Catalina Books Error - BKAgentServiceErrorDomain error 8

I spent my whole **** day on this. Finally after running disk utility in safe mode and then in recovery mode I called Apple and the best they could do was have me reinstall scatalina. And guess what. All my books are still inaccessible. Every single one of the 1000 plus epubs and pdf's that I have accumulated over the course of ten years is dead. And after waiting for Scatalina to reinstall I try to open Music...

• NOW MY MUSIC WILL NOT LOAD INTO APPLE MUSIC!

AFTER UPGRADING T0 SCATALINA THIS IS THE **** I'VE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH FOR WEEKS!

• PODCAST SHOWS UP AS BEING OPEN IN THE FORCE QUIT WINDOW CONTINUOUSLY (AND IT ISN'T OPEN).
• APPLE MUSIC DUPLICATES PLAYLISTS, CREATES EMPTY PLAYLISTS, DELETES PLAYLISTS EXCEPT A HANDFUL EVERY TIME I OPEN MUSIC.
• MAIL CONTINUOUSLY BOUNCES BACK RECEIVED EMAIL TO SENDERS.
• MAIL FILES COPIES OF RECEIVED MAIL INTO TRASH WHILE A COPY REMAINS IN MAILBOX
• FINDER BLINKS IN AND OUT PERIODICALLY LIKE AN OLD TELEVISION SET
• SPOTLIGHT SITS AND SITS THEN STATES THERE IS NO DATA WHEN THERE IS A WHOLE WEB OF DATA OUT THERE
• TEXT DISAPPEARS, PARAGRAPHS DUPLICATE AND SUBSTITUTE THEMSELVES INTO OTHER AREAS OF DOCUMENTS RANDOMLY USING TEXT EDIT.

AND THE LIST GOES ON AND ON AND ON.

The best answer they can give are, (as if I hadn't thought of them myself already).

• "have you restarted your computer?"
• "have you deleted login applications?"
• "have you reisntalled Catalina?"

Apple has no solution to this, nor does Apple seem to care at the moment. I am left with trying to back track into Mohave. And if I can't get this **** Apple crap to work after being a steady customer for almost 20 years, I'm going out and buying a PC for half the price and starting all over again. At least I won't have to deal with super expensive machines that last far longer than they can be used with half baked upgrades.

SCATALINA IS A COLOSSAL FAILURE AND I HAVE POSTED IT ON MY FACEBOOK AND ELSEWHERE

BECAUSE APPLE CONTINUOUSLY EDITS MY POSTS HERE OR DELETES THEM OUTRIGHT.

This is how I solved it:

Close Apple’s Book. 

On “Finder” go to “Go” and from there to “Go to folder”

Type the following:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Updates

You will go to a folder with two files inside. Delete them or, if you want to be on the safe side, move them to your desktop.

Open Apple’s Books. Now you should be able to open your books and pdf files.

Hope this helps. 

SOLVED:

I have what appears to be a solution to my Apple Books problem. Reasoning that if an alternate user can access my books with no problem, but as the main user I could not, led me to find the following solution:

The problem was with the disk permissions. I followed the steps in the following apple support site link to reset disk permissions and my books open again. Keep your fingers crossed that it stays this way!

No more BKagent error 8 or the spinning grey wheel!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

I think you are on to something here. That did work for me. I would modify the process a little though.

1. macOS 10.15.1
2. Reboot macOS to make sure Books and all related background services are idle.
3. Instead of resetting the entire home directory, just reset permissions on ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks. This takes a lot less time and doesn't mess with files unrelated to Books.
4. I didn't do the diskutil stuff. Did you find that to be necessary?
5. Launch Books app. Books that wouldn't open previously now open.

The issue seems related to the books that are in the library. So, what I'm finding is that the condition can reoccur if I add certain books, in which case it seems I need to run the process again. So my advice would be to get all your books added, then run the process, and I'm guessing you'll be good to go until you add additional unlucky books.

SUCCESS!

To recap, I did a combo of the above, with instructions for newbies. Please pardon me that I don't give the cites from the previous posters; username/copy paste in live post is squirrely.

Check you are Catalina MacOS 10.15

• In Finder, choose About this Mac [NB: this is the OS X version for this thread until today; God help anyone reading this in the future with your !@#$ups :) ]

Delete any crap in a folder which you will get to this way

• Copy this: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Updates
• In Finder, Choose: Go, then Go to Folder
• Paste there what you have copied, and hit return
• Delete all files; if there is an .epub or .pdf there, don't check what is, which will only launch Books or Preview, and possibly screw things up. Consign it to oblivion, it and you a victim of Apple

Disable (don't delete) all "Launch Agents" and "Log-in Items"

• HereI don't know _how_ to do this via OS X internal file-handling; I hope one of the mavens in this thread will spell that out. I used a third-party app CleanMyMac, with which it was a piece of cake.

Restart the computer

• Go to Finder, choose Restart

Start Books

• Be happy if things work. If they don't, mutter and keep monitoring this thread.

Re-enable all "Launch Agents" _and_ "Log-in Items"

• Again, I hope one of the mavens in this thread will spell out how this can be done w/o a third-party app.

Restart computer

• Go to Finder, choose Restart

Restart the computer

• Go to Finder, choose Restart

Renable the

Me too after the update, but only for one aspect discussed here (although naturally we thank god for small favors):

1. The full information and retrieval (but see 2 below) across my IOS on iPad (but not, I believe, on iPhone) and OS X is available and now synced (provided you choose that option wherever the **** it is (either/both iOS--can't remember at the moment all the choices--they're spelled out Books/Help on OSX);

1. On OS X (not iOS) the PDFs open in Adobe Reader (and maybe the full Adobe); most everybody has that one, and if you don't (I checked by deleting it briefly) PDF will open in Preview.

This was discussed above and is still not fixed. No matter if you go to the discrete file via Finder, and then choose "Open with Books" AND (to save time from a suggestion above) you go to that file or any other and go to file information and apply Open with Books, either to that one file or you let it loose on all PDFs. No joy.

[Digression on this issue beyond my report from the trenches]

Which, I must say, intrigued me as an OS thing--I would have thought if a) the "open with" app bitched, the OS would at least kick back some sort of error message; and b) even more so, or arbitrary,is that it goes ahead and opens it with whichever they'll pdf reader it finds; and c) even more so than b), when you multiple PDF readers on your system, eg, as mentioned above, Preview (an Apple OSX integrated product, of course) and Adobe Reader, this continuing error defaults to Adobe (indeed, I have a number of third-part PDF apps for fancy markup, etc).

Which means--what?

a) Skullduggery at the crossroads by Adobe? Can't be. As we know, nobody, which here includes Adobe as we know with Flash, can fuck with Apple.

b) Apple cut a deal with Adobe? Can't be, because the of this (non-reported) error condition -- the discrete command "open with Books" not working but pretending it is -- does not even defaultly fuck up to an Apple product. Can't be.

Curious and curioser.

[/Digression]

I have exactly the same problem as you. NONE of my audiobooks, epubs, or pdfs will open. I get the same BKAgentServiceErrorDomain error 8 message for each one. I assumed it was perhaps due to the fact that my audiobooks were ripped from CDs rather than purchased at the Books Store. Its scary to think that even books you purchased from Apple don't work either.

I only hope that this issue is fixed in an update soon.

I have the same problem too. epubs and pdfs open fine on iphone and ipad ios. But they do not open on macbook air Catalina 10.15.1

But strangely they do open on a macmini, also running 10.15.1 . this has got me a bit stumped at present...

Here is something strange. I also cannot open any of my books. The error BKAgentServiceErrorDomain error 8.) keeps looming at me.

However, if I switch to a made up NEW user, with the same apple id and iCloud identity, then all the books are fine. WHY???

There has got to be a solution.....

Good news...maybe. I reset the permissions one more time. This time, for now, the books open. The covers are correct although many are generic on my iPad.

I've been dealing with Apple Support at some high level. They have provided no solution as of yet. Hope mine stays working. If not ....

Actually, Apple Tech Support made the same suggestion and (for now) the books are opening. Yeah!

One other question, since doing this, many of my books on my (iPads and iPhone) devices have gone to generic covers and some have completely disappeared. I tried putting the missing ones back in books and into iCloud.co (new book) without any luck. Any thoughts?