Hi all, I’m relatively new to this whole self-hosting thing and I have been loving it. I have several instances setup on my Debian server except for an audiobooks one. My wife loves audiobooks and asked me a way she can get audiobooks on the fly. I have searched online and found many.
Audiobookshelf is the most recommended one, but I don’t really know much about it beside what I read. Most of it I didn’t understand since I’ve never set up anything like that before. I don’t know the technical details on audiobooks like I do on music for example. So I’m not sure. Audiobookshelf has an app for iOS in test flight but its beta is full. And every client for it has an “in-app purchase” tag and I’m not sure what they hide behind a paywall. I’ve also read that Navidrome (which I already have set up on the sever) works, too but it needs to be “tagged” correctly. I’m not sure how to and what to use to tag audiobooks. I use kid3 for music, would it work for books, too?
I don’t want to commit and go through the whole setup then end up hitting roadblocks. So any info would be very much appreciated.
Thank you all.
Set up audiobookshelf via docker. I like using portainer to manage docker containers because it has a GUI. Command line stuff is more difficult if you don’t have the background experience to go with it. I think doing it all in a GUI feels more comfortable for most people.
Docker can also be kind of intimidating if you are just wading into the self hosting world but it really is much simpler to use once you get the hang of it. Portainer helps a ton with that. Audiobookshelf would be great to start with both imo because it’s a pretty basic set up. You have to define a storage location for your library and config files and that’s about all it takes to get it up and running.
I recently got into all this and remember well what it was like to feel out of my element so feel free to ask questions if you have any. I’m no expert but I’m happy to share what I can.
I did setup Audiobookshelf via normal apt in the command line. I also have docker for other things, but this time I wanted to try things the normal way to see. It wasn’t bad. It created a config file that has two lines in /etc and I just created a folder in /srv and and dumped the files there and pointed the client to it. Still experimenting with it and a client app called “Audiobooth”. Not bad so far.
Nice, it sounds like you’re learning stuff just fine. I recommended it elsewhere in the comments here but if you’re looking for audiobook sources I suggest checking out libro.fm. They give half of your purchase price to a local bookstore of your choice and you can download the files in multiple formats with no DRM.
This is what I’m doing and all my friends and fam who like the books have accounts and it works very well. Direct replacement for audible.
Libro.fm seems to be a solid paid service. They give half of your purchase price to a local bookstore of your choice and you can download the files in multiple formats with no DRM.
Fuck audible and fuck Amazon. They literally used my card without my permission to charge for an audible subscription. I had to call them and get my money back. Closed all of my accounts with these fuckers.
Ya same. Has left over credits which you lose if you cancel, didn’t know what I want, only let you pause in hopes you forget and they bill you. It’s a shady business practice