Normal EPUBs Now Audiobooks thanks to iTunes Update

Are the files getting placed into the audiobooks folder in the IBooks app on your phone?

Audiobooks uses to be in the music app, but with the latest update are now in iBooks, so maybe they're getting placed there.

Who knows!

Any word yet on whether the latest OSX and IOS betas fix these problems?

II was hoping that the problem will get fixed in iOS 9, iTunes 12.3 (released yesterday) and El-Capitan GM Candidate with iBook 1.3 which I have installed on one machine Alas, all hope is gone. The problem is stubbornly persistant. No fix at all so far.

Same problem here, iTunes 12.3, iPhone 6 and iPad Air, both running iOS 9, both affected the same way, all 400 of my ePUB files are showing as "Audiobooks".

Words actually fail me. Do they not test this stuff?

Hello Apple,

I think it is wonderful that you are the most valuable company in the world. That you're building a self-driving car. That your products are as beautiful as they are well built.

But this, this is ridiculous. Your company was founded on the end user and their content. Music, Movies, TV Shows, Books. This very basic problem we're all facing, most of us on your latest hardware and software, is simply put unacceptable.

We use your latest iBooks on the latest OS X, with the latest iOS on your latest iPad and iPhone.

We have a huge collection of ePubs, that show up in iTunes under Audiobooks. If it weren't for google and a lot of research, I would have never guessed that my disappeared books are actually under Audiobooks in iTunes. And every time I want to sync an iOS device with iTunes, I need to go into the Audiobooks section, select the epub, Get Info, and go on to the next until they are all put back in the Books database of syncing.

I mean really?

This thread dates back more than a month.

There have been around 2 new updates of iTunes since then and no fixes.

Who manages your quality control?

This was a problem that didn't exist before and NOW exists. It is not a new product that comes with inherent bugs and quirks to iron out.

As much as I respect your one year cycle of new iOS and OS X products. It does seem to me that this is one of many examples of things that weren't broke that became broke, and that you're either stretched thin in terms of human resources or your quality control systems are failing you.

I am deeply frustrated, because this is not the first of many user-unfriendly bugs that anyone with slightly less tech savvy would never figure out.

A loyal customer and fan,

Nick

Let's hope today is the day Apple fixes absolutely laughable and ridiculous bug this with the new OS X El Capitan.

Crossing fingers shouldn't be part of the deal when you pay a premium for products from the world's biggest company.

Well, they didn't. They did, however, remove the inconsistency of having SOME books marked as audiobooks, now ALL my books are marked as audio books. Unbelievable!

Please tell me you're kidding. Can anyone else confirm this?

I just started downloading El Capitan.

I will confirm if all books in iTunes database from iBooks are now marked as Audiobooks.

Just unbelievable.

APPLE seriously whichever intern you hired to do QC on your Books sync needs to get fired.

Of all the glitches in Apple products lately, this is the most egregious.

I truly can't believe it.

For what it's worth, I upgraded to El Capitan today, and for me it's still only the non-Apple epubs that get sorted as audiobooks just as it was before.

Also, the same workarounds discussed previously still work.

Upgraded to El Capitan.

The OS is absolutely amazing and feels so snappy and wonderful, it's a shame that this is such a fundamental and persistent problem:

syncing Books from iBooks through iTunes from a Mac to an iPad

For anyone who finds this later, as I've seen a few posts on the forums.

The solution to re-adding your ePub Books (not purchased from iBookstore) from iTunes' Audiobooks section to the iBooks database:

1. Select Audiobooks section in iTunes
2. Select the My Audiobooks Tab
3. Select the first Audiobook in the file that is an actual ePub
4. Right-click or Command-click and Select Get Info or use shortcut Command + I
5. Use the shortcut Command + N to go next (once you get info on a wrongful audiobook, it will revert to the regular Book database)
6. Once you Command + N through your entire list you're done

Apple please fix this. Every time I restart my computer or iTunes I have to do this so that my sync with my iPad doesn't wrongfully remove books.

Just unbelievable.

For those that have many ebooks to process (as I have), I'll repeat this post:

You don't need to Get Info one by one. There is a way to process all the wrongly classified ebooks all at once. (I do this every time I restart iTunes.)

1. When viewing the Audiobook list (including the wrongly classified epubs), go to the View Menu and Show the Column Browser. Be sure that 'Kinds' is checkmarked.

2. In the Column Browser, click on Books. This should cause all the incorrectly classified ebooks to be listed, and nothing else.

3. Select All, then Get Info.

4. Within the Get Info window, change the Genre to something (Books, Fiction, Writing, etc.). It doesn't matter what you choose; it will not affect the Category of the book within iBooks after each file is recognized as an epub.

5. Click OK. All the highlighted books in the list now will rapidly be converted back to epubs, so they can be synced with your ipad or other ios device.

Instead of spending 30 min processing hundreds of individual epubs, this solves the problem in 15 seconds.

Still hugely disappointed the Apple is continuing to ignore this bug.

awesome tips srobinsn

yeah i think we're all in disbelief here

I'd like to share the results of an experiment. For this to work one of two things need to be true: You use Calibre and have a Calibre library, or you are willing in some way to put your books into a folder separate from iTunes Media. The goal is to not have iBooks automatically import your books. If one imports from a folder other than iTunes Media, iBooks copies to its library instead of moving the books.

Because I use Calibre, I have a Calibre library folder. (In the past before iBooks, one could simply drag/drop from that Calibre library into iTunes). The point to that is I have had two locations (synched) that contain my books: the Calibre library and the iTunes Media folder.

So, I deleted all books in iTunes and iBooks, after iBooks had done its stunningly bad job of importing my books and labeling them audio books.

I emptied the Trash. At that point all copies of ebooks were in Calibre's library only.

I chose File/Add to Library from the iBooks menu bar and pointed it to Calibre's library. iBooks imported all of the ebooks. Shockingly, it correctly imported them. Yay! No more audio books. I did multiple restarts of both iTunes and iBooks with no reclassification of my books.

For whatever silly reason my first sync with my iPad emptied my library on the pad. However, subsequent syncs, including the adding and subtracting of books to the pad went flawlessly.

At this point the only downside is that importing my Calibre library into iBooks lost (obviously) the true "date added" as iBooks used the date they were added to it.

I now have my books back in their proper location, with their proper classification, and synching properly. I will continue to use Calibre because iBooks has zero metadata editing abilities so the books are taking up disk space both in the Calibre library and the randomly filed cluster dump that is iBook's library. I can live with that.

Thanks for your input, that is yet another workaround for those who care to give it a go.

Those always help the community to get closer to a goal but unfortunately Apple is the only one that is going to have to iron this bug out to really solve this problem. As a lot of us including me have too big of a library to tinker with or move around.

Thanks again, and come on apple

I wrote an email to Apple. Today I was contacted by a "senior" exec.

I can't comment about unreleased software, nor divulge the content of the email, but I believe I can share that Apple is aware of this issue and is addressing it.

As an aside, I'm personally thrilled to see Apple engaged with their customers to this extent. Evidently, Apple is still the customer-driven company they always were in the past.