Prior to I was happy using Calibre and a USB cable to sync ePubs to my Kobo. Because I also use calibre-web I thought moving to wireless sync using the Kobo Sync solution would be better.
Calibre Web Automated
I am actually using the Calibre Web Automated fork of calibre-web but after this experience I may go back.
Four hours later, I went to bed knowing the next day I’d be reversing everything I’d done.
Kobo Sync did not work for me because:
- calibre-web does not provide the essential configuration instructions which involve modifying a configuration file directly on the Kobo to point sync services to calibre-web instead of the Kobo Store. It wasn’t hard to do this, yet the lack of instruction where it’s needed is telling.
- I deleted all my books from the Kobo. This flagged them as “archived”. It took 15 minutes to work out why a search in calibre-web for Peter Adamson found three books but the A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps series only showed two. One was marked archived.
- I could only see how to unarchive each of several hundred books in calibre-web one at a time. Turning on the “books” menu item does allow more bulk editing but I was unaware of that at the time. So I resorted to direct manipulation of the database.
- Setting up the sync was easy enough and it appeared to work. It syncs all books in a shelf. In contrast I have the Calibre wired solution syncing everything (which I prefer).
- I had a shelf called BBC Big Read where I tracked those books I’d read. Deleting it at some point on the Kobo wiped out my copy in calibre-web.
- If any books failed to convert to KEPUB format the system never tried to sync them again until I told it to do a force sync.
- And compared to Calibre which created the KEPUBs on the way, this solution creates a file. At approximately 110% the size of the ePUB it’s just doubled my storage.
- Over all it was super unreliable and that’s before it corrupted my Calibre database and I had to restore.
It took me less than 30 minutes the next day to have everything back as it was. No Kobo Sync for me.