iBooks & iCloud syncing Q's

PsycoGeek

PsycoGeek

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 25, 2000
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OK, I have a crap load of books (my wife's) that she has been collecting from various sources (Kindle, Nook, AND iBooks, etc...). She had been using Calibre & the Marvin plug-in to sync them to her iPhone 6s and iPad Air, but wants to put everything into one app to read from, iBooks, especially since they (Calibre and Marvin) can no longer directly sync with any iOS device since iOS 8.3.

All of the books have had the DRM removed. I have put a sampling of them into iBooks for testing and I can open them on the Macbook no problem. We have synced them to her iPhone, but can't get them to sync through iBooks and iCloud. I was under the understanding that if she turned on iCloud Drive on the iPhone and iPad that the books would sync across both of them, but only the books (and bookmarks) from the ones purchased through iBooks will sync.

My question is am I doing something wrong or will the books imported from other sources just not sync because they weren't purchased through iBooks? I refuse to re-purchase $500+ in ebooks.
 
What versions of iOS? Syncing of arbitrary PDF documents in iCloud was only recently added, so make sure your devices are all up to date. Mass importing of many books to iCloud is best done on your Mac through the iBooks app, but you should be able to do it directly on the device if you must.

This does work for me, and I use it all the time at work (usually Office Lens > Word/PowerPoint > PDF > iBooks and elsewhere) and having built in PDF syncing finally added a few weeks ago was a godsend.
 
iOS version is 9.3.1, Macbook is 10.11.4, and iTunes is up to date as well. I added a test sample of about eight books to her iPhone 6s through iTunes. Once on the phone I was hoping they would sync to her iCloud account, and then to her iPad Air. Tried turning iCloud off, then on again on both devices. The books are all DRM free. So far only books she bought in iBooks will sync.

Part of the problem is on the MacBook I'm signed into my iCloud account. My wife has her own on her two devices (iPhone 6s and iPad Air). I was hoping to avoid logging her into iCloud on the MacBook. I don't need yet another headache over books if something else borks.... :-/

I may have solved the problem through another app called i2read. It says it supports iCloud syncing, and you can load books directly to the app after you connect a device in iTunes. We haven't bought it yet (another thing I was trying to avoid....... buying ANOTHER e-reader app) but I will post an update if we do and it works. Still trying to find a solution on the 'net somewhere too.
 
Interesting, as someone relatively new to working in Swift, and iOS in general, I'm curious about this also. Let us know what you find!
 
Just to confirm, the content you are trying to distribute across multiple devices in iCloud is PDF format, correct? If your books are in ePub or something, iCloud won't sync them.
 
OK, it looks like we will be going with i2reader since it supports iCloud syncing. Hell, I'll probably even start using it since it not only syncs with iCloud but you can also put books into the app directly through iTunes. We could even keep using Calibre since i2Reader & Calibre also support shared WiFi libraries (you can download individual books in the reader app). All I have to do is figure out how to get DRM out of her purchased iBooks. Luckily she got a lot of them on sale (and in some cases free) through BookBub, and there aren't very many of them.

I'll update after we get the app & transfer books to let you all know how it works out.

What I don't understand is if a third party can do it, why can't Apple? I know, I know......... because it's Apple.
 
Because Apple doesn't like ePub. iBooks are their own format and it was years and years before they adding syncing for PDFs.

3rd party app is definitely the way to go here. Let us know how you like i2reader.
 
I didn't want this to get too far down the list, so I'm posting an update. Didn't forget about reporting back on our experiences with the app, which is i2Reader Cloud (there is another app without cloud syncing). We both bought the app and I will be messing around with it tomorrow while the wife is at work. Hopefully it will work as expected.
 
OK, I got into using i2Reader Cloud, and as always there's the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good: It's super easy to add book from out Calibre library of books using the Content Server under the Connect/Share option. All you have to do is start the content server, go into i2Reader > (upper right) menu option > Network Services > Books in "Your" calibre library and download any books you want to. You can sort them in "Shelves" and "Sets", but I'm not clear on if you can add all of one authors books to a shelf, then also add them to a set (i.e. all the books in a series). It's also easy to sync them via your iCloud account, and all the "Shelves" and sorting you do show up on any other device using the same iCloud account (say, your iPhone and your iPad). Your bookmarks also sync.

The Bad: I've had it quit a few times on both my iPhone 6s Plus and iPad Air 2. Syncing books to your iCloud account and to your other device('s) can be a little slow. If you add books too quickly (trying to add one book right after another) without letting each item complete the transfer can cause them to all seemingly all stall (although after quitting the app and restarting it they were all there). The interface could use a little work (you can't change font size while reading without going to the menu, and you can't change font size unless you have a book open; the interface could be made a little easier to find what you want; once you sort books into shelves you can't seemingly view "all books", you have to select a shelf to see the books; maybe a few more I haven't discovered yet?).

The Ugly: Nothing is really popping up yet other than the app quitting a few times.

I'm going to be emailing the creator with the little bit of bugginess I've found and see what he has to say.
 
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