Although I never used it, I am aware that Calibre can serve books in your local network. I imagine that this offers some position and annotation sync.

Also, a bit off-topic for this sub, but… how do you read? E-readers? Tablets? Software choices?

Unfortunately, there was never great ebook hardware. I use a tablet with Android. KOReader for ePub, constantly trying new Android PDF readers but finding nothing decent.

While not intentionally, running Syncthing between all my computers means that my PDF annotations get synced across devices. ePub ones do not; afaik KOReader uses its own metadata format that it stores as a standalone file.

Before, when I was still in university, I used Zotero also for annotation management. Feels like an overkill nowadays since I only read for leisure.

after reading hearing of studies that came to the conclusion that highlighting and adding notes is for nothing, I try to form the habit to summerize thoughts in my own words; and for fiction books write a short review after reading it.

I use Calibre to store and manage my library, and then serve it to KOReader clients on four devices. There are two ways to serve books from Calibre to KOReader but I prefer the “content server” approach where Calibre runs a server that I can browse from within KOReader. (The other approach, “wireless device connection,” lets KOReader show up as a device you can drag-and-drop books to from within Calibre, but comes with limitations.)

When I start a new book I manually download it to each device and let KOReader’s progress sync plugin store my reading progress across devices. Highlights and bookmarks don’t sync between devices, but there’s cross-platform desktop software called KoHighlights that I use to merge my highlights when I’m done reading a book, then I keep the merged version on my desktop KOReader library and delete the book from my other three devices. Other options for long-term storage would be using KOHighlights to export the merged highlights to plain text, HTML, CSV or Markdown, or using KOReader’s built-in functionality to export notes to a Joplin notebook (or a number of other formats). I know there’s also a way to send the highlights back to Calibre, and I did get this working at some point, but I remember it either being hassle or not working well.

KOReader also has a way of saving highlights directly into PDFs (and only PDF files, I believe), and I think this is the default, but it’s something I’ve disabled.

I’ve written a hacky Bash script that exports my kindle notes and highlights of selected books as a text file. By default kindle lumps everything in one file and it’s such a mess

I wish there was a universal standard for highlights and annotations. Probably the closest we have now is syncing all that through calibre. I personally use the kindle app on an ipad, sometimes casting to my tv so I can lay in bed and read comfortably. I’ve tried so many epub readers and unfortunately kindle is the only one I like, that’s still maintained. Marvin3 was the best but it’s unmaintained and the annotation menu is broken. the kindle export is pretty shitty. It’'s not super useful when you have no context as to what you’re highlighting, and I think they make it shitty on purpose so you have to stay in their eco system.

Jailbroken Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2 with Koreader installed. Never really bothered to take notes while reading (let alone sync them), so I’m gonna follow this thread.

I download my books from Soulseek and manage/transfer them using Calibre.

how do you read? E-readers? Tablets? Software choices?

If you cherish your eyes, get yourself a good e-ink tablet. They’re sadly slow and usually have weak hardware, but the rendering on the e-ink screens is just beautiful and you feel less strain on your eyes when you read for long periods of time. I have a Remarkable 2 tablet that I bought initially to take notes but then also started using as an e-reader. It’s got a pretty minimalistic proprietary (probably not good for this community though) OS that just allows you to open documents and annotate them or create new ones, but I like it that way since it’s completely distraction-free.

An Android e-ink tablet might also be a good idea if you still want an open-source OS and the ability to install apps.

Not a perfect fit but Firefox can annotate PDFs out of the box. Maybe in some cases that is helpful ?