Librum: Open-Source e-book platform
github.com
github.com
I see some discussions here proposing this as a Calibre replacement, but how can a frontend to a cloud service replace genuine desktop software?
And it reads a bit like an ad: "productive ... simple and straightforward".
These are dark patterns... I wouldn't be surprised if it will became a paid service. Buyers beware.
https://github.com/Librum-Reader/Librum/issues/95#issuecomme...
I've already got my e-book library on my local drive, and synced to my own storage server with NextCloud -- why do I need my desktop e-reader application to force me to use a separate, parallel server solution?
And even if I were to self-host, the UI does not seem to expose any way to point the frontend client at my own server instance.
> It's not just an e-book reader. With Librum, you can manage your own online library and access it from any device anytime, anywhere.
Different strokes for different folks as you seem to already have a solution to sync your own library.
Are the clients desktop only?
Multiple users might allow that for friends and family
It’s easier to ask “ what else could this mean” in a positive way and assume that it doesn’t have to make sense to one perspective to make sense for everyone.
Calibre for example doesn’t seem to do the multi device access/sync well
- Calibre doesn't have a reader app as far as I can tell on android or iphone.
- KOReader I hear is excellent and could point to Calibre, but again, I don't think it handles per user highlights and annotations as easily.
Mostly I'm looking for a reasonably straight forward workflow to import highlights into logseq/obsidian that doesn't need a user to install or run a script manually, or connect a usb cable. That kind of self-hosting is useful.
Since I’ve started playing around with logseq/obsidian for one point of note taking the value of having your notes and annotations from books and YouTube videos in one place is too close to making all that reading more useful and introduce it into practice :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
It took one clarifying comment from the founder of Dropbox for BrandonM to understand and agree with the value proposition.
The story of that comment is not “clueless power user doesn’t understand regular user needs”, it’s “user makes respectful criticism and changes their mind when confronted with compelling arguments”. That exchange is a prime example of what we should all strive to do, not a target of ridicule.
It will be in the Server’s readme very soon.
But thank you for sharing the link that was helpful
“ With Librum, you can manage your own online library and access it from any device anytime, anywhere. It has features like note-taking, bookmarking, and highlighting, while offering customization to make it as personal as you want!”
It is very clearly called a platform.
I appreciate and use Open Source, and still I'm recognizatnt of the saying "Open source is only free if your time is worthless".
Luckily the short term self-hostability of many projects has become trivial.
Sounds problematic, could go as far as trading user data to other companies.
> For business transfers: We may use Your information to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred
And also just outright selling the data.
Nice.
Let's make E-books a fully integrated part of the web experience! There's just a few gaps to bridge. It could be done with PDF, so it can be done with ePUB.
[1]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/11/project-gutenberg-p...
[2]: https://standardebooks.org/
[3]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow...
Anyway, I think it replacing calibre depends on how much advanced features one uses. Calibre in more than 15 years old and has a lot of "speciality" plugins.
I’m working on building a replacement for Calibre that is backwards compatible. I’d love to hear what you expect in that kind of tool.
If you do have a good reason, then please prioritize unit testing, proper release engineering, requiring documentation be included with patches, and proper UX (including, but not limited to, respecting the conventions of the host OS) that is usable by real-world users who don't obsess over managing their library.
Not having to spend an hour configuring stuff so I can sync my reading position and shelves from my e-reader...and then another hour configuring sync to a service like goodreads - would be just swell.
1. Automatic ingesting and conversion of book files (download a pdf, epub, mobi, even something with DRM to a specific folder and it's available for reading/transfer automatically)
2. One (or more if being selective) click loading onto an e-reader (with auto format conversion)
3. Plugins or native feature DRM removal for purchased ebooks. Also plugin support for reading different file types, tying it all in to the main app seems clunky, better to have auto-installed file-type plugins and the abstraction/freedom plugins bring
4. Automatic/semi-manual/full-manual metadata control. Being able to scan the internet for new covers, isbns, category tags, blurbs, etc and selectively choose what to add is perfect while still retaining the options for grab everything or enter everything by hand too
5. Full text search of all file formats, as well as field-specific metadata search
6. Semi-manual curation with tag filtering and virtual libraries (saved searches basically, very powerful in combination with tags and ratings)
7. Highlight/quote saving. This is something which I do a lot on the e-reader and have been meaning to find a plugin to load them back into Calibre. Native support (in your app) would be fantastic
8. Keyboard shortcuts, theming, all those other nice little features that are less calibre-specific
edit - adding more as I thought on this longer:
* Cover and table views - it's nice to see the book covers yet also the compact editing and selection of a text-only table is essential. Sorting by title, author, publish, upload/ingest date, rating, etc is also quite important
* Folder/file based data storage. Having database files for extra metadata or internally needed stuff is a-ok yet it's so nice to be able to go into a folder named after the author and copy out a file in any of the converted formats. Automatically updating the metadata in the file itself (title, author, publish date, etc) and standardizing the file names is also key
* Book editing. This is less important early on since it's a big feature yet it's nice to be able to go in and fix typos from OCR or take out extra whitespace (or copyright warnings). A global reformatter or format aware find/replace is also quite handy for standardizing across multiple download sources (h2 vs h1 for chapter titles, weird indenting at the start of sections, dividers done with ---, <hr>, or custom images, etc). Style editors are nice yet less important since reader apps/devices generally handle most of this
* Image background removal. If you have a dark mode or sepia or even better custom theming in the book reader view, there will be images and custom dividers with white backgrounds that would look better inverted or with transparent backgrounds. This is a tricky one, since some images don't make sense to invert or tweak to the theme, yet done well it's a really nice feature
Above all, really, I think it's a fun project to work on!
I prefer to buy eBooks directly from the author, with a fallback to sites like leanpub.
The process sucks though: you typically get a zip, which contains .epub, .mobi, and .pdf. And the naming is bogus, with spaces sometimes replaced by underscores or hyphens, and sometimes with the author's name and sometimes not. So you have to unzip the file, get the contents, decide whether to keep them all or not, move them somewhere else, and then have your reader(s) realize that they're there, and try not to get dupes in the "shelf" view, and deal with the crappy metadata, and, and, and ...
It'd be super nice if we got some standards here! It's not like Amazon has to adopt them -- they're a separate ecosystem. But if all the "indie" eBook publishers did the same thing, the reader apps could make this so much less painful.
Kobo and Google Play Books also offer DRM-free books, but you have to look at the book details (further down the book page) to see this information.
[1] https://libreture.com/bookshops/
(free) archiveofourown.org
(free) tthfanfic.org
(paid) https://www.humblebundle.com/books
(paid) https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/books
Tons more...
I usually check to see if the publisher sells the e-book directly. If so, I will consider buying there. Usually amazon has a cheaper price, and I buy from them and strip the DRM.
If you download your book from Amazon to your disk e.g. in Calibre Amazon can't touch it.
I have many amazon books and I read then in pub based readers on my iPhone.
Even on the Kindle I think I am safe as I tend not to use the Amazon link but upload via Calibre so what is on the Kindle does not match what Amazon thinks I have on the Kindle.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/
The last I checked, Librera also had two versions on the Play store, with the paid pro (or whatever) version sending a few dollars towards the Ukrainian developer. Who's been donating to the defense efforts since the war started. Or was; that language now appears to be gone from the web site.
Anyway, for those not familiar with FDroid and/or who want to contribute to development other that via PayPal -- or, looks like now that would be Patreon.
For those who asked: Humble Bundle is another source of DRM-free ebooks.
That's absolutely a nice to have, though -- free software for the sake of free software is excellent, and always justification enough.
We live in a world where new and shiny (tech) is espoused over old and trusted all the time. The latest must be the greatest.
Anyone coming in without any prior knowledge of the subject will typically gravitate to the thing that looks newer.
So as the years go on, the new thing will build a new community, while the old thing will generally see it’s community slowly die off.
It’s not great, but it happens more than it should
They don't, but they have to be honest about what they're presenting. There's this shitty motte-and-bailey situation in open source where their website ( https://librumreader.com/ ) looks like marketing for a serious application - but the moment you treat it like a serious application, people are like "it's free, why are you treating it like a serious application?".
Look:
>Simplicity
>Focus on what actually matters, using a simple and straight forward interface.
>Your time is too valuable to be wasted on complex applications.
What does the tone here convey? Is it "this is just a cool project I wrote"?
Why self-host when you can p2p? (A little tongue-in-cheek. Clearly there are use cases for both.)
[0] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119175 [1] https://github.com/Readarr/Readarr
As an aside, AMA if interesting in running Steam OS as your daily driver.
Luckily also other projects like Librera and KOReader (for other uses) were mentioned here too.
Don't forget about that marvelous standard called OPDS.