Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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my wife has a Kobo reader and it's a great alternative, from Canada. The reader works great with Calibre on desktop for books you already own, and the Kobo store is more or less equivalent to the Kindle store.
I have no suggestion for getting files off an iPhone, but presumably an app exists to arbitrarily send files to desktop, and from there Calibre works.
Kobo build quality is better than other e-readers, and it supports color and markups. Overall it's pretty good for PDFs/textbooks and novels, but manga/comics can be a little goofy.
I cant speak on the syncing since she has only the one device.
Good luck!
Edit: seems like you edited (or i misunderstood) the OP. Kobo (the device) works great with US library lending, but ymmv if you are in another country. If you use the kobo app on your phone it will sync your position with the device, but the app is pretty flawed on mobile and doesnt have a desktop version i'm aware of.
I wouldnt mind using the app to read fiction, but it's not great for reference material. I use a standalone pdf reader for that kind of thing on my phone, which obviously doesnt sync.
I had looked into Kobo, but ultimately Boox won out. Zero proprietary ecosystem, so I can use Calibre to manage everything.
I need to do a bit more work, but totally worth it to be completely DRM free
I’ll second the kobo ecosystem but add that if you install the 3rd party koreader software on it it will make syncing to a local calibre-web seamless. And it leaves the stock reader software in place so you can read drm encrypted files if needed. I have a similar use case to yours where I use the device to read books but also papers, which I usually pdf and put in a specific shelf in calibre
Two ways I like to get files to/from a mobile device: Syncthing (Möbius on iOS) or ResilioSync.
Resilio has a great feature, Selective Sync, that enables arbitrarily syncing files from a remote location. Nice for grabbing specific files when needed.
Unfortunately neither one handles any kind of reading status, they're just file sync.
I wonder if there is some metadata any viewers use that I could also sync between devices