Getting Books on the iPad
Now you’ve got your iPad, there are lots of ways to get books loaded onto the device.
First is the approved Apple iBooks app. There is a limited library of books for sale and quite a few free public domain books for download. The process of purchasing and downloading is easy and straightforward. The biggest drawback is the fairly limited number of titles in Apple’s paid selections.
Another good way is to use Amazon’s free Kindle app. I’ve been using it for a while on the iPhone and have several titles already downloaded. Amazon’s selection of titles is probably the greatest in the E-Book world. The kindle app syncs your library between devices like the iPad, iPhone and a PC or Mac. It remembers where you left off reading and picks right up where you left off, even on another device.
There are ways to get free downloads and PDF’s onto the iPad. The best app for this is Good Reader. You can download documents directly from the web within the app. The formatting of PDF’s is generally good and documents are very readable.
It is possible to convert PDF’s into the iPad’s e-pub format and load them into the iBooks app. For this you need Calibre. It’s a free program for the Mac, PC, or Linux that can convert books into just about any format you choose. For this, drag the file into Calibre and select the “Convert E-Books” icon. Once the file is in e-pub format it can be dragged into iTunes where it will be loaded onto the iPad the next time you sync.
There are many sources of free downloadable books on the web. Hint: Google is your friend. Today is the debut of Cory Doctorow’s new book For the Win. I’ve downloaded several of his other books, they’re good reads.