iPad books from apps into calibre

[ABCraine]

I've had an ipad for more than a year. In that time I have collected books on iTunes ebooks, a Kindle app and a google "Play Books" app.
I am looking at calibre to organize them.

I have successively copied the iTunes books to calibre.

Next, how do I get my Kindle books into calibre, I do not have a kindle device, I work with apps. In fact, I would rather work with the Kindle app I have on my laptop rather than the one on my iPad.

Also Play Books
when I go to iTunes --> Apps
I see the Play Books app, but it does not appear in the File Sharing, and I cannot find the books that I see on my iPad. I would like to get these books, also, into calibre.

So far I am dealing with free downloads, so I should not be worried about copy-rights or DRMs, right?

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by ABCraine

I've had an ipad for more than a year. In that time I have collected books on iTunes ebooks, a Kindle app and a google "Play Books" app.
I am looking at calibre to organize them.

I have successively copied the iTunes books to calibre.

Next, how do I get my Kindle books into calibre, I do not have a kindle device, I work with apps. In fact, I would rather work with the Kindle app I have on my laptop rather than the one on my iPad.

Also Play Books
when I go to iTunes --> Apps
I see the Play Books app, but it does not appear in the File Sharing, and I cannot find the books that I see on my iPad. I would like to get these books, also, into calibre.

So far I am dealing with free downloads, so I should not be worried about copy-rights or DRMs, right?

I'll answer the last question first, free doesn't mean without DRM. It's likely some of the books do have DRM. DRM is device or application specific, so you won't be able to do any manipulation/conversion of your book files without stripping it.

You can download the Kindle for PC (or Mac) app to your laptop and when you send books to it then you'll have them in a folder on your computer and can transfer them to calibre.

In your library on Google Play you will find an option for downloading an Adobe epub file for each book to your computer. The ones with DRM will download as a .acsm file and need to be opened in Adobe Digital Editions. You'll have to register with Adobe (account ID and password) and then use it to open the .acsm files which unlocks them and converts them to epub files. Then you can load the epubs into calibre.

[belden]

Originally Posted by Synamon

You can download the Kindle for PC (or Mac) app to your laptop and when you send books to it then you'll have them in a folder on your computer and can transfer them to calibre.

That's true, but I find it much easier to just go to the "Manage My Kindle" page on the Amazon site, find the book, and choose the "Download And Transfer Via USB" option. It's faster for me than having to fire up the app and navigate to the folder where they download, plus the file name comes out with the book title and author when you use the website rather than a string of numbers like when the app downloads it.

This is slightly more technical, but there are a number of freeware and commercial PC and Mac apps that will let you browse the file system on an iPhone or iPad and you can pull the ebook files off of it that way as well after going into the Applications directory and finding the app you used to load them.

This is just my personal opinion, but when I purchase books online I always download the ebooks to my computer first and load them in Calibre and then I either use Dropbox to open them on my iPad or I email them to myself and open them that way.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by belden

That's true, but I find it much easier to just go to the "Manage My Kindle" page on the Amazon site, find the book, and choose the "Download And Transfer Via USB" option. It's faster for me than having to fire up the app and navigate to the folder where they download, plus the file name comes out with the book title and author when you use the website rather than a string of numbers like when the app downloads it.

I use that option myself, but it isn't available if you don't have a Kindle registered to your account.

[ABCraine]

Thanks for the replies.

Synamon:
I have downloaded the Kindle for PC. Looking at the kindle folder I see different kinds of extensions:
apnx, azw,mbp, phl
I find that only the azw will show a book when I drag it to the calibre library, but when I view it, the formatting appears, well, less than optimal. Any thoughts?

As for Google Play, the original down load was something like Google Books, then several "upgrades" ago, I noticed it changed names. I'm afraid I've lost control of that one (I have no idea where to find my library on Google Play, I do have a google account though), but there is one book on there I'd like to keep.

Belden:
I do have a kindle account (I'm hoping this might solve the above issue), and when I go to Manage my kindle, where do I find the "down load and transfer" option? In the actions on the right had side I find: Read Now, Deliver to my ..., and delete, loan options. Under Deliver to my, I find my iPad, my PC, and the cloud.

also, I'd be interested in the apps you mentioned that would allow me to "see inside" my iPad.

And yes, I've done the "adobe digital additions" download, so I'm ok with that.

Again, thanks

[belden]

As was mentioned above and I didn't realize, I guess the option to download the AZW file directly is only available if you actually own a physical Kindle device because it would be found in the exact location you described. I checked mine and the only device I can download for is the actual Kindle, not the PC app or the iPad app. I know that when you download the file from there, it is tied with DRM to that specific device so I guess if there isn't a device they can't do this.

I haven't used a file explorer app in awhile, I think the one I used was Disk Aid which lets you explore for free. I did a search and the first program that came up was called iExplorer which looks like it does the same thing.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by ABCraine

...
So far I am dealing with free downloads, so I should not be worried about copy-rights or DRMs, right?

Incorrect.

The fact that an item is distributed without charge does not in any way indicate that it lacks either DRM or copyright.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by ABCraine

Thanks for the replies.

Synamon:
I have downloaded the Kindle for PC. Looking at the kindle folder I see different kinds of extensions:
apnx, azw,mbp, phl
I find that only the azw will show a book when I drag it to the calibre library, but when I view it, the formatting appears, well, less than optimal. Any thoughts?

If Calibre moved the azw file into the Calibre library then you may want to manually move the other files to the same folder. These are axillary files used for special features such as storing notes and annotations as well as providing metadata to library viewing programs so the actual file won't have to be opened. the apnx file supports showing actual page numbers from the paper book. You can read more about this in our wiki page AZW. Some of these files will be built when the book is opened if they are not present.

Dale