iBooks in Mavericks lost 700 books

Sadly, "showing invisibles" did not work for my computer. So now I have to delete iBooks for a second time, and restore iTunes as the book source.

I contacted the Apple support asking if it is possible to sync ebooks (NOT purchased from iTunes Store) from my iPad to my iMac. They said it is not possible to move or sync ebooks not purchased in the iTunes Store. However, I found a way that works. It entails the sync of ebooks and allows to keep all the notes, bookmarks and highlights. In order to do that, I had to use my old laptop with win7 and iTunes. I synced my iPad to the laptop, transfered all purchases, extracted the ebooks and pdf from the laptop folder in Windows Explorer, copied them to DropBox and imported in iBooks in the iMac using the command "Add to library". A bit tediuos but it worked and allowed me to keep all my notes, bookmarks etc. So, copying ALL ebooks and pdfs from iPad to iMac is perfectly possible.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a reliable fix....

I've gone back to Mountain lion via 'TIME M/C and I have all books and pdf's back.

I use adobe reader to read PDF''s and have never had a problem reading stuff from my Itunes library so why 'o' why did Apple go and mess it all up.

Looks like I'm staying with Mountain Lion for a long time. and if Apple keep trying to force us to use its products I might go Microsoft! at least you expect them to mess up!

I sent feedback as well since I am having the same problem.

I do not understand why my PDFs are on my iPad and iPhone but none of my computers???

aehaas

Well here's an update for you. Last night I went to the iBooks app on my Mac. I did see all of the documents on the Mac (they disappeared from the iPad). Under File, I selected Move Books from iTunes. I saw it spin through the books so I knew something happened. I then did a sync from iTunes and still nothing was showing up on my iPad. THIS MORNING I happened to connect the iPad to my Mac before turning on the Mac. I had indended to sync some music and hit the Sync button. I noticed that the books that were on my Mac were being displayed as documents to be synched during the sync process. Once the sync was finished, I went to my iPad and to my surprise, all of the documents on the Mac were also on the iPad. I don't understand it. I'm not sure if it's the hardwire connection that is needed, or the fact that I moved the books from iTunes last night in combination with the hardwire, or if it was because I connected the iPad before I turned the mac on. Of course, can't rule out that Apple snuck in an update that I didn't know about. 🙂 In any case, it worked. I'd be interested to know if anyone else can try this and has the same positive results. Thanks.

I appreciate how everyone has been seeking and sharing ideas about how to sync with the new ibooks, and various other workarounds. But none of this restores the original functionality of iTunes -- the way you could edit authors, cover art, and other metadata, and manage content much more easily and seamlessly than now. I originally responded by reverting back to Snow Leopard through time machine, as others on this forum have. I then followed the suggestion of Kevin Edgecomb in this thread and removed iBooks from Maverick. I can't use the new program to read ebooks on my Mac, but I retain the original use of iTunes exactly as it used to work on Snow Leopard, and have no problem syncing with my IOS devices. FYI

I went back to 10.8.5 and intend to forget about iBooks in Mavericks and use Marvin instead together with Calibre. I'm really p....d Apple and all those blogwriters leave us in the dark.

It may be a weird e-mail. But you submitted feedback via www.apple.com/feedback or ibooks feedback form. ibooks is considered part of iwork.

Most headers are very hard to forge nowadays with something called domain keys.

The e-mail is legit. If you post to apple.com/feedback, it breaks their ticket tracking, and they can't help you.

--Sam

Here is how to delete iBooks and get book management functionality back to iTunes (including the ability to edit metadata):

1. Open Activity Monitor and kill the bookstoreagent service.

2. Delete the file for that service:/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CommerceKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/boo kstoreagent

3. Use AppCleaner to remove iBooks app completely.

4. Restart iTunes and Books menu will appear again there.

5. Copy our ebook files from our backup back to internal storage. This is mainly for ebook files that we didn’t purchase from iBookstore. Don’t worry about books that we purchased from iBookstore, we can re-download them again.

6. Delete the ebook files from~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Booksso iTunes library will detect them as missing. Right click for each book, choose “Get Info” and it will ask the location of the file. Point the location to the ebook file that we have restored. Yes it’s probably a long and tiring process especially if we have plenty of books.

7. An alternative way of step 6 is to delete all the books from iTunes library and re-import them from the files. All the metadata we created before should remain unchanged.

8. Re-download books that we purchased from iBookstore. Or alternatively if we have those books in our iPhone or iPad, we can just sync them with iTunes and choose to transfer those books.

Thanks MorningDewProcess. That worked for me. Much appreciated. 🙂

Now if only Apple would get their iBooks app sorted, we'll all be happy.

I also lost all my PDFs and ePUBS in the Maveriks upgrade to iBooks for Mac and could no longer sync my iPad successfully because it said books were missing.

I spent the entire day fixing this, a day I will never get back.

Here is what I had to do to get all the functionality back:

Restore the Books folder from a Time Machine backup, move it to ~/Downloads

Download and Install Calibre ebook system

Import all my non-iBooks Store PDFs and EPUBs into Calibre

Install Marvin (for EPUBs), I have Good Reader (for PDFs), I have Kindle (for MOBis) on my iPad

Install IOS Applications and Marvin XD plugins in Calibre

Test the transfer and reading od EPUBs and PDFs to iPad and the readers Marvisn and Good Reader

(I tried reading PDFs in Marvin but it converts them to EPUBs and the result was only so-so so I will use Good Reader for the PDFs)

Erase my iPad and Restore from Backup --because it won't sync (due to iBooks cruft in its migration from iTunes?)

Now I am all set and will never never never use iBooks again.

I am so tired of apple doing this they think is better for me

This is the second time I have my personal pdf files dissapear !!

It is not right that i have to waste all my time and energy to redo my books and files THE WAY I WANT because it my device I paid for it !

I now do NOT open anything else on ibooks instead I open them in Dropbox and things stay there the way. I want and where I want for as long as I want

After may years using only apple devices , macbook, iphone and ipad I am beginning to consider ANDROID devices

This is very frustrating and irritating

I am more than a little ticked at Apple for forcing me into certain modes. The have really screwed up iBooks IMOP. I liked having all of my stuff in iTunes and able to controll syncing from there. It was bad enough that my pictures were not there and I had to go to two separate locations to control what landed on my iPad. Now I have THREE?? And the third place I have to go does not even work??? Love your suggestion about Marvin. Got it and it seems to be workind flawlessly. But I cannot help but feel that Apple has dropped the ball on iTunes. I happened to LIKE colored icons - they took that away and forced me to take the drab grey skin; I liked having my audio books in the same location as the print books - they took that away; now they have really screwed up iBooks and I have NO way to control what lands or syncs on my iPad. I am moving everything to dropbox when it should be comfortable staying in iCloud. At least I have controll over drop box...

Apple is screwing up everything that is not their core music download service. First they made Podcasts virtually unuseable, to the point where I no loger use Apple's Podcasta App and manage my podcasts using a different application.

Now I find myself doing the same with ebooks. After losing all of my content in the most recent upgrade, I've abandoned Apple for ebooks completely. Since Steve died they won't listen until it affects their bottom line. If enough people abandon the platform, maybe they will fix it.

Here a solution that works perfectly for me, and it took me about an hour to set up and I've never looked back:

Abandon iBooks completely. I now use Kindle for purchased content and PDF Connoseur for PDF content. Kindle has many more books and better prices, while PDF connoseur is a comprehensive PDF handling app that I've found is superior to iBooks in every way.. I've never looked back.