Syncing Books

Sorry I posted the above in error, related to a different topic https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250815165?page=1 "Chapters in my m4b audiobooks have disappeared"

On this subject, I did follow up and found that deleting the links only of the library of audiobooks and books (i.e., NOT the underlying files) in Apple Books, syncing them all off of the iPhone, then reimporting everything again to reconstitute the library of audiobooks and ebooks worked. The remaining factor that appears touchy is my collection of Audible audiobooks which I have to reauthiorize at times to get all of the purchased books to sync without Apple Books reporting an error. I don't like to use the cloud, I prefer all of the files on my drive locally. What works is to double click on the book in he library and see if it opens without error saying it is unauthorized. When I've seen errors of this type occur, I deauthorize the computer for Audible on the menu within Books which takes you to the Audible site to deauthorize the computer. Then I download the book from their site again. Once I have it, I click on it, and it says the computer must be authorized by Audible. When you see that you know you are close! Follow the steps to reauthorize the computer and then the downloaded audiobook will sync to the iPhone. I've found success following a similar process for ebooks downloaded from the Apple ebook store. In my case I have family sharing on and my wife and I share books from the Apple book store purchased under each of our user ID's. Every once in a while Books seems to lose itself and report that it cannot sync a particular book because I am not authorized. Again what seems to work on this one is to just click on the book and the Apple ID sign in will pop up relating to whichever of us originally bought the book, and then after it's been authorized, I seem to have no problems syncing to the iPhone. At this point I have gotten everything back on the phone. Sometimes a book appears twice, once from the downloaded verision on my MacMini in Apple Books, and one seemingly showing up in the cloud. Resyncing seems to clear it up, sometimes it takes a couple of times.....what fun!

just got off the phone with apple support and a very helpful senior support advisor actually had a "lab mac" and even his own MacBook pro and iPhone at his desk and was able to quickly duplicate the problem on both his own personal MacBook pro and the lab mac, trying to sync DRM-free EPUB books to his iPhone, which did not work for him either. he has promised to look into this and get back to me, and i asked him to get it working on his mac and let me know how he fixed it, lol.

btw, to relieve my concerns about whether or not apple has intentionally blocked DRM-free EPUB syncing with books now? no, as stated clearly here in article HT201478

will have to wait a few days for a response, but i hope they get it sorted out. this is a pain.

Similar situation here as well, in my case I notice that in finder where I enter the "books" tab, when the "sync all books" check is on 100% of the books in detail below (in the greyed out list) are checked, but those among them that I have loaded myself into the Books app (my own epub files not purchased through the Apple Book Store) do not sync to the iPhone despite 100% of all books showing as checked. If I change the option to "sync selected books" interestingly enough, as the books all light up in the checklist giving the avaialbilty to check individual books to sync, none of my epub books are checked, which I assume is why they are not syncing. YET, in this view, if I DO manually check them all, they STILL don't sync to the iPhone. I have deleted and recreated the Books library, added them in several times, clicked on them to open them before syncing, even deleted the plist and associated folders in the /user/Library/Containers (etc.) folder, to no avail. It seems to me this problem began after the 10.15.1 update, though it was touchy from the point Catalina was installed, just not stable and free of problems out of the box. I messed with it so much and flipped so many settings I decided to restore a backup from Time Machine while at work today so when I go home I will see if reverting to before the 10.15.1 update brings back the stabulity and syncs the books as they should. If that is the case, I think we just wait for more bug fixes in a later release. And I just got done with the album artwork problems!

I’m

seeing the same thing here, and I’m not sure if it broke with Catalina or with

the 10.15.1 update, or perhaps even more specifically, based upon what I’ve

found below, with the 13.2 update for iOS . I’ve had quite a bit of success

with the Audiobook Binder app in converting MP3 files to M4B audiobook files

and importing them into Apple iBooks/Books and being able to see chapter

information on both OSX on the MacMini as well as on the iPhone with no issues.

This also extended to Audible protected .aa/.aax files which also showed

chapter details on both device platforms. Subsequent to the update, the Audible

audiobooks do not show chapter information; rather, they show one or perhaps

but a few large files only in the chapter display on the iPhone, even though

the chapters display perfectly as before on the OSX platform, so it is obvious

that the chapter information is still there in the file. It seems that the

iPhone iOS may be the culprit. As a temporary work-around, I’ve found combining

MP3 files aand checking the compilation of several artists checkbox on each of

the files in Music with unique track numbers, common Album and cover art and

the remember file location checkbox checked for all of the files applied can be

handled in the Music app as in the old iTunes days, then the separate MP3 files

dragged onto the desktop within a folder, and then that folder would be dragged

from the desktop right into the Apple Books app. The newly-created book will

show as an audiobook when synced with Finder to the iPhone. The audiobook seems

to be retaining bookmark locations. I tested this by shutting off the phone and

rebooting it, went back into the audiobook and the file picked up where it left

off before I shut down the phone. Audible books, well that’s another story…think

we may have to wait for a bug fix on that one. Please forgive me if I feel for

that as if I’m waiting for a bus that’s never going to come. Interested to hear

what others’ experience with this is.

I have had this issue too. I spent a couple days with various apple support personnel. As far as I can determine, the issue is related to the epub format as I am able to sync a PDF file just fine. Additionally, if I manually download the file from email, I am able to read the file on my iPad with no issues. Still waiting to hear back but Im glad Im not the only one with this issue.

not me. i have been called back by apple a couple of times with no fix yet. supposedly their engineers are still working on it they had me create a fresh account which obviously wouldn't work, but i played along. they had me upload a couple of my DRM-free EPUB books and the output of the sysdiagnose file.

I have spent over 3 hours on the phone with Apple, the only outcome they could come up with was that my ipad was too old....

Then to find this discussion thread indicates the service agent was scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses.

they're back! 😅 after 10.15.2 update, my iPad 7th gen and iPhone XS Max are now syncing DRM-free EPUB books normally. it took a couple of tries of syncing just a couple each of audio books and DRM-free EPUB books with repeated warnings : "Are you sure you want to remove existing music, movies, TV shows, and books from this iPhone and sync with this library?" even though other syncs had been previously done, so it's buggy for sure, but it finally worked for me.

so the first sync after the 10.15.2 update didn't yield any positive news, hence my above post.....

another attempt this morning, and all DRM-free EPUB's are now back loaded on my iPad and working as expected.

I wrestled with this before discovering I was having a User Interface issue. When you connect a device in Catalina, it shows up in your Finder window sidebar, and there's a Books tab at the top of the window when you've selected it. Howver, it didn't appear to display any of my books, only a search box.

After some web searches, I expanded the window and discovered that the selection list to choose synced books had been off the bottom of the window and I hadn't been able to scroll down to it! Stretching the window made room for it to show up.

Same thing with me. After buying a new text book in epub format, and trying to sync through the finder. All my epub text books got deleted from my ipad mini 3 (and iphone 6). It left 2 pdf books.

After upgrading the Mac to 10.15.2, it also deleted the pdfs :( , so that is not a fix.

Found I could copy all books to my iCloud Drive, and open them in books on the ipad one at a time, using the 'Files' app on the ipad. They do get deleted again, if I try to sync with the Mac through the finder.

After 10.15.2, the books looked to have sync'd through icloud. All the books now show up in books on the ipad and iphone, but with the cloud icon, so I need to click on them to get them to download them from icloud.

Unfortunately 10.15.2 has broken my password manager, which injects the passwords into the keyboard buffer (not the clipboard). The fix for 10.15.1 was to give the app permissions in the Security and Privacy control panel, but this isn't working with 10.15.2, so I'm going through the long process of reverting to 10.15.1. That's one app I can't work without.

trying the link again that didn't seem to work

article HT201478

Read books and more with Apple Books

Hey Mac-City,

Thanks for letting us know; I’m struggling with very much the same issue.

Cheers,

Marco