How do I transfer ebooks from PC to ipad now that they've killed books in iTunes?

So, if I understand correctly, I bought an iPad a few years ago to replace my Kindle. Now I have to go and buy a Kindle to sync/maintain my book collection??!?!? I have a library of over 1400 books in my iTunes/iBooks that I can longer sync??? My iBooks app will be a monument to the last time I was able to sync my books then, I guess. Note that none of my books were purchased through iBooks, they're DRM-free epubs, so now I have nothing but an $800 internet viewing machine, I guess. Thanks, Apple!

Before this frustrating update, the way that I did this when there's no laptop at hand was pretty simple: send an email with your .epub file attached to your own email account and open it in Mail app. When you click the attachment, iPhone will allow you to copy the file to iBooks. This works for PDF files as well.

Now I guess is the only way to import your local file into iBooks.

Great change, well done, Apple! 😠

A simple addition to the useful comment of Phil0124:

If you have many ebooks/had many files in the ibooks app, that doesn't mean you have to copy these files to your iPhone/iPad one by one. In my case, all files are collected in a single folder named Books which is a subfolder of my iTunes library on my windows laptop. I ran a windows search restricted to this folder, searching for *.*

This search gives you all folders and, after these, all files that are part of the folder Books. Select all files and drag&drop them to the left side bar in iTunes -- voila, all files are back in the ibooks app! 🙂

By the way, I noticed that I have files that have the format *.ibooks; a format that wasn't mentioned in the previous posts, I believe. So if you wonder why parts of your old library are still missing after you have re-added all epubs and pdfs, this may be the reason.

Am I missing something? I thought that using iCloud Drive to access your PDF, ePub files, and books was how you would continue accessing them through iBooks on your iOS device or Mac:

Use iCloud Drive or iBooks to access your PDF files, ePub files, and books - Apple Support

Am I confused about this particular question?

GB

No. If you have the Kindle app on your iPad, it can still sync your Kindle books like it normally has from Amazon's cloud.

If you want to add books to your iPad so they are in iBooks, then that's where it was changed.

If you have epub files, or other types of book files you need to sync to the iBooks app on the iPad, then you can apparently drag them onto the iPad in iTunes and they will be synced.

If you have a Mac you can add the book to the iBooks app there and it will sync to iBooks on your iPad.

There just no longer a separate books section in iTunes.

Some options here

You removed Books from iTunes completely???

Phil0124 wrote:

If you have epub files, or other types of book files you need to sync to the iBooks app on the iPad, then you can apparently drag them onto the iPad in iTunes and they will be synced.

If you have ePub or other types of book files, you should be using iCloud Drive to sync them to your iBooks app:

Use iCloud Drive or iBooks to access your PDF files, ePub files, and books - Apple Support

Am I misunderstanding what you were referring to?

Cheers,

GB

If you were using iBooks to view your epub Books on the iPad, unfortunately there's no way to transfer them into iBooks anymore.

If you were using a different epub reader like the Kindle App, that supports File sharing, you should be able to still load the epub books using the File Sharing option in the sidebar,

Wait, if there's not laptop at hand, then the itunes change would not affect they way you did things.

The change only affects how you do things when going through iTunes on a computer, nothing else.

You can still send yourself an email. And save the PDF to iBooks directly on the iPad. That has not changed.

The question was more towards how you add epub books to iBooks on an iOS device directly now that is has been removed from iTunes. You cannot do so anymore.

Also unless you are using a Mac where you can use the Mac iBooks App to add Books to iCloud Drive, there is no access to iBooks on iCloud Drive on a Windows PC. So no way to add anything to iBooks from Windows.

Also some people don't want to have to use iCloud Drive to add books. They liked the old way where you could copy them directly onto a connected iPad rather than use space in iCloud Drive.

I'll try the drag an drop method tonight and see if it works. Thanks. I want a way to transfer into iBooks directly from the Windows PC to the iPad like it used to work. I don't use any cloud services, and I don't want to. I store my books locally and transfer direct. Hopefully that will work. I'll let you know. Thanks again for the quick response.

You can use the Files App to move the epub files in iCloud Drive to iBooks yes, but many do not want to use iCloud.

And since there is no iBooks App in Windows, you have to rely on iTunes to do it. Which can still sync the books by dragging them onto the device.

The point here was to avoid the requirement to use iCloud Drive.

Thanks all, for the suggestions. I did the drag and drop to iTunes while I had my iPad plugged in and it worked. Once plugged in, I opened the Books section, and dragged the file there. It showed up in iBooks right after. It's clunky, but it works. I guess I'll have to go back to Calibre to organize my ebooks.

wondermouse wrote:

OK there is a workaround.

Firstly you cannot directly use iTunes to maintain your ebook library any more. Thanks for buggering that up, Apple.

And for those who said download directly from ibooks, YOU CAN'T - unless you have purchased the books from iTunes in the first place, which was NOT why I asked the question.

SO... I have found 2 workarounds, neither elegant but they do work.

Method 1: For epub format books into ibooks

1. First locate the book file you want to transfer using Windows Explorer.

2. Attach your iPad to your PC

3. When it appears in the iTunes sidebar, drag the book file onto the sidebar icon for your device.

4. It should transfer and be available to ibooks.

This is, of course a bit unwieldy for lots of books but it does work.

Indeed, method 1 works and was already explained on page 1 twice.