books in emby

[RCogburn 1]

My installation plays ".m4b" files as well as those listed back in 2023 by Luke. Unfortunately it doesn't really pull the book data from anywhere or author information, I have to embed the info myself. I think its just easier to run audiobookshelf for the audio books instead of loading them into Emby. Sorry about the HDR brightness on the first pic, not sure why my system always does that.

 

 

[Neminem 1518]

I do use audiobookshelf my self.

And there is a option in ABS to write metadata to files.

I have users that have iPhones where ABS is not ready, well in beta, but users need to be queued in the beta.

[brakence 0]

On 2/23/2024 at 12:22 AM, Luke said:

HI, not yet, sorry.

just bought emby and was surprised when i saw books were an option ( i have a gigantic epub and mobi calibre library ) and now i'm sad again knowing it's not possible for now.... No port forwarding allowed for my isp so can't use calibre content server

Edited November 15, 2024 by brakence

[iMaks533 1]

On 12/7/2023 at 11:25 AM, tmysik said:

Hi all, I spent some time with fighting against .NET and Windows (I am a Java guy :) and created a prototype of Emby plugin for EPUB books. It provides really just a basic functionality - the advantage of EPUB is that it typically contains all the metadata (title, author, cover, description, year, etc.) so no need to connect remotely anywhere (yes, this part could be possibly improved, but very likely not by me :).

So, what it does exactly:

• it updates Emby metadata on library item addition
• it does the same also when one likes/unlikes the given book (to be able to manually trigger metadata refresh; this could be possibly removed, I have used this a lot during my testing)
• instead of collections, it adds tags to the books (see the last image); this is to avoid mixing movie collections with the book ones, I did not like that, it seems to me that collections are more movie friendly... this also requires proper naming of the EPUB files - personally, I am using form of "<series><index>.<title>.epub" - this way, all the files are always properly sorted, even in my ordinary file manager (I use file name sorting also in my e-book reader, too). So, the same sorting is applied also in Emby.

(That is all, so no reading or so; I have an e-book reader so I use it, of course.)

However, there are some possibly problematic parts, like - I am using an EPUB library, which is free to use, but I was not able to "bundle" it correctly into my plugin (so I simply copied its sources into my project - ugly, but works, but I may be violating its license, I don't know; any hints how to do it properly are welcome, thanks). Also, the code is very ugly (using VS and Windows is more a fight for me, as I wrote :) so it is not published anywhere.

BTW, it should not be difficult to add support for e.g. MOBI books there (I guess they are similar to EPUBs, no? I mean, they could contain all the book metadata too, no?), although it would mean some more code cleanup and refactoring, but nothing complicated I believe.

Would anyone be interested in this plugin? If so, I could try to prepare a public GitHub repo, but it would take me some time to prepare it (the reasons are explained above).

This is how it looks like on my Emby instance:

Hello tmysik,

Any chance you'll release this great plugin anytime soon?

[Luke 42077]

There is now an OpenLibrary plugin in the Emby Plugin catalog for books, and it supports ISBN lookup.

Please try it out and report your experience. Thanks !

[Dibbes 514]

On 3/1/2025 at 6:54 AM, Luke said:

There is now an OpenLibrary plugin in the Emby Plugin catalog for books, and it supports ISBN lookup.

Please try it out and report your experience. Thanks !

Will it import calibre libraries?

[Luke 42077]

40 minutes ago, Dibbes said:

Will it import calibre libraries?

It fetches metadata from OpenLibrary.

[AndrewK 0]

Hi .Is format FB2 planned to add as books format to EMBY ?

[Luke 42077]

18 hours ago, AndrewK said:

Hi .Is format FB2 planned to add as books format to EMBY ?

Hi, we'll add this to the list of detected extensions. Thanks.

[coreyjohnson75 2]

Is this just a meta fetcher or is it a reader? I already have the meta from Calibre so was curious.

 

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, coreyjohnson75 said:

Is this just a meta fetcher or is it a reader? I already have the meta from Calibre so was curious.

 

It is a fetcher, but stay tuned for more developments.

[Luke 42077]

An update to the Emby Open Library plugin has gone out to support lookups using either ISBN or the Open Library Work Id. The Work Id should help make matching easier, although you can still lookup using ISBN. Here is clarification on the differences between Open Library works and editions:

https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/editing#work-edition

[SortSpion 1]

The searching for books works good. It can be a bit challenging at time with the same book appearing as multiple different works on OpenLibrary. But that's a data quality issue on their end and has nothing to do with Emby.

Right now I can see that once identified Emby scrapes the cover, title and description of the books. It would be really nice if it got the other info as well - release date and year and author would some of the items at the very top of my wish list in this regard. But publisher, rating, language and series would also be very nice meta-data to get too.

[PixelWizard 7]

still cannot open books in emby ? 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, stay tuned.

[Luke 42077]

Emby Server 4.9.1.8+ will now have a book reader in the web app for the following formats:

• PDF
• EPUB
• MOBI
• FB2
• CBZ
• CBR

Please try it out once available and report your experience in the Testing Area of the community:

Thanks !

[Juanbol19 0]

Para cuando saldra un lector de libros para ios y android, que se pueda leer los libros desde emby, gracias.

[Luke 42077]

50 minutes ago, Juanbol19 said:

Para cuando saldra un lector de libros para ios y android, que se pueda leer los libros desde emby, gracias.

Hi, yes it's on the to do list. Thanks.

[MwxicanJoker 0]

On 7/19/2025 at 5:49 PM, Luke said:

Emby Server 4.9.1.8+ will now have a book reader in the web app for the following formats:

• PDF
• EPUB
• MOBI
• FB2
• CBZ
• CBR

Please try it out once available and report your experience in the Testing Area of the community:

Thanks !

Hello! is the new version already available?? the info on my server shows I have  4.8.11.0 version and I dont see an option to update t0 4.9 or something. I´m really wanting to try the Book reader feature as komga, caliber and other readers doesnt work I as i want. 

[Luke 42077]

6 minutes ago, MwxicanJoker said:

Hello! is the new version already available?? the info on my server shows I have  4.8.11.0 version and I dont see an option to update t0 4.9 or something. I´m really wanting to try the Book reader feature as komga, caliber and other readers doesnt work I as i want. 

Hi, not yet but we're hoping for during this week. Thanks.

[MwxicanJoker 0]

I see that my Emby server is now updated to 4.9.1.18 version but the books function is not abailable, I can see the library but the books won´t display, I can only download them. the plugins page is not showing nothing on the catalog section.

[Happy2Play 9780]

3 minutes ago, MwxicanJoker said:

I see that my Emby server is now updated to 4.9.1.18 version but the books function is not abailable, I can see the library but the books won´t display, I can only download them. the plugins page is not showing nothing on the catalog section.

What client?

But just noticed I have to Refresh metadata in 4.9.1.80 to get the play button to appear.

[Luke 42077]

4 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

What client?

But just noticed I have to Refresh metadata in 4.9.1.80 to get the play button to appear.

Oh yes this might be the answer for pre-existing libraries.

[MwxicanJoker 0]

ooh great! yes, that was the answer. you must refresh metadata on pre-existing libraries. Is there a function to add a bookmark or to save the las page you read?.

Edit: 

the client is microsoft edge browser, windows 10 pro. (if that is what you meant)

Edited October 1, 2025 by MwxicanJoker
add info.

[Happy2Play 9780]

6 minutes ago, Luke said:

Oh yes this might be the answer for pre-existing libraries.

Yes for this test I installed library in 4.8.11.0 then updated to 4.9.1.80.