I have an Ipod touch and want a good Ebook reader. Requirements(desires, anyway) are:
It allows storage of the ebooks on the Ipod itself. No online connection required to read them. I guess this is possible? Itunes must do the syncing with certain readers? Does this mean “books” will appear on the Itunes list of things that I can sync?
Can read the most kinds of ebook formats.
Free(though I’d pay 99 cents for a great one).
Thanks for the advice!
Oh, and I apologize if this belongs in another forum. Couldn’t decide between here and Cafe Society.
If you mean something that does multiple formats, I’d say Stanza is the way to go. Use that with the Stanza or Calibre desktop programs to manage your books. (Google for information on this; there are tons of tutorials.)
Apple makes iBooks but that only handles the ePub and PDF formats. Kindle only supports the Kindle Book format (AZW?) plus PDF and TXT.
I find iBooks and the Kindle reader meet all of my ebook needs.
Do you sync your iPhone with a computer? If so, you can store your library on there, and just sync the books you’re currently reading on your iPhone.
Am I following the right directions? I’m using Kindle reader right now:
Plug it in.
Choose “kindle” under the file sharing apps.
Add the ebook you wish to use. Sync it and it will copy it over and it will be readable offline.
I don’t see “Ibooks” in the “file sharing” part of Itunes, even though I installed it. How could I sync to it?
I do not see “books” as kind of choice up top on Itunes. I see Apps, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Photos, Info.
Only have a minute here so I can’t address your later question (if I haev time later I may try), but THIS. Stanza, stanza, stanza all the way. The only drawback of Stanza is that amazon bought them and I don’t think they’re going to do any more updates. WAH. No other iDevice reader I’ve used compares at all.
Are you using iCloud?
Don’t restrict yourself to one reader. They all have different ebook stores that they work with, and the selection of titles isn’t the same. There’s no reason not to have several readers on your device - my ipod has Kindle, Google Books, eReader, iBooks, Ebook reader (that one’s not so good), Kobo and Stanza installed on it.
Concur on Stanza - though I hadn’t heard that you could use Calibre with it. To be honest, I hadn’t tried using it (I use it to manage ebooks for my Nook). How do you get the books to the iPod using Calibre? Wireless?
Stanza has a nice interface with places like Project Gutenberg as well.
Both B&N and Amazon have, as noted, apps for the handhelds and that can be the simplest way to handle purchased books. Once the book is downloaded, it’s there on your handheld. Though I should caveat that for B&N, I find that periodically, purchased books that I haven’t looked at in a while seem to require re-downloading before I can read them. And if my credit card expires, I can’t redownload them until I update it at the B&N site (no, they don’t charge me again, I just have to have one on file).
I’m no genius on ebooks, but the iTunes store and iBooks meets my needs. Many classics are free. You can store the books on your phone/iPad/whatever or access them from the cloud. Books are tiny, so it shouldn’t be an issue to store them locally.
I have quite a few of them and I like Stanza and Kindle the most. Stanza is snappy and has a nice user interface which manages to be simple and yet quite feature-packed. I like how you can change the brightness instantly by swiping the screen, for example. Surprising how often I use that. I hear it doesn’t work so well on iOS 5 though.
Stanza is kicking butt.
Why does Ibooks not appear on my file sharing list in Itunes? Is it different?
Huh. Looking at the panel when I’m sync’ing my iPhone (with “Devices: Ferret’s iPhone” selected in the left margin), along the top of the panel it says: Summary, Info, Apps, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Books, Photos.
On the iPhone/iPod Touch itself, go to Settings, scroll down to the list of apps, pick iBooks, and see if “Sync Collections” is listed as on?
There are two kinds of file sharing:
iOS file sharing, like you do with the iOS Kindle App
But also, for types of content that are recognized directly by iTunes, you do the “regular” file sharing like with music files. Books show up in an iTunes category if you have iTunes 10.3 or later. See here:
forgot to say: if you have epub or PDF files that you transferred to your computer from somewhere else (e.g. Project Gutenberg), and you want to read them using the iOS iBooks application, you can import them to iTunes using “File->Add to Library…”, the same way you would add an MP3 file. Then the e-books should show up in the iTunes Books category. Once they are in iTunes you can transfer them to your iOS device.
I have Itunes 10.5, but don’t see Books as a menu, for some reason. I have Ibooks, too.
Stanza and Kindle are working well. Does Ibooks do anything they don’t?
It’s not a menu item, it’s on the sidebar. And it won’t be there unless you add at least one book. Just drag a PDF or ePub file in and the category will show up.
Stanza works well for now, but it was purchased by Amazon and won’t be updated anymore.
hi, Mahaloth, luckily, there’re many online or offline tools for your choice like Calibre software, just try to use one by one and find your desired one!
Yeah, I’m good now. That was almost 2 years ago, dude.
I use Kindle(the app) for 90% of my reading and use Stanza for anything Kindle won’t read. 