Playlists for ebooks?

February 3, 2012 12:35 PM

Can I make playlists for ebooks on my iPad? And if not on the device itself, is there software for my computer that wil at least let me manage my books in groups?

I have a MacBook Pro and an iPad. I also have a LOT of titles (ebooks and PDFs). I wish I could manage the books on the iPad itself more finely-grained than the Collections feature allows, since more than about ten Collections scrolls off the screen.

Ideally I would really like the same kind of sorting options (e.g., playlists, Author, Title, Genre) that music can have. If not, though, can any computer program for organizing my library at least let me manage the books that way, and then possibly transfer them in batches or something?

I have used Calibre before, but iTunes is the path of least resistance so I haven't yet switched over. Should I? Is there a better alternative? Thank you!

posted by wenestvedt to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I don't know of an ebook reader for .epub files for the ipad that offers substantially better "grouping" functionality than what ibooks offers. I assume you know this - but in ibooks if you click the button next to "edit" on the top right hand side - you can switch to a searchable list of your bookshelf that is more "itunes like" and order it by title, category and genre (with collections working a little like playlists)

IIRC Stanza offers you the ability to sort by author, title, genre - but it is a poorly updated and unpleasant app. You can try it out but I wouldn't recommend it.

For PDF's it is a different story- as there are many many PDF apps for ipad - the best of which is probably PDF Expert in my opinion. In terms of organisation - that uses folders - which may or may not work for you?

You could also try comiczeal - which is meant for comics but works with .pdf files and has very advanced "collections" features.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 1:12 PM on February 3, 2012

I'm not very familiar with Calibre apart from using it to occasionally manage my mum's Kobo Touch, but I just installed the 0.8.38 update and transferring multiple titles to my iPad worked pretty seamlessly. They went to the default collections in iBooks, so it might make sense to clear out those existing docs to other collections first.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:40 PM on February 3, 2012

Best answer: How about keeping them in Dropbox or sugarsync folders and organizing them there?
posted by mearls at 1:41 PM on February 3, 2012

Best answer: You can create playlists and put books into them, yes. I have playlists on my machine of RPG PDFs sorted by system, so I can transfer on and off as needed. You create it like a normal playlist and just drag books into it.

This way you don't need to install other software.
posted by mephron at 1:48 PM on February 3, 2012

Response by poster: I'll be thumped, mephron: you can make book playlists!!!

Thanks for all the answer, everyone. Maybe I will go file a feature request at apple.com, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:03 PM on February 5, 2012