ebooks on the Ipad

ebooks are bought through the iBooks app, which you download from the iTunes store.

There are also many ebooks available as apps from the iTunes store.

You can buy ebooks from many other sources. In particular, Amazon has an app for the iPad where you can buy all the books a Kindle can buy.

You can read any pdf you want on an iPad, but iBooks does not handle pdf, only ePub.

The Apple standard is epub which many libraries us for their eBook loaning (7/24 Books). Our local library has purchased 4 iPads and will loan them out with the book you want. The have done this with the Kindle- they also allow a patron to borrow a Kindle book to play on your unit. I understand that if no digital rights are violated you can drag any ePub formatted book into the iTune and then sync.

What is not clear is if Apple will work with 7/24 Books to allow the same system to be deployed for copyrighted content. The Kindle system looks at the date and after 2 weeks the eBook disappears unless you renew it.

The .pdf format is supported but would not have the feature of the page turning and control where you left off reading.

The idea that a School K-12 would get a subscription for text books makes sense. Perhaps Apple will bundle a state wide or local subscription for all students including the iPad device. The textbook budget would potentially see savings and less labor to control their books.

Regards

I would love to get the library books in this manner.

I have a Sony ereader & have purchased epub books for it from several sources. Now trying to load these books into itunes to sync with my ipad but when I try to open the downloaded URLLink-x.acsm it automatically opens reader library. Short of deleting reader library, does anyone know a way round this?

The Sony reader uses a different file format than epub. That's the first thing. The second thing is that the books have to be DRM free. If you have DRM free books, you can convert them to epub format using the free program Calibre. Then you can import those files into iTunes.

I have a Sony ereader & have purchased epub books for it

If you think these epub books are drm free you might try emailing the actual file and seeing if you can open it with Stanza on the iPad.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20006827-243.html

I have always purchased books in epub format (which the Sony ereader can read even tho it is not the default format). So my issue is not about conversion. What is happening is that if I buy a ebook from one of the online major books stores it downloads not the epub book itself but a file with a name like URLLink-1.acsm When I open this it automatically opens the ereader library software which loads the book into the ereader library. Then I can't copy it to the ipad - I guess because of its DRM protection. I think (but I am a bit out of my depth here as still quite new to Macs) that I am not asking a question about the ipad at all - I want to know how know how I can be given a choice about what software to use to open the download file so that I can choose iTunes (on a PC I would expect to right click and be given an "open with" option). Hope this question makes sense, if not then I guess I need to contact one of the online book stores and ask them to talk me through the process

This note has some stuff about .acsm which may be helpful:

http://www.ereadable.com/info/FAQ.asp