How can I read my iBooks on my PC?

Such a big FAIL on Apple for this one. I purchased two books before knowing this was the case and switching to the Kindle app. Sometimes I would like to read my purchased books on a PC instead of my little tiny iPhone, and that shouldn't be too much to ask - especially since one of the purchases was more costly on iBooks than it would've been on Amazon. You can have the app for Kindle on any device, so it's the most versatile, it allows you to lend books to friends, the customer service (should you need it) with Amazon is really great (at least that's my experience with them in the past decade), and you can borrow Kindle books from the public library if you want. Amazon constantly also runs really great specials on their book prices. Perhaps Apple will eventually catch up...

I am not misleading people as I have bought plenty of books off of the itunes store such as mathew riely's new 'Scarecrow' and 'Infinity Blade: Awakening' By Brandon Sanderson and they all work with the chrome app that I have spoken of.

I appreciate your critisism, But, as I have clearly stated earlier this app WORKS, Even for the so called "purchased books" as with my own personal experience I am a collector of ebooks and searched for a while to find this as the ebooks that I had purchased wouldn't work on my previous app but they certainly work for this one.

connor48 wrote:

I have bought plenty of books off of the itunes store ... and they all work with the chrome app that I have spoken of.

That just means that your books do not have DRM. Magicscroll cannot open DRM'd books from the iBookstore, and that is what most people want to read. Download something by Nicolas Sparks and you will understand.

As far as things stand now, iBooks can only be purchased on an Apple mobile device and viewed on an Apple mobile device.

More related articles about iBook:

How to transfer or backup iBooks from iPhone to PC

How to transfer iBook (ePub format) from iPhone to Mac

maryhowardsen wrote:

As far as things stand now, iBooks can only be purchased on an Apple mobile device

They can also be purchased via iTunes from a non-mobile device. Those in .epub format without DRM can also be read on any platform, even if non-Apple and non-mobile.

Thanks for your previous posts, Tom ...

Is there any word about iBooks compatibility on Mountain Lion? I am visually challenged and use an iMac 27" of necessity. I'm currently using Kobo and Kindle readers for Mac but would be happy to be able to buy books as well as music via iTunes. Thanks for any info you can offer.

BrianForbesColgate wrote:

Is there any word about iBooks compatibility on Mountain Lion?

Sorry, no. I don't think there is any connection between having an OS X version of iBooks and OS updates. They could have produced this app two years ago if they wanted to.

I downloaded 50 shades of grey and i use the Add-in for firefox. I was able to open one book which was a free one offered by iTunes, but the on I bought was DRM protected, so I could not open it. Its very frustrating. I don't have any Apple product, therefore I cannot use the item I purchased! Silly!

Just came across the problem myself......answer found fast firefox EPUBReader addon works like a charm now can read on my PC through firefox of course. Simple easy no messing around with striping the DRM and all that jazz sounds like a pain if you ask me but if we pay for it we own it should be able to use as we please can now read on my PC as well as my other Apple devices simple effective took like 1 min download and up and running.

This is a big reason for me to not buy apple products in the future. If I pay 35 euros for an ebook I would **** well want to be able to read it on my pc, I mean the pc is a friggin electronic device, so why should I be forced into the apple product range?

Titusoldrich wrote:

answer found fast firefox EPUBReader addon works like a charm

Not for what most people want to do. From the FAQ for this addon:

Adobe Digital Editions is also useless for DRM-protected books from the iBookstore.

Is there any way of exporting from the Apple iBooks Author App to other formats.

I just downloaded Mountain Lion because I wanted to use the iBooks Author App (it won't work on OS X Snow Leopard) to produce an arts brag book with hopefully some interactive content. I'm now having second thoughts.

What I need to know; is there any way of exporting from the Apple iBooks Author App to other formats, esp those capable of being read on other devices and on PCs? I don't want to be locked into producing just for iOS readers; distribution-wise thats a no-brainer.

If there's no way of creating a more universal product then it might be preferable to use PDF instead as this is widely used and can include I think other media, ie movies, sound etc.

Additionally I'd like to make the remark that most epub readers are really crappy and substandard, additionally the ePub format is really lacking in features, you are restricted to one font and WP-like flow-on text that can break your copy up in untidy ways ie when a new chapter starts at the top of the next page you can find one line of text from the previous chapter on an otherwise blank previous page, ugly.

And well, sad that Forstall lost his job at Apple but if it means the end of ersatz pretend book and notepad apps - faux paper pages, faux leather and wood 'binding' etc, then great, we're in the 21st century! Where's my floating text and imagery, where's my sexy avatar?

So why isn't there an indie bookstore like there's Bandcamp for music?

drowningindata wrote:

Is there any way of exporting from the Apple iBooks Author App to other formats.

The iBooks Author app is designed to produce the .ibooks format. This can only be read on an iPad. It can also export to pdf, which can be read on any platform.

To produce epub, which can also be read on all platforms, you can use lots of different apps, but Apple's solution is Pages. I think some pro's use InDesign and aim for the epub3 format, which is beyond Pages at this time.