edit iBooks categories

[jaschulz]

I have several epub books purchased from O'Reilly. These are lumped together in the iBooks library without any category specification. Is there anyway I can indicate their different categories?

Thanks,

JAS

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

I have several epub books purchased from O'Reilly. These are lumped together in the iBooks library without any category specification. Is there anyway I can indicate their different categories?

Thanks,

JAS

You can create folders and put the different categories of books into different folders.


'Edit' - select a book you want to move to a new folder by touching it - then 'New' and create a new folder.

If you want to move further books to that folder then 'Edit', select the book and then touch the name of the folder you want to move it to.

Tim

 

[jaschulz]

Thanks, but I don't see any NEW button when I touch a title in the list. Am I missing something?

JAS

 

[jaschulz]

I found the NEW button. I creates a new "Collection" rather than a new "category", but it works for me. Thanks.

JAS

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Glad you found it - it took me a long time before I realised what 'New' did - sounds as though it might be creating a new book, or something....

Tim

 

[twerppoet]

The categories are stored in the ebook's metadata, it is basically the genre. You can not edit this in iBooks, but you can edit it in iTunes if you have the book synced there.

Just right click on the book and choose Get Info. Go to the Info tab. The Genre is at the bottom. You'll have to sync again for the change to show in iBooks. You can also change your cover art and a few other things here, in case they are wrong or you just don't like the current info.

Unfortunately you can only sort inside a collection. iBooks needs an All Books default collection, in my opinion. One where all books are listed no matter what other collection they have been assigned.

 

[DougPN]

iBooks needs an All Books default collection, in my opinion. One where all books are listed no matter what other collection they have been assigned.

I agree. And some clear understanding of the nomenclature difference between "collections" and "categories".

 

[Starlight007]

I realize this is an old thread, but this solution no longer seems to work!

Any ideas?

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OK, I figured something out. This could help future browsers. There are two places to see your books in iTunes. One is on the device itself-- click the name of the device and then the Books tab. THAT DOES NOT WORK!

The other is to go to the Books section on the left-hand side-- i.e., don't click the name of the device, but click Books. You can then select multiple items and make the change all at once.

You can also select View/View Options and check Category so that column shows up in iTunes. That makes it much easier to find the books you wish to re-categorize. Interesting that there Apple used "Category" whereas in the books' info it's genre (no doubt a carry-over from the music origins of iTunes).

Of course, all this is a work around and a dismal way of doing things. One should be able to do it on their device, where one is reading, and noticing the problem that needs fixing!

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Alas, the saga continues. After I synched, some books brought over the new category, but others did not. I just checked on iTunes and they are still correct. OK, I'm force quitting iBooks to see if that helps. It did NOT!

Oddly, just discovered one book where the category reassigning worked, but retitling did not! Oh, Apple what hath thou wrought!

Now, force-quitting again on the iPad mini and trying the iTunes sync again.

Not sure what's going on... eventually, I unchecked the synching of the books in iTunes (you are warned that this will delete all books on the device!), resynched, and two books still had issues. I traced it to two unchecked books in iTunes that were on the iPad (I may have downloaded them over the air).

The good news is that bookmarks, notes, etc. are preserved in doing all this-- even with a complete deletion, they all came back fine.

All this adds up to the need for iBooks to be able to do this itself. Hope that iOS 7 brings on device editing of the metadata! (I don't mean the type that the NSA gathers! )