Chapter 13
iBooks and E-Books
In this chapter, we will show you how to use your iPhone for a good book-reading experience if you're OK with a slightly smaller screen. For example, we will cover iBooks, including how to buy and download them, as well as how to find some great free classic books. We will also show you other e-book reading options that use the third-party Kindle and Kobo(formerly shortcovers) readers on your iPhone.
The iPhone can use Apple's proprietary e-book reader, iBooks. In this chapter, we will show you how to download the iBooks app, how to shop for books in the iBooksStore, and how to read both PDF files (Adobe PDF format) and iBooks as well as take advantage of all the iBooks features.
With iBooks, you can interact with books and PDF files like never before. Pages turn like a real book; and you can adjust font sizes, look up words in the built-in dictionary, and search through your text.
In the App Store, you can also find apps for Amazon's Kindle reader, a Barnes and Noble reader, the stanza reader, and the Kobo reader. Both the Kindle and Kobo readers offer a great reading experience on the iPhone.
Downloading iBooks
Search the App Store for “iBooks” or “Apple.” You will find the iBooks app among the selections listed.
NOTE: On a brand new iPhone, you should get a notice asking: “Do you want to download iBooks now?”
If you don't see this notice right away, tap the App Store app and the notice should pop up.
Select the iBooks app and touch the Free button to download.
Select install and iBooks will be downloaded and installed on the iPhone.
The iBooks Store
Before you can start enjoying your reading experience, you need to load up your iBooks library with titles. Fortunately, many books can be found for free in the iBooks store, including the near complete Gutenberg Collection of classics and public domain titles.
NOTE: Paid iBooks content is not available in all countries. However, free content is available everywhere, including the Project Guttenberg collection of classic, public domain literature.
Just touch the store button in the upper-right corner of your bookshelf, and you will be taken to the iBooks Store.
The iBooksStore is arranged much like the App Store. There is a Categories button in the top left, opposite the Library button. Touch this to see all the available categories from which you can choose your books.
Featured books are highlighted on the front page of the store, with New and Notable titles displayed for browsing.
At the bottom of the store are five soft keys: Featured, Charts, Browse, search, and Purchases.
Touch the Charts button 
to see all the top charts and New York Times bestselling books. Touch the Purchases button to see all the books you have purchased or downloaded for your library.
Purchasing a book is much like purchasing an app. Touch a book title thatinterests you and browse the description and customer reviews. When you are ready to purchase the title, touch the Price button.
NOTE: Many titles have a sample download. It is a great idea to check this sample out if you are not sure that you want to purchase the book. If you download a sample, and you can always purchase the full book from within that sample.
Once you decide to download a sample or purchase a title, iBooks switches to the Bookshelf view, and you can see the book being deposited onto your bookshelf. Your book is now available for reading.
Using the Search Button
Just like iTunes and the App Store, theiBooksStore gives you a search window in which you can type virtually any phrase. You can search for an author, title, or series. Just touch search at the bottom of the screen, and the on-screen keyboard pops up. Type in an author, title, series, or genre of book, and then press the search button.
You will see suggestions pop up that match your search; just touch the appropriate suggestion to go to that title.
TIP: Do a search for “Project Gutenberg” to see thousands of free, public domain titles.
Switching Collections (Books, PDFs, More)
YouriBooks app has multiple collections of books or PDF files (Adobe PDF format reader).
You can easily switch collections between these two and add new collections by tapping the Collections button at the middle of the top of the library.
This button will show you the currently visible collection. In this image, Books is the currently collection. Tap the Books button to see the available collections.
From this screen, you can tap any collection to view it.
Notice that you can also create New collections and Edit collections you have created by using the buttons at the bottom.
Reading PDFs
Switch collections to view your PDFs collection as shown above.
Tap any book to open it up and start reading. All the same navigation features work as described in the “Reading iBooks” section.
One difference is that you will see thumbnail images of the pages of the PDF file at the bottom of the page. Tap any thumbnail to jump to that page. Drag your finger back and forth along the thumbnail Images to jump to a specific page.
Reading iBooks
Touch any title in your library to open it for reading. The book will open to the very first page, which is often the title page or other front matter in the book.
In the upper-left corner, next to the Library button, you can see a Table of Contents button. To jump to the table of contents, either touch the Table of Contents button or simply turn the pages to advance to the table of contents.
You can turn pages in one of three ways. First, you can touch the right-hand side of the page to turn to the next page. Second, you can slowly touch and hold the screen on the right edge of the page; and, while continuing to touch the screen, gently and slowly move your finger to the left.
TIP: If you move your finger very slowly you can actually see the words on the back of the page as you “turn” it—a very cool visual effect.
Customizing Your Reading Experience: Brightness, Fonts, and Font Sizes
In the upper center of the book, there are three icons available: Brightness, size, and search. These options help to make your reading experience much more immersive.
Touch the Brightness icon and you can adjust the brightness of the book.
If you are reading in bed in a very dark room, you might want to dim the tablet by sliding the Brightness slider all the way to the left. If you are out in the sunlight, you may need to slide it all the way to the right. However, you should keep in mind that high screen brightness consumes more battery power than most other features, so turn this feature back down when you don't need your screen to be so bright
NOTE:The preceding tip adjusts the brightness only within iBooks. To adjust the global brightness of the iPhone, use the settings app (go to the settings icon > Brightness & Wallpaper).
The Font Size and Type icon lets you adjust font values to suit your preferences.
Do this to increase the Font Size:
Tap the large A icon multiple times.
Do this to Decrease the Font Size:
Tap the small a icon multiple times.
At the time of writing, there are six available font styles—but there may well be more fonts available when you read this book.
Have fun and try out some of the various fonts. The default selection is the Palatino font, but all of the fonts look great, and a larger font size can make a difference for some. The goal is to adjustthe fontsize so the text is as comfortable and easy to read as possible.
Grow Your Vocabulary Using the Built-In Dictionary
iBooks contains a very powerful built-in dictionary, which can be quite helpful when you run across a word that is new or unfamiliar.
NOTE:The first time you attempt to use the dictionary, your iPhone will need to download it. Follow the on-screen prompts to download the dictionary.
Accessing the dictionary could not be easier. Just touch and hold any word in the book. A pop-up will appear with various options that let you highlight a word, create a note, or search for other occurrences of this particular word.
Touch Dictionary and a pronunciation and definition of the word will be displayed. Touch Done to leave the dictionary and go back to yourbook.
Setting an In-Page Bookmark
There may be times when you wish to set an in-text bookmark for future reference.
The upper-right corner displays a Bookmark icon. Touch the Bookmark icon and it will change to a red bookmark on the pages.
To view your bookmarks, just touch the Table of Contents icon at the top left of the screen (next to the Library icon), and then touch Bookmarks. Touch the bookmark highlighted and you will jump to that section in the book.
TIP: You do not need to set a bookmark every time you leave iBooks. The app will automatically remember where you stop reading in a book. This holds true no matter how many books you open and read, socan always return to exactly where you stopped reading in agiven book. The iBooks app will also sync with the version of iBooks on your iPad, so you can move back and forth between devices and keep your place in a given book.
Using Highlighting and Notes
There are some very nice “added touches” to the iBooks app. For example, there may be times that you want to highlight a particular word to come back to at another time. And there may be other times you want to leave yourself a note in the margin.
Both of these things are very easy to do in iBooks.
Highlighting Text
Follow these steps to highlight text in the iBooks app:
- Touch and hold any word to bring up the menu options.
- Choose Highlight from the menu options.
- To remove the highlight, tap the word and then select Remove Highlight.
Changing the color of a highlight is as simple as following these steps:
- Tap the highlighted word.
- Choose Colors from the menu.
- Choose a new color.
Adding Notes
It's also easy to add a note in the margin in iBooks:
- Touch and hold any word, as you did previously.
- Choose Note from the menu.
- Type in your note and then touch Done. The note now appears on the side of the page in the margin (see Figure 13–1).
TIP: Your notes will also appear under your bookmarks on the title page. Just touch the Title Page button and then touch Bookmarks. You can find the notes you write at the bottom of the page.
You can change the color of notes the same way you change the color of highlights!
Figure 13–1. Using the Notes feature in iBooks
Using Search
iBooks contains a powerful search feature built right in. Just touch the search icon, and (as in other programs on the iPhone) the built-in keyboard will pop up. Type in the word or phrase you are searching for and you will see a list of chapters where that word occurs.
Just touch the selection desired and you will jump to that section in the book. You also have the option of jumping right to Google or Wikipedia by touching the appropriate buttons at the bottom of the search window.
NOTE: Using the Wikipedia or Google search will take you out of iBooks and launch safari.
Moving and Deleting Books
Deleting books from your iBooks library is very similar to deleting applications from the iPhone. You can delete or move iBooks by tapping the Edit button in the Library view.
top-left corner.
Once you touch the Edit button, you will notice a small black “x” in the upper-left corner of each book.
Just touch the “x” and you will be prompted to delete the book. Once you touch Delete, the book will disappear from the shelf.
Other E-Book Readers: Kindle and Kobo
As we have noted, the iBooks app offers an unparalleled e-book reading experience. However, there are other e-book reader apps available for the iPhone that are worth checking out.
Many users already have a Kindle and have invested in a Kindle library. Others use the Kobo e-reader software (formerly called shortcovers) and have invested in a library of books for that platform.
Fortunately, both e-book platforms have apps in the iPhone App Store. When either program is downloaded and installed, you can sign in and read your complete library for its respective platform on your iPhone.
NOTE: No matter which of these other e-readers you choose, you can always just “sign in,” see your complete library, and pick up just where you left off in your last book—even if you started reading on a different device.
Download E-Reader Apps
It's a trivial matter to download alternative e-reader apps. Simply go to the AppStore, touch Categories, and then touch Books. In this section, you will find the Kindle and Kobo apps. Both are free apps, so just touch the Free button to begin downloading one of them.
TIP:It is usually faster to search by the name of the app if you know which one you are looking for.
Once your desired e-reader software is installed, touch the app's icon to start it.
The Kindle Reader
Amazon's Kindle reader is the world's most popular e-reader. Millions of people have Kindle books, and the Kindle app allows you to read your Kindle books on your iPhone.
The iPhone and iPad versions of the Kindle app have just been updated to support audio and video, making these versions even more advanced than the one found on the Kindle hardware itself.
TIP:If you use a Kindle device, don't worry about signing in from your iPhone. You can have several devices tied to a single account. You will be able to enjoy all the books you've purchased for your Kindle right on the Kindle app on the iPhone.
To use the Kindle app on your iPhone, just touch its icon and either sign in to your Kindle account or create a new account with a user name and password.
Once you sign in, you will see your Kindle books on the Home page. You can touch a book to start reading it.
NOTE: In order to buy or download new books, you need to go to www.amazon.com in the safari web browser. Once you've bought or downloaded a new book to your account, it will appear in the Kindle app.
To read a Kindle book, touch its cover and it will open.
To see the options for reading, just touch the screen and they will be shown along the bottom row of icons.
You can add a bookmark by touching the Plus (+) button. Once the bookmark is set, the Plus (+) button turns into to a Minus (-) button.
You can go to the cover, table of contents, or beginning of the book (or specify any other location in the book) by touching the Book button.
The font, as well as the color of the page, can be adjusted. One very interesting feature is the ability to change the page to Black—which is great when reading at noght.
To advance pages, either swipe from right to left or touch the right side of the page. To go back a page, just swipe from left to right or touch the left side of the page.
Tap the screen and a slider appears at the bottom; you can move this to advance to any page in the book.
To return to your list of books, just touch the Home button.
The Kobo Reader
Like the Kindle reader, the Kobo reader begins by asking you to sign into your existing Kobo Books account. All of your existing Kobo Books will then be available for reading.
Kobo's shelf view uses a bookshelf metaphor, similar to the one used by iBooks. Tap the book cover for whichever book you wish to open.
Or, you can touch the List tab to see your books organized in a List view.
Open any book, and you will see two buttons along the top of the Kobo reader: i'm Reading and settings.
Touching the i'm Reading buttonplaces a bookmark where you left off in the book and returns the screen to your shelf view.
Touching the settings button will display a series of buttons along the bottom of the screen for viewing bookmarks, seeing information about the book, and adjusting the page transition style and font. Under those buttons are four icons: Font, Brightness, screen Lock, and Nighttime Reading. Touch any of these buttons to make adjustments to your viewing
To advance pages in the Kobo reader, touch the right side of the page. To go back a page, just touch the left side of the page. You can also use the slider at the bottom to advance through the pages.