Bookery is a CLI-first ebook library manager that helps organize EPUB libraries from the terminal.
It’s inspired by beets and Calibre, with a metadata-first workflow for matching books against online sources, reviewing corrections, maintaining a local catalog, and syncing a cleaned library to Kobo devices while keeping original files untouched.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- EPUB metadata extraction reads title, author, ISBN, language, publisher, description, cover, and identifiers from EPUB files.
- MOBI-to-EPUB conversion converts MOBI and KF8 files to EPUB, preserving metadata, images, cover art, and chapter structure via NCX TOC.
- PDF-to-EPUB conversion detects text-based PDFs, extracts their structure with pdfplumber and a local LLM through LM Studio, and produces a reflowable EPUB.
- Kobo sync converts EPUB files to .kepub.epub with kepubify and copies them to a mounted Kobo device.
- Keeps the main library format-canonical, with kepub files generated on demand and cached for faster re-syncs.
- Collections group books into named lists, either static or rule-based using live queries such as genre:”Science Fiction” or series:Dune.
- Collection shelves on Kobo mirror Bookery collections to device shelves while avoiding user-created shelves with matching names.
- Multi-provider metadata matching uses Open Library and Google Books with a consensus merger, normalized ISBN lookups, and cached provider responses.
- Per-field provenance records which provider supplied each catalog field and when.
- Field locking protects user edits from being overwritten during later metadata rematches.
- Interactive review presents metadata candidates in a Rich table, letting you accept, compare details, look up by URL, or skip.
- Smart normalization splits mangled filenames into cleaner search queries and detects embedded author names.
- SQLite catalog imports books into a local database for querying, tagging, and integrity checks.
- Web UI provides local browser-based catalog browsing, filtering, cover thumbnails, book detail pages, collection editing, metadata rematching, and candidate diff review.
- Genre management maps raw provider subjects to a canonical genre vocabulary, with tools for assigning, applying, automapping, viewing stats, and finding unmatched subjects.
- Obsidian vault export turns an Obsidian vault into a single EPUB with a hierarchical table of contents, wiki-link handling, image embeds, and optional tag index.
- Non-destructive workflow writes metadata changes to copies, leaving original source files untouched.
Website: github.com/JoeCotellese/bookery
Support:
Developer: Joe Cotellese
License: MIT License
Bookery is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| eBook Utilities | |
|---|---|
| Sigil | Multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor |
| pandoc | Universal document converter |
| EpubCheck | Validate your EPUB Books |
| Booktype | Platform that produces beautiful, engaging books |
| Crowbook | Convert books written in Markdown to HTML, LaTeX/PDF and EPUB |
| papeer | Web scraper for ereaders |
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