Transferring ePubs onto iPod Touch Gen 1 running iOS 3.1.3

By reading the description her:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/classics/id294773236?mt=8
it appears that you can only use it with "books" purchased through the app. Have you searched the app store for a plain ePub reader?

Have you tried the BookShelf reader? It is $4.99 and says you can imprt your own books in various formats including no-DRM ePub.

Try Stanza as your ebook reader, and either the Stanza desktop app or Calibre desktop app to transfer your ebooks to your iPod touch.

Both the Stanza and Calibre desktop apps have the ability to transfer ebooks to Stanza on an iPod Touch via WiFi.

Stanza can also download ebooks from the web. If you use a URL of the form staza://address.of.web.server/webserver/path/to/your/ebook.epub

Thanks I have DLed Stanza and will give it a bash.

I've been reading ebook via Stanza on my iPod Touch since I got it 2 years ago (about 130 ebooks). Before that I read my ebooks on a Palm based PDA (about 380 ebooks). I prefer the iPod Touch over the Palm, but I prefer either over a paoper book these days.

Calibre seems to get nowhere for me. I try to link to ebooks of various descriptions and convert them and it just goes on forever and I eventually have to force quit it.

I don't know what format you are trying to convert. epub, ereader, MobiPocket (without DRM) are all directly readable by Stanza. I have no needed to convert those ebooks, I just used Calibre Connect/Share to transfer ebooks from Calibre to my iPod Touch Stanza app.

Stanza can also directly download ebooks from several ebook vendors.

As I mentioned before, if you have a URL to an support ebook format, you can change http:// to stanza:// and the iPod Touch will download the book into Stanza.

And you can use iTunes -> iPod Touch -> Apps -> File Sharing -> Stanza by draging and dropping the ebook into the File Sharing section.

If Calibre is having trouble converting a book in some other format, try the Stanza desktop app. It might behave differently.

I shall be seriously looking at Android devices if this is the future of Apple's products. Sad.

If Android rocks your boat, go for it. I use an iPod Touch because I do not want the cell phone carrier smart phone contract, and when I started using my iPod Touch there was no Android, and PDA devices were no longer a priority for Palm, and Sony got out of the market after they released the Sony CLIE TH55 (a great Palm based PDA), and I was not interested in a Windows Mobile based PDA such as the Digital/Compaq/HP iPaq.

I'm happy enough to read ePubs on my iPod Touch but am struck by just how hard Apple has made it to get material from anywhere else than its iTunes Store.

If you are looking for a general purpose file system interface (neither via mounting shares, nor treating the iPod Touch storage as a USB drive), then yes, Apple does not provide that.

They do provide a way via iTunes -> iPod Touch -> Apps -> File Sharing (if the app tells the iOS that it wants to use the service).

Apps are free to use WiFi to get data into and out of their space.

Apps may register a protocol type (like stanza did with stanza://) that will allow transferring files via Safari. A similar service can be done via email.

There are some 3rd party apps that will transfer data for your, such as Dropbox (not sure if it works with Stanza, but it does for a lot of other apps).

As far as I'm concerned, the iPod Touch is a lot more flexible than when I was reading ebooks on my Palm based devices. There I had to pay for Missing Sync to get anything into and out of my PDA for reading. At least I have multiple options with my iPod Touch and all of them are free.

But my experiences are not yours, so perhaps selling your iPod Touch and getting an Android deivce will be more satisfying for you.

I also have some source sites for ePubs to experiment with.

If you like Science Fiction/Fantasy, check out <http://www.baen.com/library> for 100+ free ebooks that can be downloaded in epub format and read on your iPod Touch. This is where I got hooked on ebooks.

In 7th grade, Heinlein's "Red Planet" both got me started novels as well as reading Sci-Fi. I've been reading several Sci-Fi books a month since then (more or less). Along the way I read "Cities in Flight" (and reread it a few times). But it has been years (a lot of years) since my last reading of "Cities in Flight".

My first ebook was "On Basilisk Station", by David Weber (4-Aug-2001), and that started me down the road to preferring ebooks over printed books (500+ ebooks so far).

I've gotten as far as trying to get the books onto my Touch. "File sharing" does NOT show up beneath the apps window.

Running iTunes 10.x on windows pc, iOS 3.1.3 on an older-model Touch, with Bluefire Reader and Stanza on it. Works great with my iPhone 4, but can't figure out why file sharing isn't showing up when I connect my touch.

Any ideas? Thanks.

I think iTunes to iOS file sharing is a iOS 4.* feature (I'm not 100% sure, but that is what I think).

Alternate ways to get eBooks into Stanza.

a) Stanza desktop app (Stanza -> Tools -> Enable Sharing)

b) Calibre desktop app (Connect/Share button)

c) If the epub is availabe as a download from the web, take the http:// URL and change it to stanza:// and iPod Touch Safari will transfer control to Stanza and download the ebook.

d) Stanza iPod Touch app can connect with several on-line ebook sources and download ebooks directly from the web. (iPod Touch Stanza -> Get Books -> Catalog)

e) You could use DropBox Desktop app to store you epub ebooks, then Right-Click on the epub in the DropBox folder -> DropBox -> Copy Public Link. Then manually type the URL http:// link into iPod Touch Safari, but change the http:// to stanza:// You can do the same trick with any other cloud storage service that allows you to access the files via an http:// URL. While this is not easy, you could maybe simplify the URL transfer by emailing it to yourself, already edited from your desktop into stanza:// form. Still not trivial, but possible.