Not having internet connectivity is never a problem for me, the entire region where I live is completely covered by 4G.
I'm also almost always in 4G coverage but there are planes, trains, mountains, tents in the middle of nowhere, etc. Apps that work offline are a safer choice.
I get that I can sort of hack together some parts of what I want but really I want the Plex experience of once I have thrown an mp4 onto my server it is just a first class experience viewing and resuming on any device I own equivalent or better than media viewers from the likes of netflix, hbo, etc. I just want that same sort of experience with regards to eBooks, not a hacked together hodgepodge of homelab sync tools and configuration.
I have a code snippet that can generate a Bookantt chart[1] from the koreader history DB. (On mobile, ping me if you’d be interested in me cleaning this up and releasing)
Calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/
Kavita: https://www.kavitareader.com/
Koreader comes close, with comprehensive stats tracking and progress sync, but I absolutely would love to see SRS or stronger note taking or easier content management
- I just sync the repo to get everything for offline use. Excellent offline access is x100 more valuable to me than anything a web interface could offer. Stats and Anki just feels like frippery.
- You get a web-interface to your repo if you do actually need to grab something online
- I store markdown notes and even diagrams alongside my books
- I edit the css in epub books if I don't like the fixed formatting they include so probably best to store a history of changes. It's quite fun becoming an editor to change an author's idiosyncratic spelling or chop out that "free chapter of another book" they added as an advert.
- I prefer a directory organisation of books - a media website things only impairs my access e.g. grepping all your books and notes together is just a minimum expectation for me.
Here's the help page on setting up your own content server: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/#the-calibre-content-server
I keep the metadata up to date, strip Kindle DRM from the books I buy from Amazon, and maintain a giant personal DRM-free collection of books and comics (which Calibre also handles!). It's one of my favorite pieces of software.
Calibre is an insane piece of software on its own. Pretty much the only Swiss Army knife you need for anything “epub”.
I have the library stored on my NAS and am running a fairly simple Node.JS + Express + React web app on my Raspberry Pi that reads the database and provides web access this content.
Sadly, I don’t have the code in a publisher format as of yet.
One thing I’ve been meaning to do is add an upload feature so that I can have the web app add ebooks to the library. For now, I still have to fire up Calibre for that.
Edit: Wow, I just saw a post below for Calibre-Web. It’s the same thing I had been working on but it’s much much nicer than what I had hacked together!
Don't think you'll see it from there.