moving a non-DRM EPUB from iPad Books to Mac

[zenpicker]

I have what seems like a simple need, but Apple is of course making it hard....

I use Calibre almost weekly to create ePubs of my own Word documents, which I then email to myself and open in Books on the iPad. I annotate them on the iPad, often recording dozens or hundreds of notes.

Now I would like to transfer that annotated book back to the Mac, and/or email it WITH NOTES INTACT to myself or a colleague.

It look like Calibre Companion might do it, but if I understand things correctly it only transfers in the opposite direction. Is there a way to do this? They are epubs of my own work, so no DRM whatsoever, but Books seems to make it impossible.

I much appreciate any tips on how to get this done!

Edward

[meeera]

Have you tried just using Word for iOS instead? I believe it supports document collaboration.

You might also want to ask for a thread title change - what you want is annotation export, not to move an epub.

[pwalker8]

Apple has always made such things a one way street. It's been that way since the first iPhone. It's the whole walled garden thing.

[milady133]

I doubt CC might be able to do it. Besides that is not the purpose of the app, what you are asking has an additional problem, because the way a reader program manage annotations is no standard, each program handles them differently, so you'll have to look for a program to read your books that is available for your two devices and has synchronization of the books and annotations implemented. Or at least has a way to export the annotations and the way the program exports them is useful for you.

[Deskisamess]

The Books app is for reading, not document handling.

Use Pages for sharing annotated documents.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208459

Work with annotations on a Mac:

If you're using iCloud to keep all your Pages documents up to date across all your devices, annotations appear in your document on all your devices. On a Mac, you can remove, show, or hide annotations when editing a document.
To delete an annotation, select the annotation, then press Delete.
To remove all annotations, choose Edit > Remove Smart Annotations.
To show or hide all annotations, choose View > Show/Hide Smart Annotations.

[zenpicker]

Originally Posted by meeera

Have you tried just using Word for iOS instead? I believe it supports document collaboration.

You might also want to ask for a thread title change - what you want is annotation export, not to move an epub.

Thanks for the reply. (And thanks to others, too, for theirs.) Word on iOS is ok, but these are fiction manuscripts, and I find that reading the work as an ebook helps me see nuances I don't see in Word. So that's been my solo workflow for a couple years now, and it's fine until I have to share those annotations outside the iPad - with a fellow writer, in this case.

I did figure out, finally, that annotations are being synced to the Mac via iCloud, which as you suggest means I can see them on the Mac. Good. And I saw that I can drag an item from Books into Finder and have the ePub "exported" as a normal file. But when I send that file to my colleague....no annotations. Ugh! So close!!

[meeera]

Originally Posted by zenpicker

Thanks for the reply. (And thanks to others, too, for theirs.) Word on iOS is ok, but these are fiction manuscripts, and I find that reading the work as an ebook helps me see nuances I don't see in Word. So that's been my solo workflow for a couple years now, and it's fine until I have to share those annotations outside the iPad - with a fellow writer, in this case.

(It's got nothing to do with which OS you've chosen, so ignore pwalker8's pointless remark.) You're just not using the right software for the job. You need document collaboration software, not reading software. That's gonna mean changing your workflow, instead of barking up this tree.

You've been hitting a hammer with a nail for a long time. Now that you're facing a screw, which looks kinda the same but not exactly the same, you need a screwdriver instead. You could keep hitting it with a hammer, but results will be suboptimal, and it's going to take a lot longer and be far more frustrating for you.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by meeera

(It's got nothing to do with which OS you've chosen, so ignore pwalker8's pointless remark.) You're just not using the right software for the job. You need document collaboration software, not reading software. That's gonna mean changing your workflow, instead of barking up this tree.

You've been hitting a hammer with a nail for a long time. Now that you're facing a screw, which looks kinda the same but not exactly the same, you need a screwdriver instead. You could keep hitting it with a hammer, but results will be suboptimal, and it's going to take a lot longer and be far more frustrating for you.

Hardly pointless. The question was how to transfer from an anointed ebook in books on an iPad to your home computer. It's easy to do with a mac, not possible with Windows or linux.

[zenpicker]

Thank you all. I'm going to look for an alternative e-reader that does what I want.

As for the premise that readers should only be for reading, maybe, but it seems to me that if you build in note-taking capability you should make it possible for those notes to be portable to the same degree and under the same ground rules as the epub file itself—at least for a personal ebook that has nothing to do with DRM, royalty revenue, etc. As an author who makes something from DRM-protected editions of my own books, I certainly have no objection to my readers using their reader for purposes that do not infringe on my copyright. Of course they should be able to do that. Sharing of notes on personally-owned documents certainly does not affect me as a content creator...except that the absence of that capability somewhat impedes my preferred workflow for content creation.

But okay. Apple didn't ask my opinion. I'll dump Books and find something that fits my workflow. (Open to suggestions!)

[zenpicker]

Thanks to you all. I think I'll ditch Books and find something that fits my workflow.

As to whether readers should just be for reading, basically—I paraphrase—maybe. But if you offer the capability to take notes on a privately-owned, non-DRM epub and allow that epub to be moved around between devices, it seems to me that the notes should follow. Why shouldn't they?

As someone who earns royalties from DRM-protected ebooks, it wouldn't affect me in the least if my readers were to use their e-readers to read my books but also to work on their own self-created content. That includes annotating and emailing their own epubs with embedded annotations to others. Why should I care? Why should Apple care? No one's copyright is affected. A silly limitation IMHO.

Anyway, Apple didn't ask my opinion. There are plenty of e-readers and I'll look around. Open to suggestions!

[pwalker8]

You mean e-reading program on the iPad? I can tell you what I use, but I don't really do much with regard to annotation, so I can't speak to how well it would serve your purpose. It does strike me that if keeping annotation part of the document, then you would be better off taking the earlier advise of using something like Page, but past that, I'll let someone who does a lot of annotation talk about how well various reader programs handle it.