iPad Backup of iPad books

[john fun]

I have an iPad 1 and a PC.
I want to back up all the books that are on my iPad.

ITunes tells me I have 1736 items under the book heading yet when I go to My Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Books there are only about 150 books backed up.
The other 1600 odd books do not apear to be on my computer as iTunes backups.

When I go to the Books heading in iPhone and tick the box to sync all books I get a frightening warning about all other files will be deleted.

Calibre tells me it has 410 books in its Library.

My books are mostly not purchased from iStore.
Most of them are epubs and pdfs. Some are Kindle which have purchased from Amazon or sideloaded. Many are work PDFs.

My question: is there a simple and certain way in which to backup to my computer all my iPad books?

UPDATE
See my solution at #13 below

[susan_cassidy]

Each app stores its books separately, as far as I know. If you sideloaded books, you should already have copies of those. For Amazon books, you can download a copy from Amazon for whatever device you want to back up for.

[DixieGal]

First, let me preface this by saying that iTunes is a continual bafflement to me. Every time that I plug in, I cringe. It seems like every synch is different.

This is how I back up my books. I do not have it set to auto synch ever. So I plug in, drag the books from my ipad to itunes, instead of the other way around, and hope it works.

Hopefully an expert will swing by and tell us the correct way to do it.

[john fun]

Thanks.
It is good to see I am not the only baffled person.
IPhones seem to work in one direction only.

[kjk]

Look one directory up, in your Music directory, and see if you can find the authors names listed there. I believe iTunes is somehow filing books in one of two places-some in the Music directory directly, and some in the Books sub-directory.

The Books sub-directory is new I believe-I don't remember seeing books stored there originally. No idea why there are some in one directory, and some in another.

This is all assuming you have iTunes managing your books, of course.

[john fun]

@kjk
There is nothing relevant one directory up.
In the Books subdirectory the books are contained in folders named by author.
ITunes manages all my books except for a few with Kindle.

The more I look at it the more I feel that the books are *not* backed up to my PC but simply sit in the iPad itself.

I suppose the counsel of perfection would be that everytime I upload a book through iTunes that I keep a separate copy but I find it difficult to believe that, having uploaded all my books, I cannot now copy them doen to my computer for backup purposes.

Anyway, I will keep looking for a solution and keep this post updated.

[l..k]

Oh, it happened once to me too. The point is that you have to run backup before you start side loading books to your iPad. I did not do it and when I first tried to do backup it gave me some strange warning,sorry I do not remember what it was. But after the first backup all books added later are being synchronized every time without problems.

[susan_cassidy]

If the purchase is from iBooks, you can re-download at any time, if you accidentally delete the book or something. From Apple's iBooks FAQ:
"Can I redownload my purchased book again for free?

Yes, you can redownload any book from the iBookstore, as many times as you need, free of charge. To redownload a book, tap Store, then tap Purchases. Find the book you wish to download again and tap Redownload."

Also:
Can I copy my books onto other computers or devices?

Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own.1 Audiobooks, PDF files, and ePub files you've added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your device, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select your device then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on your device then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store."

[john fun]

@susan_cassidy
Thanks for your reply.
I have very few books from the iBookstore.
Mostly my books are epubs and pdfs loaded onto iBooks.
There are a lot of Kindle books - about half purchased and half sideloaded.
I am used to a PC where all these things are in identifiable folders and backup just consists of copying the folder.
Apple seems to be different.
Apparently when I do an Apple "backup" it only backs up iBookstore purchases.
This does not help me.

Can anyone help with the Apple file structure for iBooks and Kindle.
The books are on the iPade so there must be some sort of file structure that I can identify on the iPad and backup.

Any suggestions?

I am worried that when my iPad2 arrives and I try to load it that it will wipe out most of my library.

Thanks again to all who have been good enough to reply.

[sapphiresilver]

A program like iPhone Explorer might help. You can use it to go into the applications' folders. You might be able to find your books and copy them back to your computer.

[john fun]

@sapphiresilver
I have just located that software as well. Here are my preliminary results.
I have downloaded a (Windows) program which gives me some access to my iPad1 files.
It is called iPhone Explorer v 2.101 http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ and is supposed to work with iPad as well as iPhone.
This is what I see.
*connect iPad
*let iTunes do it thing and finish
*open iPhone Explorer
*I see a directory: at the top is MyIPad with 2 subdirectories, Apps and Media.
*open Media and I see 12 subdirectories and 3 files.
*open the Books subdirectory
*I see a number of directories with the file description ".epub"
*To take an random example, the 2nd file is ABCZ.epub
*It has 2 subdirectories and 2 files.
*The directories are "590" and "META-INF".
*I open 590 and see a number of files, the important ones being 3 htm files referring to Gutenberg.org: e.g www.gutenberg.org@files@590@590-h@590-h-0.htm On the face of it, this is a htm file. A search at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/590 reveals that their book number 590 is "Robert Louis Stevenson: a record, an estimate, and a memorial by Alexander H. Japp " which is one of my books. Part of the mystery solved.
*The next file is ABJI.epub. It has one subdirectory only (META-INF) and a number of files. I click on the file cover_image.jpg and the software displays the image which tells me that it is a PG Wodehouse book. The books contents seem to be in 2 html files called index_split.
*the PDF books loaded into iBooks are there as well
*My deductions are that some epub books loaded into iBooks (not purchased from Apple) are located in the file structure of iPad. The OS seems to create folders at random with 4 letter capitals file names. Inside the folders the books seem to have been converted to html. Nothing indicates the name of the book.
*The FILES CAN BE COPIED by a tedious process of dragging and dropping onto the PC. The software is buggy and frequently crashes.
What I now need is software which can read these files in the Apple OS format.

[john fun]

Last August, PCWorld http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html said:
"Apple's directories on your device are labyrinthine, and the device also renames everything it stores on the device, relying on internal tags to remember what things are supposed to be called." and
"Apple's propensity to rename every file and bury them within folders"
Not very encouraging.
I am still looking for a program that can not only see the files on the device but correctly name them.

At the moment, I advise everybody to make a list of their books in iPad (probably a screenshot is easiest) and then locate them on your computer and copy them into a directory so that you have a collection of loaded books.
Whenever you load a new book place a copy in this directory.
Unfortunately I have about 1800+ books loaded and doing this manually is a $+)*&%.
I had wrongly assumed that I could simply download them from the device as a backup.
And I will have to do all this in the next 2 weeks before my iPad 2 arrives as I have no confidence that iTunes will copy all my books from one device to another.

[john fun]

Some success.
Joboshare iPhone iBooks Transfer at http://www.joboshare.com/iphone-ibooks-transfer.html
Seems to be doing the job. But no guarantees.
At least it shows the correct titles for 1136 of my books leaving out of 1736.
I am currently downloading all these to my PC.
Slow.

UPDATE
Bought a copy as the free copy is limited to 99 files.
Downloading my books is going well.
Has downloaded all epubs and pdfs which were loaded in iBooks.
Next I will download all my music.

I am very happy with this!

UPDATE 2
It is downloading all my music from my iPod.

[januaryman]

I've had this same problem and question hovering about in cyber space for weeks! Thanks for a useful solution, John Fun!

[kjk]

Originally Posted by john fun

@susan_cassidy
Apple seems to be different.
Apparently when I do an Apple "backup" it only backs up iBookstore purchases.
This does not help me.

I'm not sure why it doesn't work for you, but for me every book (iBook or otherwise, both ePub and PDF) transferred without problems from my iPad 1 to iPad 2, which tells me that Apple's "backup" (if you mean iPad backup) definitely backs up more than iBookstore purchases.

But, I have iTunes manage my content, which means anything I add to the iPad automatically sends a copy of that to the iTunes library (and, gets backed up properly).

Also, I'm only talking about books *in* the iBooks app. The other reading apps have their own storage systems.