't recognized, and not properly syncing progress occasionally.
Edit: I should mention it's actively being developed, devs are active on discord & GitHub, and it's getting better all the time.
AudioBookShelf is awesome for audiobooks. I can't speak to its capability as an eReader but I thought I'd throw that out there for anyone wanting a second opinion. I use it daily and the Android app is great too. My go-to audiobook server for life if it stays just like it is right now.
I just set up audiobookshelf yesterday for audiobooks and podcasts. I tried out the e-reader, and it's not good enough for real use. It doesn't save your page, and it's super barebones.
As an audiobook server/app it's fabulous, so I'll be sticking with it for sure. For podcasts, it's pretty great, too, but missing a few features like badges for unplayed episodes, and an "up next" queue/playlist that gets auto populated. I switched to it from pocketcasts and the downsides are things I can live with, but I'm excited for when those features are added.
For an e-reader, I'm going to set up Calibre and Calibre-web, while keeping an eye on Readarr development.
For general 'non-book' type documents, I've also set up a Paperless-NGX instance. It's working fairly well, but I'm still in the learning curve phase of getting it set up exactly how I want it.
With Audiobookshelf you need to download the Podcast episodes to your server, right? You can't just subscribe and stream them? That's what has kept me from using it for that. I would like to get away from Pocket Casts as well.
I'll second Ubooquity. I have a lot of experience with this, as I've been self-hosting my eBooks and Audiobooks for many years now. Ubooquity is not perfect, but if you're willing to tinker with it, you can get it set up pretty nicely. There are themes, and the Plex theme actually makes it look really slick.
Kavita is the new kid on the block for me - I have been testing it out as a general-purpose eReader but I'm not ready to give it my recommendation yet.
For manga, I use Kavita and connect to it with Tachiyomi on Android. I organize these files by hand outside of any system. I prefer this because it synchronizes and works well.
For regular books, I have Readarr synced with Calibre, which I then have Calibre-Web connected to, which then exposes an endpoint for my devices using opds with apps like moonreader+ on Android or an e-ink device running koreader.
I prefer my regular book setup for the organization Calibre brings along with the flexibility of Calibre-Web.
Komga is very stable and about to hit v1.0. it and Kavita have different structure for organization (komga's being 1 folder is 1 series and kavita's is some folder and some metadata). Komga is focus on comics and manga and has a great web reader with fantastic integration with tachiyomi and tracking manga/comic progress that sounds to their site and tachiyomi. Kavita has a few features komga does not, such as the ability to read ebooks, send then to Kindle, kobo, and others. They do seem to have more updates but are also still beta now. Both are great but have their strong suits.
Calibre is highly regarded and works well with nearly all e-readers afaik. It has a local server option for browsing, uploading/downloading, and community extensions.
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