News
iBooks to support regular ePub titles
By Charles Starrett
Contributing Editor
Published: Friday, March 12, 2010
News Categories: Apple, iPad, Apps + Games
According to a new page on Apple’s website devoted to the new iBooks application for the iPad, iBooks will support non-DRM ePub books not downloaded from the iBookstore. According to the text, “you can add free ePub titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.” In addition, iBooks also supports Apple’s VoiceOver technology. “iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page,” the site says. Finally, the app will offer the ability to tap and hold on any word to look it up in the iPad’s built-in dictionary, in Wikipedia, or search for it within the book or on the web. iBooks will be a free download for iPad users from the App Store.
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1
This all looks like very good news to me. Currently I read my DRMed books on the Kindle App and my non-DRMed, epub book on Stanza. Having one application would be great. Having automatic syncing would also be great. But what’s still missing is iBooks for the iPhone/iPod touch. I look forward to reading on the iPad, but currently and into the future I have times when the only piece of tech on my is my iPod Touch. If iBooks could sync my books and my bookmarks to two devices, it really would be the killer eReader application.
Posted by Rob E. on March 12, 2010 at 8:23 AM (PST)
2
I’m a bit confused about the ability to “...add free ePub titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.” Where are free ePub titles available? Also, I currently use the Barnes&Nobles; eReader, is it possible for me to sync the titles I have on the B&N eReader and sync it to the iPad?
Posted by MightyMa on March 13, 2010 at 5:20 AM (PST)
3
Good news. I’ll be interested in seeing how one can download a free ePub book from a non-Apple site into iTunes on the iPad.
Now, there’s both a Kindle app and a Stanza app for iPhone/iPod Touch. I’m wondering if we’ll see them on the iPad.
BTW, I haven’t heard about more publishers being signed up.
Posted by MelM on March 14, 2010 at 3:45 PM (PST)
4
MightyMa,
Many out-of-copyright books are available on-line in a number of formats. Look up Project Gutenberg for a large supply of titles. Also there are programs to take other formats (all without copyprotection, I believe) and convert them to epub format. I think Stanza’s desktop client might do that, as does Calibre. There are also epub authoring tools. The open source version I’ve been using is Sigil. This has enabled me to merge text files from Project Gutenberg with image files from other sources to create an epub file with most of the text and visual content of the original item.
As for B&N titles, I believe they are copy-protected. I would not expect iBooks to work with another vendor’s copy protection, so unless the copy protection is broken, I would bet that iBooks will not play B&N books and that you will have to use a specific B&N reader for those items
Posted by Rob E. on March 15, 2010 at 8:01 AM (PST)