Nfo Files for Books

[Yopla59 0]

Hello Emby Team and Community,

I've been using Emby for years and I absolutely love it for movies and TV shows. However, one area that has been consistently lacking is the support for eBooks and Comics.

Currently, Emby treats books as second-class citizens when it comes to metadata management. While we have a dedicated "Books" library type, the metadata scraping is limited to the OpenLibrary plugin (which is often incomplete, especially for non-English titles), and there is no native support for reading .nfo files for books.

This is a significant gap for users with large eBook or comic collections (CBZ, CBR, EPUB, PDF). We currently have to manually edit metadata for each book, which is not sustainable for large libraries.

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The Feature Request

Add native .nfo file support for the "Books" library type, similar to what exists for Movies, TV Shows, and Music.

This would allow users to:

1. Pre-define metadata for their books (title, series, volume, authors, plot, publisher, ISBN, etc.).

2. Organize series and collections (e.g., comic events, manga volumes).

3. Use external tools (like tinyMediaManager, Calibre, or custom scripts) to generate .nfo files, making library management much more efficient.

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Suggested Metadata Schema (NFO)

To make this truly useful, the .nfo should support the following fields:

 

 

Field	Description	Example
<title>	Full title of the book	"Carnage Tome 01"
<subtitle>	Subtitle (optional)	"Dans la cour écarlate"
<sorttitle>	Title used for sorting (e.g., "Carnage 01")	"Carnage 01"
<series>	The series name	"Carnage"
<volume>	Volume/Issue number	"1"
<author>	Author(s) – can be multiple entries (Writer, Artist, etc.)	<author>Ram V</author>
<publisher>	Publisher name	"Panini Comics"
<year>	Publication year	"2023"
<releasedate>	Exact release date (YYYY-MM-DD)	"2023-02-01"
<language>	Language code (ISO 639-1)	"fr"
<plot>	Synopsis / Description	"Le seul hôte avec qui..."
<rating>	Parental rating (Teen, Mature, etc.)	"Teen"
<isbn>	ISBN-13 or ISBN-10	"9791039100984"
<pages>	Number of pages	"160"
<tags>	Custom tags (Genre, Universe, etc.)	<tag>Comics</tag>
<cover>	Path to local cover image	"cover.jpg"

Example NFO file :

xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<book>
    <title>Carnage Tome 01</title>
    <subtitle>Dans la cour écarlate</subtitle>
    <sorttitle>Carnage 01</sorttitle>
    <series>Carnage</series>
    <volume>1</volume>
    <author>Ram V</author>
    <author>David Michelinie</author>
    <author>Francesco Manna</author>
    <publisher>Panini Comics</publisher>
    <year>2023</year>
    <releasedate>2023-02-01</releasedate>
    <language>fr</language>
    <plot>Le seul hôte avec qui le symbiote Carnage a partagé sa vie a été Cletus Kasady...</plot>
    <rating>Teen</rating>
    <isbn>9791039100984</isbn>
    <pages>160</pages>
    <tags>
        <tag>Comics</tag>
        <tag>Marvel</tag>
        <tag>Symbiote</tag>
    </tags>
    <cover>carnage_t01_cover.jpg</cover>
</book>

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Folder Structure (similar to Movies/TV)

The proposed logic would be:

1. For a standalone book :

   text

   /Book Title (Year)/
      Book Title (Year).epub
      Book Title (Year).nfo
      cover.jpg

2. For a series (or manga volumes) :

   text

   /Series Name/
      tvshow.nfo          <-- Series-level metadata
      /Volume 01/
         Book Title - Vol 01.cbz
         Book Title - Vol 01.nfo
         cover.jpg
      /Volume 02/
         Book Title - Vol 02.cbz
         Book Title - Vol 02.nfo
         cover.jpg

   Note : This would also allow Emby to group books into "Series" and display them similarly to TV shows or collections.

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Additional Features

• Image support : Automatically pick up cover.jpg, folder.jpg, or <cover> from the NFO.

• Series grouping : Ability to create "Series" entries (like TV shows) that group individual books or volumes.

• Metadata refresh : The ability to reload metadata from the .nfo file when it changes (similar to IHasItemChangeMonitor).

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Why is this important?

• Consistency : Users who already use .nfo for movies/TV expect the same for books.

• Automation : Advanced users can generate .nfo files using scripts or tools like Calibre, tinyMediaManager, or custom parsers (EPUB, PDF, CBZ).

• Language support : OpenLibrary is often limited for non-English books; .nfo files would allow users to define metadata in their own language.

• Collections & Series : Currently, there's no way to properly group comic runs or series (e.g., Marvel Must-Have, DC Rebirth) without manually editing each item.

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Existing Community Efforts

Several users (including myself) have attempted to create custom plugins to add this functionality. However, the lack of native NFO support makes this complex and prone to break with Emby updates. A native implementation would be much more stable and widely accessible.

Forum threads discussing this :

• Book metadata not being read

• No NFO support for Books

• Feature Request : NFO for Books

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Summary

Adding native .nfo support for Books would :

• Bring parity with other library types.

• Empower power users to manage their collections efficiently.

• Attract new users with large eBook/Comic libraries.

• Align with community expectations and standard practices.

I hope the Emby team considers this request seriously. The book/comic community is growing, and Emby could become the go-to solution for media servers that handle both video and literature.

Thank you for your hard work and for reading this request!

- A dedicated Emby user

[Luke 42825]

@Yopla59