Komga: Ebook support - need feedback on use cases

[gotson]

Ebook support has been requested a few times already (#69 #166 #173).

I would like to understand better how Komga could help, compared to existing software like Calibre or others.

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If you have an interest with ebooks, could you please share a bit:

• what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?
• how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?
• what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

Example:

• I don't need Komga to do anything with my ebooks
• I use Calibre to manage my ebooks.
  
  
  
  • Calibre retrieves metadata for my books when the metadata is not present in the book file
  
  
  • Calibre can perform conversion from and to various ebook formats.
  
  
  • Calibre can send ebooks directly to my devices (Kindle device, Kindle on my Android phone/tablet) via email using the Kindle address
  
  
  • I use my Kindle or the Kindle app to read my books. Those are stored as documents in my Kindle account and can synchronize reading progress among all my Kindle devices.
  
  
• I don't have any pain points in my current process

[cloudycloud47]

I manage my ebooks using Calibre and my kindle or ebook readers.

I manage my comics with Mylar and Komga (And tachi.)

[muchtea]

I currently don't see a use case for Komga as an ebook reader unless at least feature parity with calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web can be reached.

I manage my ebooks with calibre and read them with calibre-web.

I don't really have any pain points, apart from the need to have a new calibre-web instance for each calibre db.

[cesalo]

I actually think that bringing ebook support to Komga is a great idea.

• I do use Calibre for metadata and organization (with Lazylibrarian) and occasionally to convert between formats (epub, mobi,etc).
• I tried Calibre-Web but in my tablet (the same one I use for comics) didn't have a good experience also depends on the Calibre db so is not a standalone app.
• I ended up using an android app (moon-reader / Kuboo) to download manually the books I want to read and then go from there. It does a good job in terms of the reading experience but has a lot of short comics in the integration with the ebook server.
• I find the Calibre Desktop app very old fashion and even though is super powerful I wouldn't want to use for day to day reading and as I mentioned I did use Calibre-Web but didn't quite like it in my tablet and haven't used it in a long time (I sill have the docker).
• I like a bit better other apps like bookbrowser and pyshelf.

At the end of the day I don't think this is about if these apps are good or bad at their job (otherwise all the Komga users will be still using Ubooquity) but what about:

• Single reading experience for similar media (Currently using Komga with Comics and Magazines).
• One admin place for similar media (create users, shared libraries, etc).
• Bringing (Komga) a cool, well done app with modern features to the ebook world.

This is kind of the Plex mentality as well - movies, tv-shows, podcasts, etc.

• Imagine have the "Keep Reading", "On Deck" section applied to books together with comics and magazines.
• Imagine seeing you book library together with your comics library organize by author instead of series.
• Imagine the current features and new features coming applied to your e-book library !!.

I'd love to see that and for sure will use it.

[hot22shot]

I'm using Calibre to manage my ebook and push them on my Kobo.
I also have a calibre-web instance to access them online.

For me it is important to keep being able to push ebook on my reader, so I would expect from a replacement the same features.
For example I'm not interested in having Komga+Calibre as I understand that each software will have its own database for metadata.
And I sure don't want to manage two sets of metadata in 2 databases.
Except if I find some way to import ebook from Komga on my Kobo, of course, that would allow to have only one database.

[xx255q]

Having epub would be great since the files I usually end up getting are epub. And having it all on one platform would be nice, Ubooquity had already supported it

[gotson]

Having epub would be great since the files I usually end up getting are epub. And having it all on one platform would be nice, Ubooquity had already supported it

Please use the template provided. Arguments like "would be great" and "would be nice" do not bring any value to the debate.

[gotson]

@BryanWall you are mixing a lot of things, and putting everything in your comment. This issue is specifically about supporting ebooks.

Can you use the provided template to expand specifically on the ebooks use case, and not about just every improvement or generalities you would like to see in Komga?

[stonechitlin]

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?
Provide basic pdf, epub support in conjunction with read status and current page.

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?
I'm already using komga for my books, they are all in pdf format.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?
epub support with basic text options (size, a few fonts) as well as "paper" or background color options so that I can use komga for all of my reading needs.

[juligreen]

I tried to use Calibre for my ebooks before, but since I haven't been able to sync reading progress from inside ebook apps with it, it wasn't usable for my and I'm stuck with proprietary solutions for now (i.e. Google play books).

[Gin-no-kami]

• The minimum feature set is the ability to display ebooks (and their cover image) and their metadata in the library (similar to what is currently done for comic formats) and allow the option to download the ebook. As a stretch feature, being able to read the books in the browser would also be a great feature as I could use web extensions (like Yomichan) to look up unknown words.
• I currently use Calibre/Ubooquity to manage and view my epubs. However, since Ubooquity is Calibre based, it doesn't allow for browsing books by their series (I primarily read light novels which are heavily serialized).
• Due to bookwalker selling their books in image format, I have half of my light novel library in Komga (as they are .cbz) and the other half in Calibre/Ubooquity. I would like to consolidate them all under Komga, which is what I use to view my library on any device. I already have a replacement script to scrape the epubs metadata from Amazon, so if Komga would just be able to display the ebooks in my library then I would be able to completely remove Calibre/Ubooquity from my workflow and just use Komga for everything.

Thanks for considering ebooks!

[ultrahumanite]

• I would like Komga to display .epub and .mobi, show cover and meta data, allow reading of the books in the browsers, remember progress, download option, at some point email to kindle option would be nice.

• Pain point. For audio/video I have Plex handle my music, audiobooks, tv, movies it's all in one place easily accessible and manged by one app. Komga could be a Plex like hub for printed media one place to do almost all my reading and perhaps most importantly allow me to share my library with friends and family via a modern user friendly interface.

[timo95]

• I would like Komga to display .epub and .cbz (many LNs are in cbz) in their folder structure with cover and metadata. I would like to edit the metadata and download them using opds with koreader.
• I don't use any software to manage my ebooks. They are organized in a custom folder structure and i copy books i want to read to my ebook reader.

[Shadowfied]

• what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

I would like Komga to add ebooks just like it does with comics with support for EPUB files.
I would like for OPDS to be supported for this too.

• how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I read my ebooks on my Kobo Libra and right now I use Kobos built in web browser to access a public FTP I opened which is really not ideal.

• what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

Having an open FTP server is not an ideal setup for me. I don't even know if I can use basic auth for it yet, but I could drop this entire setup with Komga supporting ebooks.
I would have a great unified source for all my e-reading needs, and I'd be able to securely consume content through an auth protected and up to date OPDS catalog from my server without having to use, maintain and configure 2 (or even more) separate pieces of software.

[lukaslangrock]

• I'd love for Komga to get metadata and support eBooks (epub) so I can read them using the webreader or OPDS.
• I currently manage my (few) eBooks using Tolino Webreader, the cloud storage/reader for my ebook reader.
• I always have to upload them to my cloud and it's not self hosted which Komga could solve. Sure, I could setup calibreweb or something but I just have a few ebooks and they are all related to the mangas so having it all in one place would be great.

[LivingWithHippos]

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

I wouldn't want komga to manage my ebook

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I have calibre web installed, it's pretty good and has a lot of useful features. It has opds, send to kinfle, shelves etc. I use komga for my comics because by default I want to see a list of all my books, if I added comics I would have lots of items.
I read from my ebook reader with opds.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

Pretty happy with it

[golserma]

I use komga to read magazines in PDF format.
Everything works fine if I had two wishes .

1. Fulltext search to find an article.
2. Prefetch more pages in advance to make swiping faster.

[garbled1]

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

Basic in-browser support would be nice.

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I don't. I have very limited need for ebook reading, and am not inclined to install anything to fix that, but I have komga, and love it, so if it had the feature I'd probably import a few here and there.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

I have no way of doing this now and don't want another app.

[edwinbadillo]

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

Support for epub books with the same features as Kogma, creating libraries, collections, series, metadata editor, filters, web reader (with read progress), OPDS, etc. Web reader being a bit flexible: having a few of the standard fonts, allowing some simple styling styling, margin etc. (I currently use Marvin 3 and that does a pretty good job of offering a few options)

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I use Calibre for metadata management and OPDS while reading in Marvin3 (iOS App). for some time I was using the calibre content server's webreader to keep read progress and sync it across devices but the web reader is not great and kept cutting off chapters and causing issues so I had to abandon it.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

Keeping track of what I'm reading and where I left of across devices. I would mainly end up using the webreader for the most part so it maintains my read progress in sync across my devices. Being able to see where I left of in a book series and if I'm I have any books unread would be great. Honestly I'm just spoiled with Plex and Komga and would love to have a similar experience for ebooks, unfortunately the best available now is no where near as good.

[deafmute1]

I'm rather happy to use calibre+calibre-web+importer script at the moment for my ebooks. But I'm happy to see komga take on ebooks and perhaps switch one day if it gets the features I need done. Perhaps my only real gripe with my current setup is the overhead/complexity. I have to run calibre and calibre-web docker containers, basically using calibre as a db image. But its seems rather unncessary to have a dedicated db for just manging a file tree of epubs.

Two features needed from calibre-web: The ability to instantly convert from the webui using calibre from epub to mobi (or vice versa) and then to send it to the kindle import email address. It is not necessary to implement a email server (this is difficult for anyone hosting via a home connection anyway due to smap filters and port blocking), just allow us to connect to an external SMTP server and facilitate the sending of ebook files over it.

If you are implementing these features, it makes sense to implement kcc which converts image archives to mobi as an additional converter backend to calibre, as it could make use of the previously implemented feature-set. Of course, it is a little more complicated then epub to mobi as there are many more options available and some are necessary at minimum to present to user (device profile, manga/webtoon/2panel layout). it may be easier to allow the user to input a number of preselected custom cli arguments forkcc-c2e.py.

[otravers]

I would like to make the case _against_ supporting ebooks if that will be done at the expense of continuing to improve Komga for what it's uniquely good at, which is comics. Calibre is already a very established platform for ebooks that gets updates all the time, while it's not good at comics. With Ubooquity development being abandoned, the case for building Komga as a "Plex for comics" was clear.

It would be a massive effort to match Calibre, which surely would divert resources from comics. If there is a use case for ebooks in Komga, I'd be concerned with scope creep and focus dilution.

[cityeyes]

As long as it doesn't interfere with the comics side of things, I'd really like ebook functionality in Komga. Maybe make it optional, or a plugin type thing, so that existing functionality isn't changed for current users, but so that those of us who have ebook libraries could use Komga to serve them.

A lot of people like Calibre, but it's just not an option for me because I don't like how it duplicates my library to use its own organizational system. Plus, I don't want to introduce yet another server to my PC. I LOVE how Komga works with my comics, and would be really happy if it could extend to my ebooks.

Ubooquity, which I migrated to Komga from, deals with both ebooks and comics, but I'd rather stick with Komga because I like that it's in active development, it's constantly improving, and it just _works_, which I really appreciate.

As for the specific questions you asked:

• what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?
  I don't need a ton of functionality, honestly. It'd just be nice to be able to read my ebooks on the go using the same server that I use for my comics, since they're both read on the same device. I'd also like to keep my position in my books across platforms, of course. I definitely don't need a "does it all" solution like Calibre, just a way to access my ebooks in the same way I access my comics. I've actually got a handful of .pdf ebooks already imported and the functionality is just fine. All I'd personally want is for Komga to _handle_ ebooks, I wouldn't really need much more.

• how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?
  Currently, I don't have a perfect solution. I either copy my ebooks over to my device manually, or read them via Google Books. I used to use Ubooquity, but switched to Komga. I've tried Calibre, but I don't like how it treats my files and it's honestly just a bit too much for what I need.

• what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?
  I'm trying to reduce my dependence on the Google ecosystem, so being tethered to Google Books isn't perfect. Outside of that, I really don't have any self-hosted options that I'm happy with, since my only alternatives are Ubooquity, which I've left, or Calibre, which does a phenomenal job, but doesn't work how I'd like it.

[farahnur42]

Just like the poster up above I don't like Calibre's heavy-handed organizational system (that doesn't even work well with the sort of books that I want to read, light novels and webnovels that is) and the metadata scraping in my case has been abysmal even after many tweaks. So:

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

Beyond the oft-repeated metadata support [to be more specific on that I'd like for Komga to be able to gather metadata from elsewhere, not so much read the metadata that already exists included with the files] I'd like an improved reader (for example with inverted colours support since I prefer reading white text on black backgrounds and the current reader doesn't allow for that [the background colour is already set to black but that doesn't invert the color of the page]), so I'm more or less asking for the Invert Luma option in Okular. Other than that maybe being able to change out the colour scheme there altogether?

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I don't use anything beyond just going through my library and reading things from the individual folders with Okular, my DE's included reader, because my experience with Calibre has not been positive whatsoever and I have yet to have found a suitable alternative (to Calibre) that has both ebook management (or at least serving as an ebook server) capabilities and the capability to read them. I already use ebook-convert to convert all of my epubs to pdf anyways so that's not something that I'm looking for from Komga in particular.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

Just being able to use the same media server for all of my printed media (ebooks, comics and manga), really. Just the fact that Komga respects my library organization is good enough for me as far as library management goes.

[FunWithUrban]

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

All the basics that I need seem to already be in place like OPDS support, editing metadata manually, adding covers, etc. People above have mentioned other great features that would make the experience even better like searching for metadata from external sources and inverted colours.

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I'm currently using Ubooquity but the experience is not great and development here seems much improved. All I really do now is scan the root folder with Ubooquity and then use and external app with OPDS support for reading.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

I love everything I'm seeing from Komga and would love to start using it but I don't want to have to run two separate services in order to support comics/manga and ebooks.

[moisesbelda]

what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?

Apart from reading in a streaming way like the reading comics feature, it will be nice to have all my reading libraries in one single app and place, Komga. The ODPS support for ebooks will be nice as well.

how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?

I was using ubooquity (comics) and calibre-web (ebooks). Ubooquity is discontinued and both libraries (comics and ebooks) corrupt the database, and calibre-web doesn't support comics so well.

what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?

The most important for me is to have just one application for rule them all :) I mean, all my reading stuff (books, magazines and ebooks) in one sigle application, with same interface, same way to read. Komga made me to use just the web browser to read comics in my tablet instead of using a specific comic books reading app. It would be nice to have the same for ebooks and if possible in the same UI like the comics. For now, I'm satisfied to have the epub library in Komga without reading support (only the pages with images can be read), therefore what I do is to download from komga the epub and import in the epub reader app.

Thanks for your application.

[frogcrush]

A pain point for me is not being able to stay on the same page between devices, eg between my desktop, laptop, and tablet that I use for reading.

[ted46045]

• what exactly you would like Komga to do regarding ebooks ?
  Basic epub rendering/reading, no real metadata support needed. Familiar UI (as comic reading) is nice

• how you manage it at the moment for your current use case / workflow ?
  Convert .mobi/epub files to pdf and put into a library folder (seperate from comics folder). Turn off metadata/scanning for comic info

• what is painful in your current workflow that Komga could solve ?
  No need for converting to pdf, no need to use calibre