Can iBooks be shared?

[Huntn]

Can iBooks be shared on separate iTunes accounts? A good link would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Tyler23]

Can iBooks be shared on separate iTunes accounts? A good link would be appreciated. Thanks!

Nope. They do not allow your to share purchases. That would defeat the point of, well, purchasing them..

 

[Huntn]

Nope. They do not allow your to share purchases. That would defeat the point of, well, purchasing them..

Thanks for the peculiar reply. I'm not speaking of sharing it with the world, but with my wife on her iPad with her own account. I believe there is a way and when I find a good link, I'll post it

Here is one such link but I need more clarification- http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/sharing-ibooks-between-ios-devices/

We currently have apps on both our devices that belong to a single iTunes Account. I'm wondering if this works similarly with iBooks

 

[Tyler23]

Thanks for the peculiar reply. I'm not speaking of sharing it the world, but with my wife on her iPad with her own account. I believe there is a way and when I find a good link, I'll post it

Here is one such link but I need more clarification- http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/sharing-ibooks-between-ios-devices/

We currently have apps on both our devices that belong to a single iTunes Account. I'm wondering if this works similarly with oBooks.

Is it the same iTunes account, or separate? What you could do, is log into the account with which the books were purchased on her iPad, download them, then log out, and resign in with her account.

 

[Huntn]

Is it the same iTunes account, or separate? What you could do, is log into the account with which the books were purchased on her iPad, download them, then log out, and resign in with her account.

Separate accounts. I logged into her iPad with my account. It asked to sync with my library which I did. I purchased a book, "A Dance of Dragons" (which btw was only $4.99 as compared to nook, which was $8.99). A warning popped up that I would only be able to redownload items from my account for the next 90 days, so I cancelled what I thought was the purchase and the down load or maybe just the download? I logged out and back In with my wife's account and the book is there but only this book. I thought she had other purchases but I don't see them now. And it says it is synched to her account. I'll have to ask her because in the past she has done most reading on her Nook, so maybe this is the first iBook purchase on her iPad.. Bottom line, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but the book is there to be read.

One other distinction, with the 90 day restriction, I wonder if there is any difference when purchasing a new book that both of you plan on reading (using this method) versus downloading a previously purchased book from the other person's library?

 

[Huntn]

Check this out from 2012: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4540889?start=0&tstart=0

I read different approaches on this site, and tried a couple of them, to no avail.

Here's what finally worked for me:

I logged into my iTunes account (which backs up my iPad2). I jumped out to Finder, created a New Folder called Books. Then I went back to the ITunes window, clicked on iBooks, and then one by one dragged the books my wife wanted into the folder.

Next, I inserted a thumbdrive, and dragged the Books folder from my desktop to the thumbdrive.

Finally, my wife logged into her account and opened ITunes, plugged in her iPad mini, went to File > Add to Library, and highlight the thumbdrive, and then the folder Books, and clicked on it.

All of my iBooks then transferred to the iPad mini's collection. A few steps, but pretty fast and easy.

 

[madsci954]

This is changing in iOS 8 with Family Share. You can share the same content from different accounts as long as they have the same credit card assigned to both accounts.

 

[Huntn]

This is changing in iOS 8 with Family Share. You can share the same content from different accounts as long as they have the same credit card assigned to both accounts.

Thanks for the info!

Update on my reply #5, my wife had no other purchases on her iBook account, so for now, for a new purchase, what I describe appears to have worked with the book on both iPads, although on my iPad it shows as in the cloud for download. (I have auto updates turned off.)