How to manage my e-book library across my devices

Question

So I have a reasonable collection of ebooks, and it starts to be a mess. My collection is a mixture of ebooks from Amazon (Kindle) and pdf.

I have one laptop, one kindle, one android tablet and one main PC.

For the reader part, I'm fine with what I have: kindle for novel, adobe pdf reader for windows PC and laptop and a good reader for the tablet.

What I miss is a way to centralize and share metadata around those books: what I have read, not read, what's next, short comments, rating, ...

Right now I'm using Calibre on the laptop, because it was my main device. The drive is synced to my onedrive account, so I can access my books from every browsers and thank to portable Calibre install, I can even run calibre from any windows machine.

So basically I have many book management systems (Kindle, Calibre) that are synced by cloud, but this is not good for my tablet: Kindle and onedrive are storing the file in internal memory (short) while I have a big sd card. I also have no way to share my metadata with the table which starts to become my main reading device for pdf.

I would like to have a central library for metadata that I can update from many places, and a way to replicate my ebooks in all my devices, in my favorite location (sd card for Android) so I can read what I want without an internet connection. In addition this central library should be able to integrate with my kindle books and other library system.

Do you know if such a centralized software exists ? If no, what would be the closest thing to my need ?

Answer 1

Ok, so here is my current solution, which is not perfect but that corresponds more or less with my current need.

• PC with windows are using the portable version of Calibre. The library and the metadata are stored in a specific dir in my filesystem that is synchronized with my local onedrive directory.

• Android devices are using the Calibre Companion app ($4) and are configured to use my onedrive cloud account. I'll probably change that in order to use a cloud synchroniser tool to mirror my cloud storage to the SDCard and point Calibre Companion to my local storage instead !

• IOs: don't need it at the moment.

What needs to be improved:

• possible conflict between metadata of pc version: I need to investigate if I can have a centralized version of calibre that can received updates from secondary devices. But right now I use the same machine for adding new stuff, so is is fine.

• Need to find a way to push my ebooks with DRM to calibre. No really needed, because Kindle app is ubiquitous, but I would like to have one central place to organize my ebooks collection.

Answer 2

Yes, I have been calling for something similar for a few years now :)

The real question is DRM; I assume that you are not talking about moving books bought on Amazon because those can't be transferred by memory card. In fact, the Kindle app is really the only tool for viewing and syncing purchased content.

For me, any tablet I have contains the Adobe app (or Bluefire app) for storing Adobe DRM stuff, the Kindle app (for storing Kindle DRM stuff) and the Google app (for storing epubs -- encrypted and nonencrypted).

That means you are going to be spreading your content into three different apps.

I don't think there is a way to export your metadata from one library management system into another, especially if you are talking about encrypted stuff.

It's possible to use the same app for encrypted PDF and epub (like the Adobe Digital Editions). But I think it's still better to keep pdfs and epubs on separate apps.

One solution (a not-so-good one) is to keep your metadata on librarything or goodreads. But you'd have to input data manually. I know more about librarything, and know that you can store your inventory spreadsheets which you can sync via Dropbox. But you need to manually generate the spreadsheet each time.

If a solution comes which will bridge the gap between Amazon and the other digital book sellers, I expect that several big publishers would work together to make a central ebook management app which can display titles in each DRM universe and then launch the correct app if you want to open a certain ebook up. But it's unlikely that Amazon would allow personal ebook inventory to be listed by a third party application, if only for privacy reasons.

Until that happens (I think we will be stuck with several apps with their own DRM and syncing mechanism).

Answer 3

I have Amazon ebooks, epub, and PDF ebooks. My work-related ebooks are associated with my work-related Gmail account. My home-related ebooks are associated with my home-related Gmail account. I have hundreds of ebooks in each of my 3 libraries, 2 associated with my Google Play Books accounts, and 1 with my Amazon account.

For me, it is critical all my ebooks be stored in the Cloud and are available on all my devices all the time. Computer crashes are inevitable. It is only a matter of time before everything is lost. Backups may work but are problematic by their nature. Both Google Play Books and Amazon Books feature ebook readers and ebook managers in the Cloud. They both work on my Android mobile devices and my Windows computers.

All my epub and PDF ebooks are uploaded to and downloaded from Google Play Books. They are always synced and always up-to-date. In my opinion, Amazon Books is too insular, but they do make it easier for me to read and manage my ebooks than Google Play Books does.

Amazon books are semi-automatically integrated with Goodreads; Amazon owns Goodreads. From the Goodreads website, Goodreads users can selectively update their Goodreads libraries with their new Amazon books.

Google Play Books must be cataloged manually on Goodreads and that likely won't change while Amazon owns Goodreads. I don't use tags on Goodreads other than to track my current reading progress with the ebooks I am reading and to tap into the reading public.

Google Play Books ebook readers (mobile and Windows) are basic ebook readers. Generally, they work quite well. If you require more advanced features provided by better ebook readers ( e.g., Adobe Acrobat for PDFs), you have to first download the files from Google Play Books.

Whenever I upload an ebook to Google Play Books, I also upload that same ebook to my Google Drive -- every time without exception. By that association, any ebook reader that works with Google Drive can read any ebook in my Google Play Books libraries. My Google Drive ebooks are all in the same "Library" folder -- they are not tagged.

Google Play Books has all the basics, you can buy ebooks, read epub & PDF books, add tags (bookshelves) to your books, sort them within a bookshelf, sort by title, and modification date. However, bookshelves are not available on Google Play Books for Android. They feature automatic tags instead, which in my opinion is pretty useless.

Adobe Acrobat has a Chrome extension, which works with Google Drive. You can also set up your Google Drive on your laptop so that it is synced with your Google Drive in the Cloud. Adobe Acrobat can read those synced ebooks and if you desire, it can store a copy in the Adobe Cloud.

I have not found any way for the ebook managers Calibre, Nook, and Adobe Digital Editions to work with Google Drive or OneDrive. In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before advanced epub book readers and/or better ebook managers integrate with Google Drive or OneDrive; Adobe Acrobat -- advanced PDF reader -- already integrates with Google Drive.

There is definitely a mechanism for putting all your ebooks in the Cloud, but it is a bit clumsy. Hopefully, Big-tech will be forced to provide better tools in the near future.