Reading and Buying Books with iBooks

Abstract

In addition to doing so many other things, the iPod touch is also a breakthrough e-book and PDF reader. iBooks, the all-in-one application that lets you buy books and read, search, and mark them up, is an elegant yet powerful tool for discovering new titles and taking your entire book library with you. Here are a few key tips for you to carry away with you: You aren’t limited to buying books from the iBookstore. Many web sites sell books in the ePub format that you can download and sync to the iPod touch. A great place to start is www.gutenberg.org. Also, Googling free e-books will return a host of results of sites that let you download e-books for free. iBooks has a powerful dictionary-lookup feature that gives you the definition of a word right on the screen. iBooks bookshelf has many views and a search function to help you navigate your books library. No audiobook? No problem. You can use the iPod touch’s built-in VoiceOver technology to read any book out loud to you. Choose different colors for your notes and highlighting. Maybe use blue for passages you like and green for something you want to reference later. See all your bookmarks, notes, and highlights in one easy place (the Bookmarks page, of course!), and tap any one to instantly jump to it in the book. iBooks isn’t limited to reading e-books. It’s also a PDF reader. Now you can organize, view, and easily navigate all your PDFs—even while on the go!