Books not opening ePub files in macOS Monterey

I understand; I've had plenty of iCloud woes over the years, although it's not too bad now.

Anyway, if it helps at all, I ended up using CleanMyMac to remove the Apple Books cache / other data on my Mac. I then re-opened Books and let the book covers re-load, and I can now see the epubs I added.

Not a great solution I grant you (remember when this stuff just worked??), but there it is.

Sadly, since I updated to Catalina, I have been having the same problem. Where once I was able to import an epub and open it, they no longer do. I can still import them into Books, but that is all. Many of my epubs are public domain and/or downloaded through Gutenberg.org or The Internet Archive.

My solution has been to convert my epubs to .pdf format using Calibre Ebook Manager, which can be downloaded for free here.

calibre - Download for macOS (calibre-ebook.com)

I have found that epubs imported before a certain date can still be opened in Books, as always. But after the update to Catalina, nothing imported after that would open. Ever since Apple and all the other big corporations began doing all they can to do away with using free books (even those that are public domain, it seems), they have made buying and using electronic versions rather unappealing to me and many of my friends. We are older, having had our adulthood during an era that just didn't have today's modern toys. We can take them or leave them when we find they cause more headaches or stress than their benefits are worth. That being said, I no longer purchase electronic versions anymore. I have reverted to having physical copies of books when possible, because then there is little that can be done by these companies to prevent or interfere with my ownership and use of it. Even if that book was given to me freely by another.

Case in point, when an electronic version of a book suffers some issue with content within it and that content is either retracted, or re-written, your purchased electronic version of that book will be updated at some point by the book service you subscribe to. Those changes within your copy will be made without you knowing of it whenever it is updated by your connection with that service.

I wish I could remember the situation with a well known, long existing book whereby this recently happened. The only way it was found out was that the person owned both a hard copy and the electronic version of a particular book. They loved the book and would reread it from time to time. It was while rereading the electronic version they came across a section that didn't seem the same, and in comparing it to their hard copy they discovered it had indeed been changed since the last time they read the electronic version.

Needless to say, that person was a bit spooked at the utter loss of control they thought they had over their purchased content. It would seem that the big companies are trying to move us away from owning copies of a work to being leasers of them. It's a frightening aspect to think that our futures and concerns are actively being planned for us with the long term in mind. To me, it rings of big brother. This is why I resist all attempts to be put in dependence on a cloud back up format, or any other such things. It requires too much trust on our part to do so, and I come from an era where one still didn't think that the things a company sells us makes them friends or concerned for our well-being. It's always a bit unnerving to witness younger people fawn over the company that produces their toys as if that company did so out of the kindness of their corporate heart.

I'll be quite luck if this makes it past the Apple censors, trust me. They never take kindly to my "editorials", and often condemn them to the electronic garbage heap of zeroes and ones.

This worked for me.

Find an online epub converter and get your epub files converted into epub anyways. After I did that, they Books opened them successfully and unaffected.

I don't think this is confined to Monterey. I've tried to open epub files in Apple Books for the past few days in Big Sur (11.6.1) to no avail – my last success was on 1 November, no joy since then.

You can select the file from a dialog, drag n drop it into Books, or double-click on it from the Finder, but nothing more happens, and it doesn't appear in your library. This is with standard epub files, no file protection or anything like that. iCloud is working fine (albeit somewhat laggy) and I've tried repeatedly across Mac restarts.

I've reported it to Apple, for what that's worth.

If you have another device and you use iCloud, check whether the books you added are on there.

It turns out mine are: so whilst Books for the Mac isn’t updating properly, iOS Books is fine.

I’ve noticed my Mac has been quite slow to update iCloud-sourced data in recent days, eg Notes and Safari pages, so I can only put it down to that random delay. Frustrating.

Can you provide a source for one of these files so others can try to see if they have the same problem, or if it is just on your machine?

ppam wrote:

I can download into Adobe Digital Editions but can no longer go from there to my nook since I installed Monterey.

You need to contact contact Nook support.

(This forum is for people using Apple's Books app)

I have CleanMyMac. How do you do this?

I can download into Adobe Digital Editions but can no longer go from there to my nook since I installed Monterey.