How well does family sharing work for iBooks?

[Nate the great]

Earlier this year Apple launched iOS 8 with Family sharing, enabling iDevice owners to share content from a parent to a child account.

The idea sounded cool but it's not working so well:

Three months ago I turned Family Sharing on for my wife and one of my daughters to see if this additional expense would be worth it. The transition has not been easy. Indeed, my family, that is normally game for just about any new nerdy thing I bring in, has rebelled. They’ve all told me how much they don’t like Family Sharing but not because of the above limitations, the problems are in execution. We’ve faced several challenges

It's not even working well with Apple's own apps:

I set up Family Sharing for Cole and I when Apple introduced it. And then in December, during the big Product (Red) promotion, I purchased the special loops that Apple was selling in Garage Band. It worked great for me on my devices, but on Cole’s devices, it’s another story.

When he opens Garage Band, instead of access to the loop library, he gets a button that says, “Restore Purchases.” (So his child account can apparently “see” that in-app purchases have been made by my parent account.) But when he taps on the button, he gets an error message that reads, “There are no purchases to restore at this time.” He cancels out of that, and is left with the “Restore Purchases” button blocking his access to the loops library. In other words, he can’t use Garage Band at all until he restores the loops purchase, but he can’t restore the loops purchase because his is a child account. It’s a “loop de loops!”

Is anyone having trouble with family sharing and iBooks?

[Jessica Lares]

The loops aren't there to be purchased anymore. That's the problem. It would be like still having access to a book in your Kindle Library, but it not being in the storefront to buy.

Shouldn't be having issues with iBooks. It works like if you were trying to find something you previously purchased, except it's in a separate list with the other person's name.

Lots of people here use iBooks as their reading app, but they don't buy from the store because if you get rid of your Apple devices, there goes your books. So you might have issues trying to find people around here that use it.

My problem with Family Sharing is simply that I couldn't stop the other person from using my credit card, without becoming the babysitter. It kept on telling me to authorize the download of free stuff, and it got tiring.

Otherwise it's fine. Lots of confusion, but people just haven't bothered to read the information about it and are just expecting it to do what they want. Same thing with iCloud Drive.

[wannabee]

I'm resurrecting this thread because it's the only one that remotely looks like it may have anything to do with what I'm looking for.

I have no issues with family sharing apps and music but when it comes to sharing ibooks i can not locate existing purchases on the newly family shared computer. I authorised it to the family account on both computers and in ibooks preferences it confirms it's a part of the shared family account but the only documentation on how to obtain shared books at apple forum says for itunes, apps and ibooks "go to the purchased page". I can't locate a purchased page in ibooks only in apps and itunes. Has anyone family shared ibooks successfully? (On the Macs)

Regarding in app purchases as mentioned in the opening post, I shared an app from my wife which didn't recognise me when reloading previous in app purchases. I signed out from my account and signed in as her account and was able to restore previous in app purchases. Then signed back in as me.

[FlorenceArt]

In iBooks, in the library view there are five buttons at the bottom. The button on the right is for displaying purchased books and download them if they are not yet on your device. I suppose this is where you will find books from the shared library, although I don't use this myself.