http://tidbits.com/ iTunes treats books as songs when it comes to metadata, and iBooks on iOS doesn’t help matters. Read on for confusion-reducing information and practical steps you can take to better wrangle your iTunes book library. en-us Copyright 2013 TidBITS Publishing Inc. Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 EST Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 EST editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) http://tidbits.com/images/tb_logo_152x55.png http://tidbits.com/ 55 152 TidBITS badge http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17599 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:08:13 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17599
The only thing iBooks has going for it is a somewhat better reading experience, but it's not so superior that most people would choose it over the competition.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17400 Fri, 25 Jan 2013 09:02:39 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17400 2. In the header bar above the device summary screen, click Books.
3. On the Books screen, in the panel under Sync Books, click Selected Books.
4, In the list of books below that, uncheck the books you don't want to sync with your device.
5. At the bottom of the screen, click Apply.

The books you uncheck remain in your iTunes Books library, but won't sync back to the device.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17399 Fri, 25 Jan 2013 08:49:27 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17399
How may I set things so that the book is deleted or archived everywhere?]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17384 Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:03:41 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17384 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17383 Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:01:10 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17383 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17382 Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:57:52 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17382 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17368 Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:14:20 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17368 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17327 Thu, 17 Jan 2013 06:35:46 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17327
Michael has done a terrific job pointing out iTune's shortcomings for organizing eBooks in a meaningful way, and it's easy to blame Apple for being shortsighted. In fact, the book publishing industry isn't much better about this sort of thing.

The ONIX XML metadata protocol used by publishers is full of inconsistencies. It's not the fault of the protocol, but of inconsistencies among and within publishers. The ePUB metadata is intended to map to ONIX, but publishers have been very slow to adopt this in a consistent way.

Nonetheless, iTunes needs to do a better job as a catalogue tool. We've bought all this stuff, now we'd like to enjoy consuming it!]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13494?rss#comments_17293 Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:16:04 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13494#comments_17293
Keeping track of one's books (music, movies, photos, etc.) is an unpleasant task, and IBooks or iTunes does little to help. I wonder what those two programs would look like if they also had to organize real books, CDs and DVDs? I bet there'd be a "comment" field so I could put in terms like:
*Purchase Price (often different than cover price)
*Signed
*First Edition
*Special Edition

And I bet "genre" would have an auto-fill feature (supported by a decent number of options for "genre" or "category").

You, however, are to be commended for trying to bring some light to the darkness that is the iTunes/ iBook interface. 

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