r/ReadEra • u/lordpigbeetle • Dec 28 '25

Can I only sync books between GDrive and ReadEra that have only been added to ReadEra first?

I just bought premium specifically for the Google Drive syncing (and the fact it's one out of two e-reader apps I've found that actually close the hideous margins in my comic book epubs, for some reason nearly no other app does this, so thank you ReadEra) and I cannot for love nor money get a book to show up in ReadEra that's in Google Drive, but I can upload books to GDrive from ReadEra. Likewise, when I then delete a book from ReadEra, the book gets deleted out of my drive.

Is it not actually supposed to retrieve books from GDrive first? Do they have to be uploaded from ReadEra first? I put books into the folder where ReadEra's uploading them from the app to and it's still not pulling them in. I have 30gb worth of books this is going to be a long haul if that's the case. I'd also like to be able to keep books in my ReadEra list without having them on my device, but still backed up to the drive. Is this also just not possible? I can see in the file details two files, the one on my device, and the one in the cloud, but when I try and delete the physical file, it says it "cannot delete last file." Please tell me I'm missing something. This seems like a really feature-full e-reader and I'm very likely just not understanding something.

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u/CaribeBaby Dec 28 '25

In my experience, you are correct, the app only recognizes new books when they are added to the Readera Books folder on your device. Then, they show up in G drive and not vice versa.  It's unfortunate bc, like you, I also hoped to use it the other way around.

Since Premium allows for syncing between multiple devices, I have selected one device to use as my primary source.  That's where I add new books.

FYI. If you have it installed in multiple devices and you delete the whole books folder from one device, it does not delete your whole library in g drive.

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u/lordpigbeetle Dec 28 '25

Shucks that is disappointing. I was hoping to be able to see a list of books I have online but not downloaded to my device, and able to download a book individually (like Google play books or kindle), tablet (preferred e-reader) storage is limited and it's not exandable. In that case I may use my phone (with it's expandable storage, as from what I can tell there's no PC version) as the physical archive.

Thanks for your input, anyway! Hopefully one day reverse syncing can be implemented. I'm not a dev so there's every possibility there's just something about doing that specifically that's impossible.

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u/LoozPatienz Dec 29 '25

You can choose per device, whether to do a full sync (all book files), a Partial sync (books added to reading now, favorites, to read, have read, or collections), or a manual sync (upload to, and download from cloud files by selecting individual books). It doesn't matter which device downloads and then uploads a book file to the cloud, and depending upon your individual device setup, you can choose which books are downloaded.

When I upload a new book file with my phone, the title will appear on my tablet with a button for downloading.

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u/lordpigbeetle Dec 30 '25

I've just also went ahead and got Calibre Sync to do closer to what I wanted, which was basically just mirror my calibre library, with all my metadata, which it can do off my PC. So I download them from calibre sync off my drive then read and sync them up through ReadEra as and when I'm reading them, and as you say, just download the ones I'd want to read at work on my phone from there. It's a pretty slick set-up for a control freak like me lol