Set up a local Calibre library

Install Calibre

At the time of writing (March 2022), this works better on Raspbian Buster, than the latest release Bullseye, which is still in testing mode. Make sure you choose Buster for stable results.

After flashing an SD card with your Raspbian Buster OS, we should update and then install Calibre.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install calibre

create library and add a book

The location of the directory will be in my home folder, which is /home/simoon. Make a directory in your home folder, and then enter it:

mkdir calibre-library
cd calibre-library

We can use wget to download a book from Project Gutenberg;

wget http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46.kindle.noimages -O christmascarol.mobi

Then, we use calibredb to add the book to our library

calibredb add *.mobi --with-library calibre-library/

You should get a message saying "1 book added".

Next, we're going to use calibre-server to start the service.

calibre-server calibre-library