Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
If you’ve ever bought an e-book from Amazon, you already know you don’t really own it. Sure, it’s in your Kindle library and you can read it in the app. But try moving it to another device or archiving it somewhere else, and you’ll quickly run into walls. In fact, Amazon has been doubling down on its attempts to curtail access to the books you’ve bought from the Kindle store.
Between DRM, proprietary file formats, and a complete lack of export tools, you are stuck playing by Amazon’s rules. And if they ever decide you have violated some clause buried in the terms of service, your entire library could disappear. It’s a worrisome position to be in, especially for someone like me who has amassed a library of thousands of eBooks.
Amazon sells you access, not ownership, and that access can vanish overnight.
I didn’t think much of this when I first got a Kindle. But as the years passed and my reading habits changed, the friction built up. Not only was I switching between my Kindle and Boox e-reader, I was also downloading more DRM-free EPUBs, PDFs, and research papers. I wanted a single, flexible way to manage all of it. Calibre was the obvious suggestion and my go-to for years. But let’s be real. Calibre looks and feels like an app from the early 2000s. The interface is too clunky, the web UI feels like an afterthought, and even simple tasks take too many clicks. I just wanted something that looked modern and didn’t skip out on features. And especially something that was built from the ground up for multiple users. That’s when I stumbled onto BookLore.
A self-hosted library that just works
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
BookLore is a self-hosted ebook library built with simplicity in mind. There’s no bloated desktop client, no outdated UI, and here’s my favorite part — it is entirely self-hosted. You own your data and the server it lives on. If you’ve been following my writing recently, you’ll have realised this is a very important factor for me.
Now, if you are used to self-hosting apps, you know that between permissions and dependencies, installation can become an ordeal. Not so with BookLore. I followed the instructions on the app’s GitHub page and had it up and running on my Synology NAS within minutes using Docker. The onboarding process is straightforward and starts with creating a user, spinning a library, and you’re good to go.
Between the modern, customixable design and excellent metadata support, BookLore is a massive step up from Calibre.
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