According to the official Discord, “ACX has made the decision to close Booklore and step away.” Some contributors are working together on an unnamed replacement project.

For those not in the loop, Booklore was an app for selfhosting book libraries. It had a nice UI. It was able to store metadata separately from the download files, so you could have an organized library without duplication. In recent weeks, there have been conflicts about AI code, licensing, and general Discord nastiness.

RIP

Edit: The discord, website and github are all gone. I found a copy of the announcement:

Announcement

📢 A note on where things stand

ACX has made the decision to close BookLore and step away. He has a partner, a new chapter of his life ahead of him, and honestly - building something that reached 10k stars and thousands of daily users is something to be proud of. We wish him well.

That said - this community, and this project, is bigger than any one person. That’s the whole point of open source.

So here’s what’s happening next:

A group of the original contributors - the people who built a lot of what you’ve been using - are continuing the work under a new name. [PROJECT NAME TBD] is that continuation. Same mission. Better foundation. Governed the way an open source project should be: transparently, collaboratively, and with the community at the center.

We’re not starting from zero. We’re starting from everything this community has already built together.

If you want to be part of what comes next, come join us: 👉 https://discord.gg/FwqHeFWk

More details - name, repo, roadmap - coming very shortly. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for giving a damn about this project. That’s exactly why it’s worth continuing.

  • versionc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1412·
    16 hours ago

    Good riddance.

    Has anyone used Komga as an alternative? It’s primarily for manga and comics but it seems to support books too (epub and PDF). It also seems to be able to sync books with Kobo devices.

    • nfreak@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      I set up Komga as soon as the original reddit thread went up about the Booklore dev. Works great, pretty simple, does what it needs to do, and setting up Kobo sync for my wife took all of 5 minutes.

    • d1gitalsn0w@feddit.orgEnglish
      6·
      14 hours ago

      I just switched to Komga, the only thing I’m missing is the easy way to search for metadata, but I don’t mind that part. Komga works perfectly fine for normal books in my short testing.

      The handling of books is a bit weird, because for single books it creates a “Series” with only one entry.

      I don’t directly sync to my Kobo reader, but instead use KOReader and access Komga via OPDS. The progress sync from KOReader to Komga works too (just don’t use special characters in your password)

    • TheFerventLion@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      15 hours ago

      I will say, even given all the drama around the original creator in the last few weeks, Booklore has a solid front end experience, is quite flexible, and generally stable app. It’s a bummer the creator acted childishly (again and again), but I know I’ll be looking to use whatever the v2 of this becomes.