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 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…
Here is a pretty good list of what is supported where.
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 :)