HACKER Q&A
📣 davehcker

How do you manage your eBooks library?


I'm curious what tools you use.

I have myself tried:

* Calibre -> not the most beautiful UI/UX. Does it even sync across devices?

* Mendely -> Good for paper management.

* PapersApp -> Much better for paper management and research stuff.

* Kindle Cloud -> Only for epubs. I have epubs, pdfs, djvu.

* PDF viewer -> Files here and there and often in multiple places. Hard to manage across topics/genres.

* Preview (Apple) -> I can highlight. But files scattered.

* iBooks -> can't open PDF.

Personal frustration:

I'm cursed to live in permanent temporariness so far, but luckily am fully adept at spending countless hours reading books (and papers) on any screen. I read on various topics and usually just because I love consuming knowledge, and not necessarily hoping that I'd churn out a paper (so I don't care about bibliography/citation features). I guesstimated and realized I've read some 200 non-fiction books and around 70 papers in the last four year and I alway end up discovering some gems left in some folder. Now it bothers me so much that I'm planning to write a webapp just to solve this problem.


  👤 RMPR Accepted Answer ✓
Kindred soul, have a look at this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21635012, the author covers quite a few tools, you may find something that fits your needs. In the meantime, you can always combine many tools to achieve what you want.