adityachandelgit
Link and sync books between Audiobookshelf + BookLore
Feature Request Template for Booklore
What problem or limitation are you encountering?
I have a decent sized collection of audiobooks, which I currently manage in Audiobookshelf (ABS). As I tend to jump back-and-forth between audiobooks and ebooks, including mixing both reading and listening to a given book, it would be awesome if BookLore could be integrated with Audiobookshelf to link and sync information for books where the ebook is available in BookLore and the audiobook is available in ABS.
What solution or improvement do you propose?
Ideally, I'd like to be able to automatically and/or manually link ebooks in BookLore with corresponding audiobooks in an ABS library. At the time the books are linked, I'd like to have the option to choose whether to use BookLore or ABS as the source-of-truth for certain metadata (e.g. genres, tags / categories, audiobook duration, etc.), which will then be synced between both BookLore and ABS. After a book is linked between BookLore and ABS, any changes to the metadata source-of-truth + reading progress (started / finished on, current progress, sessions, etc.) would automatically be synced between BookLore and ABS either at the time the change occurs (on-demand) or as a scheduled task (e.g. every 12h, every day at 4am, etc.).
Stretch Goal: Bi-directional sync for collections / shelfs. It'd be amazing if when a book that's linked to an audiobook in ABS is added to a shelf in BookLore (including a magic shelf) that the audiobook would also be automatically added to a matching collection in ABS, as well.
Have you found any workarounds or alternatives?
Prior to migrating to Booklore, I managed my library of ebooks with Calibre and used a 3rd party plugin to integrate Calibre with ABS. Every 24h (or when manually triggered), the plugin would check the linked books in Calibre + ABS and sync the reading progress and metadata (tags, genres, etc.) from one to the other. This approach allowed me to use Calibre as the "source-of-truth" for metadata, made it easier to find which books I have as booth an ebook + audiobook, and kept reading progress in sync so that when an audiobook was finished the linked book was marked as completed in Calibre as well.
Additional details
For reference, the ABS <> Calibre plugin mentioned above is available here --> https://github.com/jbhul/Audiobookshelf-calibre-plugin
What feature of BookLore are you using that isn't availablein ABS ? ABS has a native eBook management platform that handles all of the metadata, covers, formatting, importing, et al.
I use ABS for all of my eBooks and Audiobooks. The only thing it is missing is Kobo integration, which is why I am looking here at BL.
What feature of BookLore are you using that isn't availablein ABS ? ABS has a native eBook management platform that handles all of the metadata, covers, formatting, importing, et al.
I use ABS for all of my eBooks and Audiobooks. The only thing it is missing is Kobo integration, which is why I am looking here at BL.
I am in the process of deciding which of these two to use. Audiobook is the winner so far due to the ability to manage both ebooks and audiobooks in the one catalogue (Which is important for me). However, I much prefer the layout and options of the Booklore UI (except the lack of light mode in library, I can only see this as an option in the reader). Based on the demos, the things ABS does not currently have that BL does:
- Much more intuitive info vs read layout on results pages (with the badges). In ABS, Clicking the image of an ebook opens the reader, you need to click the one line of text to go to the item info.
- BL offers a more advanced search functionality.
- BL tem pages have 'similar book' recommendations (which I love), as well as notes and reviews.
- These sections are tabulated at the bottom of the item page, which is nice (I'm not a fan of the excessive horizontal scroll, though, would prefer a collapse)
- Item pages in ABS are very limited. BL is much richer with rich text descriptions that collapse, reviews fetched from Amazon, GR etc. as well as their respective overall ratings (plus the above).
- I can't see anything comparable to magic shelves in ABS.
- ABS does not have a dashboard, or any options to keep track of what you're currently readings. I also like the 'recently added' and 'discover something new' options on the BL dashboard.
If Booklore had a light option (I end up with headaches when I use dark modes, feel one brewing from reviewing bL for the above list) and could handle audiobooks, BL would be the clear winner.
