Syncing Kobo to Calibre-Web

• Introduction
• Prerequisites
• Process
• Account Creation
• Basic Setup
• Setting up Calibre-Web for use with your eReader
• Setting up your eReader for use with Calibre-Web
• Setting up Shelves within Calibre-Web
• Adding books to Shelves within Calibre-Web
• Syncing your Shelves to your Kobo
• Additional Notes and Features
• Goodreads Integration & “Wishlist”
• Force Full Sync
• Error 500
• Collection Updates
• Reverting all Changes
• Conclusion

Introduction

This document is a manual on how to connect a Kobo eReader to the “Nasmans Library”. The document will guide you through the prerequisites, functions and best-practices using a step-by-step guide. It should be comprehensive and clear, but if you find anything I missed or forgot, don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the Nasmans Library FAQ on the Wiki. I can’t guarantee an immediate response, however, I’ll try to get to it as soon as I can and will try to update this guide accordingly.

“Nasmans Library” consists of a small stack of fully integrated tools. A database managed using Calibre, downloads that are managed through Readarr, and a nice, user-friendly interface provided by Calibre-Web. As an end user, you should only ever have to interact with Calibre-Web. There will be some mention of the other tools later in this manual, but this will only be related to automation. “Nasmans Library” currently contains a collection of about 12500 books, but will be expanded in the future. The current collection consists of mostly Dutch and English language books.

WARNING: You’re doing this mod at your own risk. I will not assume any responsibility for any broken or bricked devices, lost data, or any other damages you may incur due to using this service. If carried out correctly, this mod should be perfectly safe but installing/using it will always be at your own risk.

Prerequisites

Before you start this process, please make sure you have/prepared everything on this list

• A Wi-Fi-capable Kobo eReader (of course)
• Signed in to your Kobo eReader using a Kobo account. Without a Kobo account this guide WILL NOT WORK!
• A Windows, Mac or Linux PC. This guide was written using a Windows PC, use another OS at your own risk. Only Windows support will be provided (and if really necessary a little for Linux)
• A good text editor. If using Windows preferably Notepad++, not absolutely required though, notepad will do fine
• A USB-cable capable of carrying data, suitable for your Kobo-device
• Full Kobo backup – To do this, connect your Kobo-device to your PC using the USB-cable. Copy everything from the root folder to a new folder in a safe place (so not a folder on your Kobo-device)
• Make sure your Kobo-device has been updated to the most recent firmware version. Older firmware versions may have issues connecting to Wi-Fi, and may thus prevent this manual from working. Also, a firmware upgrade after the fact MAY cause this guide not to be persistent. Check the most recent firmware version for your device here: https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html If your Kobo-device reached EoL, and you have not updated it, it may not be possible to execute an OTA-update. It’s (probably) still possible to update it through other means, however, for now I’ll not include this in this guide. If it’s necessary to append it, shoot me a message.
• A modern browser, preferably not Firefox. Firefox is great, but often has some difficulties with HTTP. Chrome and Edge (or any Chromium-based browser) should work great.

Process

Account Creation

1. First create an account on the “Nasmans Library” web page. You can access it on: https://library.nasmans.nl 
2. On the landing page, click the “REGISTER” button.
3. Enter your preferred username and a working email-address. Don’t use 10-minute-mail addresses or the like, I’ll personally remove those. A working address is important to secure your account.
4. Click “REGISTER”. Your login credentials will be sent to your entered email-address. If you can’t find the e-mail, check your spam-folder.

Basic Setup

1. Login to “Nasmans Library” using the credentials you just created.
2. Your account has been set up using the basic settings. If you wish to change these (UI-language for example) click on the picture in the top-right corner and click your username

    3. Check whether the basic settings are correct for you and change your default-password. Press the orange “SAVE”-button at the                bottom of the page.

Setting up Calibre-Web for use with your eReader

1. Go to your personal settings menu as explained in the previous paragraph.
   
2. THIS STEP IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. DON’T SKIP THIS. In your personal settings menu, there is a checkbox that has not been checked by default. It’s titled “Sync only books in selected shelves with Kobo”. CHECK THIS BOX!!!!! If you don’t check this box, your device may try to sync all books in the collection (currently ~13K). This WILL crash your eReader and may even crash the website. 
   

    3. Press the orange “SAVE”-button at the bottom of the page.
    4. Press the “CREATE/VIEW”-button under “Kobo Sync Token” 

    5. A seemingly empty popup will appear at the top of the webpage. It’ll just be populated by three dots at first. Don’t close it! It will            take a while to generate a token. 

    6. After about twenty seconds, the popup will display a strange string of text. In the current version of Calibre-Web there is a small              issue with the layout, which may make it hard to read. Copy the complete string and paste it somewhere safe. 

    7. Close the popup and press the “SAVE”-button at the bottom of the page again.
    8. NEVER share your sync token with anyone. It’s a security risk. Don’t bother with the token pictured above, it’s been deleted. The              basics of Calibre-Web have now been set up for your eReader.

Setting up your eReader for use with Calibre-Web

1. Connect your Kobo-device to your PC. Click the “Connect” popup on the eReader.
   
2. Navigate to the root folder of your eReader using your file explorer. Then, double click the “.kobo” folder. If you’re using Windows, you may need to enable the “View Hidden Files” option: on the top bar of Microsoft Explorer click the tab “View”, then select the checkbox “Hidden Files” To the right of the window. 
   

    3. Next, open the folder “Kobo”. The path should now be “#:\KOBOeReader\.kobo\Kobo”. The pound sign (#) signifies the assigned              drive letter, which may differ per PC, and the name KOBOeReader may be different for different models. The following folders                  (\.kobo\Kobo) should be an exact match.
    4. If you’re in the correct folder, you should see a file named “Kobo eReader.conf” (you may need to enable viewing file extensions,              this can be done in the same way as viewing hidden files but check the corresponding checkbox). Duplicate this file (even though,          if you followed the prerequisites, you should have a full backup) and rename it “Kobo eReader.conf.bak”. The PC will display a                  warning about changing file extensions, just click “Yes”. The .BAK-extension signifies it’s a backup. The folder should now look as              follows:

    5. Open the file “Kobo eReader.conf” in your favorite text editor (Right mouse button on file > Open With > More Apps ↓ >                          Notepad(++))
    6. Scroll down until you see the tag “[OneStoreServices]”. The following line is probably amongst the lines underneath this tag:                    “api_endpoint=https://storeapi.kobo.com”. If this line is there, replace it with the line we copied during the Calibre-Web setup, if              the line is not there, create it according to the following image:

    7. If you did everything correctly, the code should now look as follows:

        Keep in mind the last part of the code WILL be different for you. It’s recommended to put the line in the same place in the code              (underneath the “account_page” and the “account_page_rakuten” variables directly underneath the “[OneStoreServices]” tag (it                probably won’t break things if you don’t do this, but why take the risk).

    8. Save the config file and safely eject your eReader. 
    9. Reboot your eReader. If you did everything correctly, the configuration of the eReader is now complete.

Setting up Shelves within Calibre-Web

1. Log back into the Calibre-Web interface.
   
2. Navigate to the bottom left corner. You should see shelves here. There’ll be some public shelves and the option “+ CREATE A SHELF”. Click the “+ CREATE A SHELF” option. 
   
3. Give your shelf a suitable title. Alsof, select the checkbox with the text “Sync this shelf with Kobo device”. ONLY the shelves where you selected this checkbox will be synced to your eReader. However you design your shelves is your own choice. It may be good to know that “Shelves” in Calibre-Web correspond with “Collections” within your Kobo-device. So it may be a nice strategy to order shelves by category/series/author etc. This depends upon your preferences. 
   
4. Finally, click save.
   

Adding books to Shelves within Calibre-Web

There are multiple ways to add books to add books to shelves in Calibre-Web. I’ll explain the basics of the two most frequently used manners. 
If you wish to add a single book, just search for it using the search bar or use the options under “BROWSE” in the side navigation menu to select your book. Next, click the “Add to shelf” icon in the top right corner and select your preferred shelf.

The workflow to add multiple books at once is a little more involved. First, press the option “Advanced Search” to the right of the search bar. Next, you’ll see a window with many options. Choose any option that will result in your required selection of multiple books. In this case I’ll choose “Author”, I typed the name of the author and pressed the “SEARCH” button at the bottom of the page. A result will be returned listing all the books that correspond to your query. The “Add to shelf” button is now in the top left corner. The rest of the workflow is identical to a single book. 

Try to play around with the advanced search feature, it’s easy to create extensive shelves in this way. Please try to keep a sensible amount of books on your shelves. Kobo-devices don’t really appreciate being bombarded by thousands of books at once.

 

Syncing your Shelves to your Kobo

Now we finally get to the best part. Effectively, we tricked our eReader into believing the “Nasmans Library” is actually the Kobo store. You just have to do two things to do the synchronization, and better yet, you never have to mess with USB-cables/memory cards anymore. 
First, make sure your eReader is connected to your Wi-Fi network.  If it’s not, just press this icon:

Then, follow the instructions on screen to connect to your network.
Next, Just press the sync button and wait for it to complete! Happy reading!

Additional Notes and Features

Goodreads Integration & “Wishlist”

As mentioned before, the toolstack consists of multiple tools. The beauty of this is that it’s possible to automate a lot of things. One of these things is automatically (mostly) downloading requested releases. As there is no such thing as an integrated request-platform in Calibre-Web, Readarr provided an option.

It’s possible to import different kinds of ‘lists’ from Goodreads. Due to import constraints, the only options I will accept for now is a Goodreads Listopia Lists and Goodreads Series. If you wish to add your list/series send me a message with your respective list-/series-ID. Again, other lists WILL NOT be accepted, as they need account credentials and I will not go through this amount of trouble to add an import list.

Force Full Sync

This might be the wrong place to mention this, but it’s not really a part of the configuration process. If you ever fail to sync all the books you listed, this might be because the database believes it’s already on your device. To resolve this, it’s possible to force a full sync. In the Calibre-Web portal, navigate to your personal settings menu. First press the “FORCE FULL KOBO SYNC” button, then press the “DELETE” button in the popup.

Error 500

If you ever encounter Error 500 when you login to Calibre-Web, please send me a message (leave a comment) at once. The database has locked and needs to be restarted. This happens incidentally and will prevent login/sync. I’ll try to remediate this issue permanently as soon as I can.

Collection Updates

Please don’t message me about a single book missing from an import list etc. As all downloads are automatically managed through torrents, the collection is limited by what is available online. I’ll try to get as much as possible, but I can’t promise I’m able to find anything and I won’t spend all day manually looking for books. You’re welcome to send me an archive with eBooks, I’ll try to import them into the collection. Also, after an import list was added, be patient. It takes 12 hours for import lists to refresh.

Reverting all Changes

There are a few different ways to revert all changes to your Kobo-device. I will only explain the easiest and least intrusive workflow in this guide. The easiest way to revert all changes is to connect your Kobo-device to your computer using a USB-cable again. Navigate back to the “#:\KOBOeReader\.kobo\Kobo”-folder. In here, rename your “Kobo eReader.conf” file to something else and change its file extension, for example: “Kobo eReader_CALIBRE-WEB-MOD.conf.bak”. Afterwards, remove the “.bak” extension from the backup you made while setting up the mod on your kobo.

If you have any difficulty reverting, please refer back to the chapter “Setting up your eReader for use with Calibre-Web”. Every step of the install process is explained thoroughly with related pictures. Refer to these, and follow the steps in opposite order. If this is not sufficient, please leave a comment.

Conclusion

You’ve reached the end of this manual!

I’ve tried to write this manual as concisely as I could, though I undoubtably forgot some edge-cases or maybe even forgot to answer some essential questions. It’s hard to explain the technical side clearly without being too detailed or glossing over parts. If you have any questions, suggestions, or additions; please send me a message!

I hope you enjoy the “Nasmans Library” and everything works just as well for you as it does for me. Syncing the first time after setting everything up was almost like magic to me. It’s amazing free software integrates this well (even with unrelated hardware!) and, well, that it’s all free.

Happy reading!
    -    Lieven