How do I delete a book from iBooks?

Hi Kathieabc,

Welcome to the Support Communities!

When you open iBooks on your Mac, click on the Help menu to the section "Organize your books"

I've quoted some important information for you from this resource:

Manually reorder books: Click Sort By, choose Sort Manually, then drag books where you want them.

Show book titles and authors: Click Sort By, then choose Show Title & Author.

Show all books you purchased: Click Sort By, then choose Show Purchases in iCloud. You see all books you purchased using your Apple ID.

Delete books from your Mac: Select the book, then press Delete. At any time you can redownload purchased books from the iBooks Store.

About using iBooks with iCloud

Your books, collections, highlights, notes, and bookmarks are available automatically on your computers and iOS devices—just use the same Apple ID to sign in to the iBooks Store.

• If you buy a book on your Mac, it’s automatically available on all of your iOS devices with iOS 6 or later and with Show All Purchases turned on in iBooks settings. (Books made with iBooks Author aren’t available on iPhone or iPod touch.) To see all your purchased books on your Mac, choose View > Show Purchases in iCloud.
• If you start reading a book on one device, you can pick up right where you left off on another device. Collections, highlights, notes, and bookmarks are also available on other devices when “Sync bookmarks, highlights, and collections across devices” is selected on your Mac in the General pane of iBooks preferences. On your iOS devices, turn on Sync Bookmarks and Sync Collections in iBooks settings.
• If you’re not seeing your info on all of your devices, make sure you’re using the same Apple ID in the iBooks Store on your Mac and on each iOS device. Also, make sure syncing is turned on in the General pane of iBooks preferences on your Mac and in iBooks settings on your iOS devices.

iTunes Store: Hiding and unhiding purchases

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4919?viewlocale=en_US

Learn how to hide and unhide your App Store, iBooks Store, and iTunes Store purchases.

Cheers,

- Judy

Hi Kathieabc,

It seems you can't delete anything, but you can hide stuff so it won't show up in your library.

Here's how:

Click on "iBooks Store", sign in, under "Quick Links" click on "Purchased", hover your cursor over the book you want to remove from your library, click on the "X" and it will no longer appear in your library.

You can unhide also under "Quick Links, "in "Account", by clicking on "Manage" to the far right of "Hidden Purchases", just click on "Unhide".

Hope this helps,

Ike

I cannot even get my iBook Store to open. iBooks (iMac) becomes unresponsive and I get the wheel of death.

iBooks for iMac has been an utter disappointment, even though it has been THE single most anticipated feature since I heard of Maverick. It does not sync with my iPhone iBooks at all. I have had to add books separately to each Mac (iMac and MacBook Pro). While highlights are synced eventually, pages do not move to where I have read till.

Most horribly, I attempted to delete some books I thought I had gotten rid of long ago in my iPhone - they reappeared when I opened iBook in iMac. Not only was I not able to delete them (delete is not even an option when I select the book or right-click, etc), but to my chagrim, I now have 16 to 30 copies of each - YES, EACH - of these books which I now hate. Everytime I select them on my iPhone for deletion, they stay deleted for the briefest moment and then reappear in the same number. At least, on Macs, they only stay single copied, with the icloud sign on them prompting redownload if wanted.

How in the world can this program be so buggy? Or else, how did the mighty Apple create such a user-confounding interface to an app I loved until Maverick came?

I have purchased a book and when I right click it and choose Delete, it won't go away. When I try to open it up and read it, it won't work either.

I can read and delete it from my iPad and iPhone but from my iMac it won't work at all.

Anyone got any idea on how to get the book to work again?

Thanks.

I'm with you, there. When my iPhone is connected to my Mac and I open iTunes to look at what's synced to my device under the Books tab, I see three copies of several books I have deleted. And no copies of books I've added. Now I've gone so far as to delete all books from my computer and from iBooks on my Mac, which has emptied out all the books from my iPhone, but those copies of all my books are still present when I look at my connected device in iTunes. It's utterly ridiculous. Every time I sync music, apps, or anything, it alerts me of these books that won't sync to my phone because iTunes can't locate them. It makes no sense. Apple have seriously dropped the ball with this iBooks thing. Very frustrating, as every support article that tells me how to delete books from iTunes tells me to click on the Books icon in the iTunes sidebar, but that no longer exists with iTunes 11.1.3. Their help articles are no longer current with the latest apps in their line. How ridiculous.

I just noticed this problem too. I poked around and figured it out! Open iBooks for Mac and navigate to File>Move Books from iTunes. It took the books out of iTunes and put them into the iBooks library. I went back to iTunes and under the Books tab under my iPhone they were still there. I closed iTunes and reopened it and one was gone, so I closed and opened it again and this time the Books tab completely went away. Problem solved.

Okay, you're a star. Your method worked the same way on mine. Managed to remove all those phantom inconsistencies and (multiples of) copies that no longer existed on my computer from the iTunes Books tab. However the Books tab didn't disappear from iTunes the way yours did, because there were still books in iBooks. I When I emptied iBooks altogether, it also emptied the Books tab in iTunes and only then did it remove the tab altogether.

However, that Tab comes back as soon as I add a book to iBooks again, presumably because iBooks needs a way to sync the books to your device. It doesn't come with an in-built ability to sync to devices the way apps like Notes, Contacts and various other syncable apps do. I guess iBooks syncs books the way iTunes syncs music – you have to connect the device (wireless or wired) and hit the Sync button. Hopefully they can make iBooks independent of iTunes some day like they have with Notes, Contacts, Calendar, Mail, Reminders, Safari and iPhoto. Nevertless, it solved my problem. Thanks again.

It was very helpful!

so thanks!

You can try this:

Go to finder and enter the book you want to delete. Then, move it to trash.

Open ibooks and open the book. If this is done correctly, ibooks should say unable to locate book and it will remove it from your ibook library.

Hiding and Unhiding purchases: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4919.

This is a problem!

Even if we delete the book on the iMac its still visible in the purchase history and thus available to other linked devices.

Why o Why can't we just DELETE a book from our iBook libraries?

The only solution I can see is to either stop using iBooks and stick with the Kindle or change your iCloud /iTunes user ID, but thats not without pain.

Come on Apple, trust us, we sometimes get it wrong but it's OUR decision.

😠

On itunes, login to your account. Then once you connect your phone to your computer with the cord, go to your itunes store on the comp. select the books category on top then click on purchased on the right side panel. there you will have all your books listed and you can delete the ones you don't want by hovering over them and clicking on the X that appears. once you have completed this, you must log out of your apple ID on your phone and log back in for the books to be completely cleared from your purchase history.

HI i usually deleted my books on my ibooks app and there is stiil icons from books on my iBooks i want to delete all books and their icons please help me