Some bad luck in downloading "Life on Earth" book

I tried Googling around for anyone having a similar problem with iBooks or app downloading, but I didn't find close enough of a match…

This is probably more of an iBooks or app store type problem than anything about this specific book. Here's what's happening:

I tried downloading Life on Earth with iBooks 2 on my iPad 2 the other day when it first launched -- it continually won't go through with the download though, saying "Unable to Download 'E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth' Retry or download later from the store." and I can select either Later or Retry. Whichever option I choose, I'm still stuck with that message and it won't download.

I've tried downloading the book on my Mac and it will download just fine, but when I transfer it to my iPad, the book icon will show with an almost-completed download progress bar on it, even though the file downloaded completely on my Mac, and has appeared to transfer all the way from my Mac to my iPad. So with this look of not being completely downloaded, I'm still unable to open the book.

I can download a sample of this book just fine. I've downloaded a sample of another textbook and that works just fine. I've tried downloading this Life on Earth book with as much as about 2.3gb free space available on my iPad. My iPad has also been turned off and restarted a few times over the past couple of days.

Any help is appreciated. I'm presently without any other ideas on what to try. Thanks for any feedback!

Argh. So lame. Tried copying the book from iTunes to my iPad again, this time it told me it couldn't do it because I didn't have iBooks 2, which I do. After I restarted my iPad, it then appeared to copy over just fine, but it ended up with the download-in-progress bar on the book cover again. I also made sure that I had iBooks closed on my iPad when I transferred it over this time.

I deleted my copy of the book off of my computer and am re-downloading through iTunes onto my Mac again…

Still gives the "still downloading" appearance when I copy it to my iPad.

I think that my iBooks really doesn't like this book for some reason. I would delete and then re-download iBooks 2 altogether, but I don't want to risk having to put back all of the PDFs and stuff that I have in it at this time.


edit: Oh, goody! My Life on Earth book suddenly turned into a normal icon just about thirty seconds after I posted this. About three or four minutes after it appeared [on my computer's end] to completely copy from iTunes.

So I guess if you're having a problem similar to what I was having, first connect your iPad to your computer and go to the "Books" section on your iPad within iTunes. Delete any copy of the book that you might still have listed there.

Download the book to your computer through iTunes.

Transfer the book from iTunes to your iPad.

Open iBooks on your iPad and see if it's completely transferred over yet (even if iTunes seems to think that it has).

If it appears to not be completely downloaded and/or you can't open the book, then leave your iPad connected to the computer for a little while longer and hopefully it will fix itself after not-too-long.