CheckMag | Booklore is the Plex of self hosted e-book libraries, but is sadly irrelevent when DRM free e-books are so hard to obtain legally

Calibre has been the go-to book manager for many people over the years, which allows yo to manage, convert and read e-books. It will also allow you to strip the DRM from books purchased from Amazon (more on that later). Like Booklore, it can even be hosted in a Docker container, but the interface is dated, and as good as it is at managing books, it doesn't make the most satisfying experience for browsing and reading content in your library.

Booklore is not a replacement for Calibre, more of a web based manager for your collection that allows you to organise and read your titles in a beautiful, intuitive and easy to navigate way. Because it is hosted through Docker, it can be accessed from any device on your network and works great through a web browser or on a phone, tablet or e-reader. 

It will let you categorise books on custom "shelves", download missing covers, art work and metadata, as well as read content through a built-in e-reader, tracking your progress as you read. If you don't want to use the built-in reader, books can be downloaded and uploaded to your e-reader of choice through OPDS integration (Open Publication Distribution System) and it can even email books directly to a Kindle device. Booklore also has multi-user support, allowing you to set up different accounts for different people, who are then able to manage their own libraries independently of each other.

Installing Booklore is as simple as spinning up a Docker container. The Docker Compose file can be found on Github. You will also need a MariaDB instance running, Pre-configured templates for both can be found in the Unraid apps section. In either case, you just have to make sure that the Booklore container can access the MariaDB container by setting the database name and password consistently in both containers, and telling the Booklore container the address of the MariaDB container.

You can specify a folder of books to the Booklore container, which can be imported directly to your library. This can be useful if you are importing numerous books, however, multiple files can also be uploaded through the web interface directly.

If it's set up correctly, you should be greeted with a login page when accessing the web interface, which will prompt you to create an administrator account.

While you can buy some DRM (Digital Rights Management) free books from somewhere like eBooks.com, you certainly won't find the latest Pulitzer Prize winner available pre-stripped of DRM. Anyone looking to host their own e-book library, or even read a book outside of something like the Amazon or Kobo ecosystem, are going to be out of luck. You'll either need a dedicated piece of hardware, such as the Kindle (available on Amazon) or an app from the respective company.

There are ways to strip DRM from Amazon purchased books using Calibre and a number of plugins (which does work), but the process is time-consuming, sometimes requires a Kindle serial number, and for Windows users at least, is reliant on downloading an older, very specific version of the Kindle App, giving this process a limited lifespan.

Alternatively, you may choose to download a DRM free copy of a book you have purchased from a shadow library, such as Z-Library (which I won't link here for obvious reasons) but because of the association with piracy, downloading copies of books you have purchased legally, still falls on the grey / illegal side of the law.

Ripping audio, video and even games from the physical media we own, thanks to modern hardware, takes minutes, although it still falls into a somewhat grey area in many countries. Unfortunately, the practicalities of doing the same with a physical book are fairly unrealistic. Even though purchasing a physical book allows someone to loan or sell that book, and DRM certainly hasn't done anything to harm the piracy scene, we are still forced into ecosystems where content we have supposedly purchased can be removed at any time. Something that obviously cannot be done with a physical copy.

While DRM on books exists, the masses are forced to purchase from the big players, or sail the high seas. This makes projects like Booklore impractical for many people, which is a shame, because the self-hosting scene is becoming more and more popular, and Booklore is a fantastic addition for book lovers who want to stay in control of their data.