How to find & manage ebooks from various apps?

[rapidlanguage]

(I'm sorry if this question has been asked before, I found partial answers already in the forum but I'm still stuck!)

I have an iPad with ebooks in a variety of formats: kindle, kobo, ibooks, and various PDF readers. I'd like to either pull them off the iPad or collect them from the kindle, kobo, itunes stores, etc.

I started by installing the kindle and kobo desktop readers (for windows) and downloaded all my purchases. But I can't seem to find any of these ebooks in calibre anywhere. I tried connecting to my iPad, I tried adding books from the kindle folder on my PC, and also the (obscurely hidden) kobo folder, but none of the files were recognised.

I feel I'm missing something important. Surely, it's just a matter of reading/detecting all my ebook files (epub, kepub, azw, azw4, pdf, etc.) and pouring them into the calibre library? I'd like to convert and edit some of these files, and I have hundreds of my own PDFs that I'd like to put into kindle and kobo formats (as well as some books with enabled audio that only seems to work in ibooks for some reason).

Please can you point me in the right direction and/or explain what I'm doing wrong.

many thanks...

- update: I've now managed to discover my kindle ebooks. It seems one has to click on the Add Books icon not the drop down arrow to the side of the icon... or it may have been that the ebooks hadn't downloaded yet from the kindle desktop app...?

(Strangely, there are now more kindle ebooks in my calibre library than on my kindle desktop app... I'm really not sure what's going on - but that might be a kindle software problem and nothing to do with calibre.)

Another related question is where do the ebooks go when I Send To Device? Will the ebooks appear in their respect ibooks, kindle, kobo apps - or will they all end up in the itunes/ipod app. I don't really want to mess up what's already on my ipad - and I can't find details about this in the manual.

thanks again for your help...

[itimpi]

The only iPad app that Calibre can interface directly with via USB is iBooks as this is the only one that iTunes directly supports.

having said that there is the (free) eBook-Search app on iOS that can interface via WiFi or 3G with the Calibre Content server to select and download books, and having downloaded a book transfer the book to an apporpriate app for the format downloaded (if multiple apps support the format you are asked to choose one). You can also do this using the Safari browser although is not as convenient.

If you are using the Kindle app you also have options such as emailing a book to your Kindle account which would result in the Kindle app downloading it.

[glug]

I've been having similar problems. I think I have books which I would like to add to calibre so that I can convert them but they seem to be (deliberately) "trapped" inside other software - I'm thinking particularly of Kobo/WH Smiths. Any idea how I can "find" them and add them to Calibre?

[PeterT]

Books from Kobo/WHSmiths you will need to go to the Kobo/WHSmiths website, head to the "My Library" link and download the ADE version of the books. These will contain DRM, removal of which we can't discuss here.

However Google "Apprentice Alf" and you might get an answer you like.