LazyLibrarian x2 instances, 1 for audiobooks and 1 for comics and ebooks. Nothing else needed, it uses Prowlarr to check all indexers.
I have a script that converts everything to epub, even epubs to ensure characters are utf8.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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I use Audiobookshelf as the app support is great (allows downloading offline versions and progress syncs when you reconnect to internet). This works amazingly well with my Boox Palma 2 since it runs android.
I don't download a ton of books, so I just have some simple Python scripts for organizing the content.
I just manually transfer books to my reader when I get them. I have them organized by genre on my reader (done manually). This is not an area where I see automation providing any significant benefit to bother setting up and maintaining an automated pipeline.
I don't think I can read books fast enough to make automation attractive either, haha. I break DRM on Calibre with two plugins, books purchased from Kobo, and then organize on Komga after manually dragging the files.
Yeah i read Like 8-12 books per year, at best, it doesn't make sense to automate any aspect of that.
Audiobookshelf, shelfmark, and prowlarr work well for me
thanks a lot for recommending shelfmark.
Do you use calibre to manage metadata?
I'm actually working on an all in one solution that sort of fills the roles of Readarr AND Calibre - without all the baggage of the latter.
Oh, and of course a KOReader library plugin that foregoes OPDS and works like the Kindle interface ("available books" synced from this backend, one tap downloads them, plus potentially adding series handling too in the future).
But right now it's mostly manual downloads + CWA ingest + OPDS via KOReader.
Try shelfmark
why would I try a book REQUESTING system when I'm working on my own AIO solution?
Didn't know you are writing your own code, thought you might take advantage in shelfmark, because it is very much mature.
One of the benefits of Free Software is that you can copy and improve the good parts of other Free software into your own, reducing the required effort.
Uhm, no.
Only if the licence allows. I personally go for A/GPLv3 wherever I can because I don't want corporations to just take and not contribute back. But that means I can't just copy MIT/Apache software, need to do my own implementation from scratch. Which I prefer anyway.
I use Calibre but I don't have any automated, download, pipeline. I just upload the books as I buy them. I guess I'm boring and vanilla like that. LOL
Mostly pandoc (for epub to text) and a few stupid python scripts. I'm a luddite and prefer reading text files. I don't use any particular collection management beyond filenames and grep.
To something like Markdown, or do you just throw away formatting?
Epub is html with some crap wrapping it. Converting it to text follows the html formatting, like using the lynx browser.
For books: mam (manually now that readarr died) -> calibre -> Kavita
If it's a manga or comic, bypass calibre, straight to Kavita + komf for metadata / covers.
Would you say Kavita is better than calibre web? I'm having trouble adjusting to folder structures of Kavita
I vastly prefer it to calibre web personally, but it's all up to personal preference. Kavita has a pretty extensive user guide too
I use calibre to label books by series. I don't think I did anything crazy with the folder structure outside of putting comics, manga, and books in separate directories.
I have one media directory with books / manga / comics in separate subdirectories. I process metadata with calibre or other tools as needed, and point Kavita at my books directory and tell it to scan. Kavita should automatically group books of the same series together provided the series name is exact. (eg: "The adventures of Bob" vs "adventures of Bob, The" would be seen as different series. Kavita should also group the libraries together by directory, so I have 3 libraries, books, manga, and comics.
You do need to make sure books are all in the correct formats. I batch convert everything to epub and limit Kavita to only show epubs to avoid duplicates.
The upside to all this is that Kavita comes with a cleaner interface imho, opds is easier to set up, and I've had less issues with it. Also users can set their own reading lists and collections if you are setting this up for other users.
I'm also looking to get startet and to integrad it in my media arr server
I have kavita and audiobookshelf running as containers on my NAS. I don’t have a good automation for getting books there since I usually need to remove DRM, which is a bit manual with calibre. Kavita is then coupled to my ereader (tolino) running koreader.
Download books from libgen, Anna's archive, torrents. Move (sftp) to a watched folder on my pi4 that's running calibre and then download from server using moon reader.
I recently switched from manual downloads to Shelfmark, and I highly recommend it, makes downloading books so much easier, especially from Anna's Archive.
I looked into Moon+ Reader, and I would recommend readest instdead.
Wow, shelfmark looks really cool. I like the customisation moon+ reader offers for the UI, but find the progress sharing a little lacking, so will take a look at readers, thanks.
Sorry for recommending readest, the webdav feature is locked behind paywall
No worries! Always good to see what alternatives are available. I bought moon+ reader a while back so happy to support good products.
Openbooks IRC download to calibre guacamole instance to fbreader opds connection. Once I pick a book it's automated to the point that I find it on my reader index page.
Didn't know Openbooks IRC before, thanks a lot!
If you set it's download folder in the .env to the same as the ingestion folder for Calibre, it'll just show up. Set -no-browser-downloads and it'll just drop that into the folder and won't prompt you to save it manually.
***
version: "2.1"
services:
calibre:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre:latest
container_name: calibre
environment:
- PUID=0
- PGID=0
- TZ=America/Denver
security_opt:
- seccomp=unconfined
volumes:
- ./data:/config
ports:
- 7080:8080
- 7081:8081
- 7181:8181
restart: unless-stopped
labels:
- com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
openbooks:
ports:
- 7082:80
volumes:
- './data/:/books'
restart: unless-stopped
container_name: calibre-openbooks
# command: --persist
command: --name asdasuu6ghgf --persist --no-browser-downloads
environment:
- BASE_PATH=/
image: evanbuss/openbooks:latest
labels:
- com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
You'll have to manually set the ingest folder in Calibre in the the setting to this folder that shows in the calibre container as "config" (or maybe just the root folder, can't recall)
will do, thank you!
electronic library -> calibre web -> ebook reader via opds
Not really automation, but I will copy-paste a comment I made in an older thread, maybe it can still be useful :)
- I download books through Z-Library, I tried in the past lazylibrarian and readarr/bookshelf for automation, but I always ended up spending a lot of time on refining the search for non-english books or specific editions, which was just way easier in Z-Library.
- I tag/update metadata of books using Calibre of my laptop. I prefer to manually do that because while it took a few days to do it for my whole library, I don't really add books in such a high number that I can justify automating it or having a Calibre container on my homeserver. (I know Calibre Web Automated will do this, but see below). I use Hardcover to track my readings, so Calibre with the hardcover plugin makes it easy to find ids or HC editions for integrations with other apps I use.
- After moving between Kavita, CWA and Booklore, I set up on Komga for library management. I found Komga's koreader sync way more stable and mature than the other options. I am a bit annoyed by the fact that (as in Kavita) each book/series folder is a series, but at the end of the day the pros outweighs the cons for me. I can manage custom reading lists or series, so it's not really an issue personally.
Try shelfmark, to me it is much better than lazylibrarian and readarr/bookshelf
I am a bit annoyed by the fact that (as in Kavita) each book/series folder is a series, but at the end of the day the pros outweighs the cons for me.
Yeah me too. I will try komga. thanks a lot
Calibre Web Automated. I have Kobo integration enabled, so when I add an ebook to the "sync" folder, it appears on my Kobo. pretty nice system.
It's not fully automated, but I use Shelfmark -> Grimmory for my ebooks. Works quite nicely with the ingestion/metadata lookup in Grimmory.
thanks a lot!
Grimmory is new to me, is it something like calibre for managing metadata?
Yup, I transferred from Calibre and Calibre-Web to Grimmory end of last year. It's a webapp based solution with built in look ups for GoodReads, Hardcover, and other services. Overall pretty nice!