{"slug": "show-hn-notebooklm-calibre-plugin", "title": "Show HN: NotebookLM Calibre Plugin", "summary": "A developer has released a Calibre GUI plugin that integrates with Google's NotebookLM to generate podcast-style Audio Overviews of books directly from a Calibre library. The plugin extracts the best available format (preferring PDF or TXT, falling back to EPUB/MOBI/AZW3), creates a new notebook in NotebookLM, uploads the book as a source, and triggers background generation of an Audio Overview, which can take 3 to 15 minutes. Because Google provides no official public API, the plugin relies on the open-source CLI tool gemini-notebook-mcp-cli and undocumented web endpoints, so it may break if Google changes its interface.", "body_md": "A Calibre GUI plugin that seamlessly integrates with Google's NotebookLM to generate podcast-style \"Audio Overviews\" of your books directly from your Calibre library.\n\nBy clicking a single button in Calibre, this plugin will:\n\n- Extract the best available format of your selected book (prefers PDF or TXT, falls back to EPUB/MOBI/AZW3).\n- Automatically create a new notebook in your Google NotebookLM account.\n- Upload your book as a source document.\n- Trigger the generation of an Audio Overview on Google's servers in the background.\n\nBecause Google does not provide an official public API for NotebookLM, this plugin relies on the open-source community CLI tool [ gemini-notebook-mcp-cli](https://github.com/jacob-bd/gemini-notebook-mcp-cli) to communicate with the service.\n\n-\nInstall the CLI tool by following the\n\n[installation instructions in their documentation](https://github.com/jacob-bd/gemini-notebook-mcp-cli). Ensure the`nlm`\n\ncommand is available in your system's PATH. -\nAuthenticate the CLI with your NotebookLM account:\n\n```\nnlm login\n```\n\nFollow the prompts to log in via your browser.\n\nYou can install this plugin directly into Calibre using the `calibre-customize`\n\ncommand-line tool.\n\n- Clone or download this repository.\n- Open your terminal and navigate to the plugin folder:\n\n```\ncd notebooklm_plugin\n```\n\n- Build and install the plugin into Calibre:\n\n```\ncalibre-customize -b .\n```\n\n- Restart Calibre.\n\nOnce installed, you need to add the plugin button to your Calibre UI:\n\n- Open\n**Calibre**. - Go to\n**Preferences**->** Toolbars & menus**. - Select\n**The main toolbar**(or whichever toolbar you prefer) from the top dropdown. - On the left side under \"Available actions\", scroll down to find\n.`NotebookLM Audio`\n\n- Select it and click the\n**Right Arrow** button to move it to the right side (\"Current actions\"). - Click\n**Apply**(or OK) at the top left.\n\n- Select a book in your Calibre library.\n- Click the new\n**NotebookLM Audio**(sparkles) icon in your toolbar. - A progress dialog will appear showing you the upload status.\n- Once it successfully triggers the generation, the dialog will notify you and close.\n- You can now head over to\n[NotebookLM](https://notebooklm.google.com/)in your browser—your new notebook will be there, and the Audio Overview will finish generating shortly!\n\n**Unofficial API:** This plugin relies on undocumented Google NotebookLM web endpoints via the`nlm`\n\nCLI. If Google changes their web interface, this tool may temporarily break until the upstream CLI is updated.**Background Generation:** Because Audio Overviews can take anywhere from 3 to 15 minutes to generate, this plugin intentionally**does not wait** for the generation to finish, nor does it automatically download the final`.wav`\n\n/`.mp3`\n\nfile back into Calibre. You will need to listen to or download the audio directly from the NotebookLM website once it is ready.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-notebooklm-calibre-plugin", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/divyenduz/notebooklm-calibre-plugin", "published_at": "2026-08-11 18:28:30+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-11 18:42:57.304582+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "generative-ai"], "entities": ["Calibre", "Google NotebookLM", "gemini-notebook-mcp-cli", "jacob-bd"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-notebooklm-calibre-plugin", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-notebooklm-calibre-plugin.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-notebooklm-calibre-plugin.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-notebooklm-calibre-plugin.jsonld"}}