this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2026
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Howdy self-hosters!

I've got a huge pile of eBooks flying around here: poetry, scientific literature, magazines, comics, teaching materials, RPG rule books - it's a wildly mixed bag. I'm still looking for a self-hosted solution to make it more accessible and get an overview of what I actually have. (Calibre looks promising!)

My question here is not about software, though, but about organisation at the filesystem level: what folder and file name structure have you established for your eBooks? Do you just dump everything into one single folder and let the software do the rest? Do you create sections by genre ("Crime", "Fantasy", "Young adult", like the libraries do it) or application (job-related, hobby-related, cooking, ...)? Does it matter at all?

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[โ€“] affenlehrer@feddit.org 9 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I don't organize by folders, I use tagging so a single book can be in multiple categories at the same time.

[โ€“] LewdLemon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 hours ago

That sounds reasonable. So you're essentially throwing everything into one folder and let software do the rest? May I ask what software you're using, and how it stores your tags? Does it use metadata files or a database?