I love my Kindle, but over the years I realized I was trapped. Some of my favorite Norwegian authors were nowhere to be found, and managing books from other stores was a headache.
I have, since 2013, been a loyal Kindle and Amazon customer. While convenient, this has had the drawback of making me feel somewhat restricted by Amazon’s availability, particularly for some books by Norwegian authors. You can send books from other stores to Kindle. I never did. Managing my library felt too complicated. I wanted my entire collection easy to access, organized, and fully under my control.
Then I discovered OPDS (Open Publication Distribution System) and the many open-source libraries available. At first, I was excited, I could finally see a way out of Amazon’s lock-in.
I tried everything I could find: Kavita, Calibre, Calibre-web, Booklore… each had strengths, but also frustrating limitations. None could give me persistent metadata across libraries. My initial hope started to dim, and I was mentally trying to get ready for a compromise.
And then it became crystal clear: what I really needed was a single-purpose EPUB metadata editor. One that to my knowledge didn’t exist yet. That’s when I knew, I had to build it myself.
The next few days were a revelation. I dove into EPUB standards, learning the subtle but important differences between EPUB 2 and EPUB 3. Every new discovery made me more confident that this project was possible.
Inspired by BentoPDF’s simplicity, I realized the workflow I wanted: upload, edit locally, download while keeping the original file intact. That was it. This became the model I would follow for my own editor..
Initially, the focus was just on basic functionality: editing title, author, and year. The ambition of the project quickly grew to include automatic cover search and metadata lookup from providers like Open Library, Google Books, and Apple Books.
I have been really pleased with how it’s starting to take shape, and I plan to release it in an early but functional form to make it easier for others who might be thinking along the same lines. Next, I’ll share the excitement, and horror, of releasing my first software. Early feedback, bugs, and lessons learned await.
Comments