Since inception, we've offered a combination of Calibre and Calibre-Web, which work hand-in-hand to manage your eBook library. I've personally used Calibre-Web for years to split "currently reading" accounts for my family, and lean heavily on its ability to "send-to-kindle" books to each family member.
Calibre is very much a desktop app, and while we did have a Kasm-based VNC-in-browser implementation to allow you to manage it, it's awkward to use, especially on mobile devices.
Calibre-Web, however, being a web UI, works very well, and can be themed to look a bit like Plex!
Development on Calibre-Web was stalled for a while, and while it seems to have picked up again, Calibre-Web is intended to be used alongside a full Calibre UI instance, as opposed to standalone.
Calibre-Web Automated is a set of enhancements for Calibre-Web, which "bridge the gap", making it possible to fully manage your remote ebook library without requiring Calibre at all.
Our Calibre-Web product has been updated to Calibre-Web-Automated, which brings a lot of new UX features, including (summarized, see full list here):
- Automatic Imports ✨
- Automatic Conversion 🔃
- A Weighted Conversion Algorithm: ⚖️
- 28 Supported file types for conversion
- Automatic Enforcement of Changes made to Covers & Metadata through the Calibre-Web UI! 👀📔
- One Step Full Library Conversion 🔂 - Any format ->
.epub - Library Auto-Detect 📚🕵️
- Easy Dark/ Light Mode Switching ☀️🌙
- Batch Editing & Deletion! 🗂️🗄️
What about storage for ebooks?
We don't provide storage for user content, but it's now free to attach any rclone-compatible storage to your stack, and given the size of ebooks, you can probably do it for effectively "free" using Google Drive, AWS S3, B2, etc! 🎉
I'm sold, how do I do it?
You can grab a Calibre-Web stack, with a 7-day free trial, below: