Itunes no longer handles ebooks -- --

[Stu109]

The new version of iTunes 12.7.0.166 released 13th September 2017 no longer includes iBooks.

Does anyone know how to update an iPad from Calibre now that the "connect to iTunes" option is no longer available as iTunes no longer deals with iBooks

[Stu109]

Originally Posted by Stu109

The new version of iTunes 12.7.0.166 released 13th September 2017 no longer includes iBooks.

Does anyone know how to update an iPad from Calibre now that the "connect to iTunes" option is no longer available as iTunes no longer deals with iBooks

Forgot to say that my iPad is running IOS 11.0 (gold beta) Have tried Calibre Companion and whilst it connects and transfers the books into CC on the iPad and even though I have "copied to iBooks" the books are not actually copied over into iBooks itself.


Ideas ??

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Stu109

Forgot to say that my iPad is running IOS 11.0 (gold beta) Have tried Calibre Companion and whilst it connects and transfers the books into CC on the iPad and even though I have "copied to iBooks" the books are not actually copied over into iBooks itself.


Ideas ??

Ditch ibooks
There has to be something else you can use to view epub

[Katja_hbg]

Try to export from Dropbox into iBook.
That works ar least on my ipad with ios 10

[McPoodle]

It is possible to update iBook using Calibre after the 12.7 iTunes update, but it is a real pain. I'll document all the steps in the hope that it will assist whoever's able to update the Apple interface plugin:

To remove existing books from iBooks:
1. In the iBooks app, go to My Books, tap on Select, select each book you wish to remove, then tap on Delete. You can't remove books using iTunes anymore, as far as I can tell.

To add books from Calibre to iBooks (on a PC):
1. Connect your device to your PC with a USB cable, and launch iTunes if it doesn't open automatically. Click on the device button in the top ribbon (the one you'd normally click to pick which books to sync). Books are no longer located under Settings, but will be present under "On My Device"--click it. This should show the list of books in iBooks--click Sync if necessary to synchronize. Note that you can't check or uncheck any of the books from here.
2. From the Edit menu of iTunes, select Preferences and go to the Advanced tab. Note the iTunes Media Folder location.
3. Launch File Explorer and navigate to the directory found in Step 2. There should be a Books subdirectory, and under that will be one folder for each author, with ebook files inside of those folders.
4. Launch Calibre. Instead of Connecting to iTunes (which will no longer show you which books are on your device), Connect to Folder, and pick the Books subdirectory from Step 3. Send ebooks to or delete from your device as usual, and these changes will affect the Books folder from Step 3. Close Calibre when you're done.
5. For each book you want to upload to your device, go to Explorer, go into the folder for the author, and drag the ebook file into iTunes, and on top of the Books icon under "On My Device"--they will then appear in the list, and in iBooks on your device. I tried dragging folders to make things easier, and it didn't work.

[rcharbon]

McPoodle has described what Apple gives us (of course, what they really want is for all of us to buy books directly from them). But I want to keep all my books in my Calibre Library and sync selected books to iBooks on the device, exactly the same way I manage my books on my Kindle, so I have only One True Library on my computer.

Thoughts? Ideas? Hope for the future?

[kovidgoyal]

Use the calibre content server, download the book using safari and it gets added to ibooks automatically. Or look into calibre companion or similar apps, although IIRC the latest iOS 11 update broke calibre companion <-> iBooks integration as well.

[Stu109]

My library is 500 non DRM Epubs and about 600 PDFs.

What i’ve tried so far :

1. Calibre content server on, access with Safari, select/download from Safari using open in iBooks option. Works fine but only one book at a time and no sync comparison in Calibre.

2. Export from Calibre to single folder, copy to folder in iCloud, open and save to iBooks . Same issue as 1.

3.Use Marvin communicating with Calibre via OPDS and everything came from the pc to the iPad and into Marvin. If you recopy Marvin does not allow duplicates to be imported so that’s good. Negatives are that Marvin doesn’t handle PDFs and there doesn’t seem to be any way to synchronise Marvin and Calibre. Additionally if I use Marvin I am left with about 100 books from the Apple store. Also not sure about syncing between iPad and iPhone with Marvin

Any ideas ? Be nice to see a Calibre, iCloud, iBooks fully synchronised solution

[kovidgoyal]

Trying to get third party tools to integrate with Apple products is fighting an uphill battle. Apple doesn't want you to do it. Your best hope is that the iOS version of calibre companion can be adapted to workaround whatever Apple broke in iOS 11.

[u752181]

You can get books onto you iPad by emailing them to yourself and then opening mail on you device and then opening the attachment in iBooks

[broden]

I removed itunes 12.7 and went back to a previous version. Then had to load all the PDF magazines from calibre again. I am using IOS 11 beta on an ipad pro 10.5. I plan to not update itunes until I find an alternate way to use IOS with calibre.

[Stu109]

Now that iTunes sync and Calibre Companion are no longer fully functional under IOS 11 I have been looking around for another methodology to handle my book collection.

This has made me look more closely at Marvin which seems to be an excellent app. It enables you to add collections and series within those collections and has multiple book filtering capabilities I think are just excellent.

I've also made some changes in light of comments about my DeDrm choices.

For those who might find the information useful my new process is:

Kindle

Calibre with DeDm and auto-convert to EPUB then "start content server"

Marvin and go to Get books from "OPDS auto or calibre server"

Select and connect

Select and download on "newest" filter as required

I'm looking forward to using Marvin and am actually starting to think that "loosing" the iTunes sync might be a really good move

[TRB]

I have a large library of epubs and pdfs (approaching 14,000). I put the epubs in Calibre and then loaded them into iTunes. I loaded the pdfs (a few thousand) directly into iTunes. iTunes was the master list of everything. I would sync with iTunes to the iPad when I added new books. I upgraded iTunes to 12.7 and it a few seconds all of this information was lost. I tried to go back, but it had modified something in the library and I could not restore it properly. Needless to say, I want to abandon iBooks and go with something different.

I would like to keep the master library on my PC but also have a copy of all the books on the iPad. I don't want to pull things from the cloud (it is fine for backup), but have them on the device. From this trail, it sounds like I should put the pdfs into Calibre, and then use it sync to another software program on the iPad. Any recommendations on what app to use on the iPad that will hold that many books (organized into folders or bookshelves), will be easy to sync with Calibre, etc? Thanks in advance.

[Highlander1694]

Hi,

i fiddled with iBooks for a while now with iTunes 12.7 and iOS 11. It really only works as McPoodle states above. An alternative is to go back to an earlier version of iTunes 12.6.x, but that really is only a stop gap measure and I don't recommend it.

I suggest trying out other ebook readers.


You can try both Marvin 3 and KyBook 2 which are the only full feature readers I know (would be glad to hear of others). I bought both to try them out and report here:

Both offer all features in the free version but have advertisements. KyBook costs 4 Euros, while Marvin costs 5 Euros to get rid of the advertisements. Both have pretty much everything you need. KyBook offers some extra features but also adds some complexity in the settings so Marvin is a bit easier to use.

Both can get Books added via iTunes (click on your device whilst connected) via the app add files option. Both offer adding of books via iCloud or other systems. KyBook is especially open to different methods.

I can recommend both KyBook 2 and Marvin 3.

I chose KyBook for myself, because the reader is a bit nicer (subjective) and library view has more options, I especially like the icon view with text under the books. Also it reads more formats than Marvin. Here is another comparison.

KyBook TiP: in the "Synchronization" settings, turn on "on the Device" to see all the nice book covers in the "File" view.

[Highlander1694]

I also opened a bug on this on the Apple developer bug-tracker. It was closed with this comment:

Engineering has provided the following information regarding this issue:

Syncing support has been removed for books from iTunes 12.7 but you can manually add your books by dragging and dropping (even multiple books at once) from a folder on your computer to your device in iTunes 12.7 for Windows. This is detailed in the following support article (scroll to the bottom of the page to the section titled Manually add items from your computer)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201593