by nizejpodpisany of Password Incorrect
Adding third-party books to iBooks is painful. You need to cable your device (iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) with a computer to sync books between iTunes “Books” folder and the application. I personally feel stressed every time I connect a device to iTunes. Syncing is slow and when it’s finished app icons are messed up almost every time.
Compared to Kindle’s 60 seconds, a cable connection is just outdated. The other thing is that with the iBookstore offering such a little selection of books, many people try to download their own book libraries collected before.
Two tips listed below apply only to pdf documents, so probably only iPad owners will want to try it. You can’t use them to send ePub files to iBooks, but I hope that will change soon. So far only Stanza is capable of opening external ePubs (as well as pdf docs as you’ll see in the screenshots).
I assume a book is already on your computer. What you can do is to:
1. Attach to email
When you send yourself an email with the attached book and open a message in a native Apple Mail application on your iPad, you are able to open and save it to iBooks.
Opening pdf documents from Mail2. Open from Dropbox app
If you have a Dropbox account and the application is installed on your device, you can open it and look for the pdf previously uploaded from a computer. In a latest update Dropbox added a possibility to open documents in third-party applications.
Opening pdf documents from Dropbox
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you can send 3rd party ePub Books to iBooks, either dragging them to the iTunes Library
OR (my choice): using copy trans manager
Emailing yourself an EPUB file works for me (iPhone, iOS 4.2.1). Maybe the latest iOS update does the trick?
-Matt
I’ve also used Google Docs (which lets you upload any file type now) and “sharing” the file to my email address. That works too.
-Matt
Thanks for this article but for those of us who can’t access Internet on the iPhone/iPad, dragging 3rd party ePubs into iTunes works like a charm, like xfze said.
Hey ‘xfze’. I don’t know if you will get this reply, but I am wondering what folder you drop the .epub file into using copy trans manager?
Hey ‘xfze’. If you get this reply, I have the same question as the ‘guy’, In what folder you drop the .epub file using copy trans manager?
Every manager I found out about is about music, movies and audiobooks…
SUPER simple way to add epubs…
Get Dropbox — Either through this link which will give you an extra .25 GB of space (http://db.tt/XKc4tHz) or through their webstie.
Make an account with DropBox
Install it on to your computer
Install it from the app store onto your iPad (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropbox/id327630330?mt=8)
Add the ePub’s to your Dropbox folder on your desktop
Then go into the DropBox app on your iPad and go to the file… it’ll try and open it and be unsuccessful. But at the top right there is an arrow that once you press it’s the “open with/in” tab and it’ll give you the option to Open With iBooks.
Presto– works perfectly.
If you have any questions, you can reach me at the email provided.