iPad For Seniors For Dummies, 8th Edition (2016)

Part III. Having Fun and Consuming Media

webextra Visit www.dummies.com/extras/ipadforseniors for information about Apple Music.

Chapter 10. Using Your iPad as an E-Reader

Get ready to …

· Discover How the iPad Differs from Other E-Readers

· Find Books with iBooks

· Explore Other E-Book Sources

· Buy Books at the iBooks Store

· Navigate a Book

· Adjust Brightness

· Change the Font Size and Type

· Search in Your Book

· Use Bookmarks and Highlights

· Check Words in the Dictionary

· Organize Your Library

· Delete Books in Collections

Atraditional e-reader is a device that’s used primarily to read the electronic versions of books, magazines, and newspapers. Apple has touted the iPad as a great e-reader, and although it isn’t a traditional e-reader device like the Kindle Paperwhite, you don’t want to miss this cool functionality.

Apple’s free, preinstalled app that turns your iPad into an e-reader is iBooks, which enables you to buy and download books from Apple’s iBooks Store. You can also use one of several other free e-reader apps — for example, Kindle, or Bluefire Reader. Then, you can download books to your iPad from a variety of online sources, such as Amazon and Google, so you can read to your heart’s content.

Another preinstalled reading app covered later in this chapter is News. It has a similar look and feel to iBooks, but its focus is on subscribing to and reading magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals.

In this chapter, you discover the options available for reading material and how to buy books and subscribe to publications. You also learn how to navigate an e-book, interactive book, or periodical; adjust brightness and type; search books; and organize your iBooks and News libraries.

Discover How the iPad Differs from Other E-Readers

An e-reader is any electronic device that enables you to download and read books, magazines, PDF files, or newspapers. These devices typically are portable and dedicated only to reading the electronic version of published materials.

The iPad is a bit different: It isn’t only for reading books, and it allows you to use iBooks or download other e-reader apps such as Kindle (these e-reader apps are typically free). Also, the iPad doesn’t offer a paperlike reading experience; you read from a computer screen (though you can adjust the brightness and background color of the screen).

When you buy a book or magazine online (or get one of many free publications), it downloads to your iPad in a few seconds over a Wi-Fi or 3G/4G connection. The iPad offers several navigation tools that let you move around an electronic book, which you explore in this chapter.

tip iBooks contains tools for reading and interacting with book content. You can even create and publish your own interactive books by using a free app called iBooks Author on a Macintosh.

Find Books with iBooks

1. To shop with iBooks, tap the iBooks app on the Home screen to open it.

2. In the iBooks library that opens (see Figure 10-1), you see a bookshelf; yours probably has only one free book already downloaded to it. (If you don’t see the bookshelf, tap the Library button in the top-left corner to go there.)

3. Tap the Featured tab on the bottom of the screen. In the iBooks Store, shown in Figure 10-2, you see several rows of books in categories such as Hot This Week and Popular on iBooks. Try any of the following methods to find a book:

· Tap Featured at the bottom of the screen and then tap Search at the top right of the screen. Use the onscreen keyboard to type a search word or phrase.

· Tap the Categories button at the top of the screen and scroll down to browse links to popular categories of books, as shown in Figure 10-3.

· Tap Purchased at the bottom of the screen to see any books you’ve bought on devices signed in with the same Apple ID. You can tap the All tab to show content from all devices or tap the Not on This iPad tab to see only content purchased on your other devices.

· Tap the appropriate button at the bottom of the screen to view particular categories: NYTimes to display The New York Times best-seller list, Top Charts for books listed on top charts, and Top Authors.

· Tap a suggested selection or featured book to open more information about it.

Figure 10-1

Figure 10-2

Figure 10-3

tip Download free samples before you buy. You get to read several pages of the book to see whether it appeals to you, and it doesn’t cost you a dime! Look for the Sample button when you view details about a book. If you like the book, you can buy it from within the iBooks app by tapping the sample and then tapping Buy.

Explore Other E-Book Sources

The iPad is capable of using other e-reader apps to read book content from other bookstores. To do so, first download another e-reader application, such as the Kindle from Amazon, from the App Store. (See Chapter 9 for details on how to download apps.) You can also download a non-vendor-specific app, such as Bluefire Reader, that handles ePub and PDF format, as well as the format that most public libraries use. Then use the app’s features to search for, purchase, and download content.

The Kindle e-reader application is shown in Figure 10-4. After downloading the free app from the App Store, you just open the app and enter the email address and password associated with your Amazon account. Any content you’ve already bought from Amazon is archived online (display All Books in your library to see these titles) and can be downloaded to your iPad for you to read any time you like. Use features to enhance your reading experience, such as changing the background to a sepia tone or changing font. Tap the Device tab to see titles stored on the iPad. To delete a book from this reader, press the title with your finger; the Remove from Device button appears.

Figure 10-4

tip Electronic books are everywhere! You can also get content from a variety of other sources: Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), Google, publishers such as Baen (www.baen.com), and so on. Download the content on your computer, add it to Books in iTunes, and sync with your iPad or you can register your iPad as a device with services such as Amazon and choose to download a book to that device when you buy it. Many public libraries’ systems allow you to “borrow” e-book versions of books and sync them to your iPad. Certain formats may need to be associated with the apps for those formats, such as the Mobi and AZW formats for the Kindle. You can also make settings to iCloud so that books are pushed across your Apple devices, or you can place them in an online storage service such as Dropbox and access them from there.

Buy Books at the iBooks Store

1. If you’ve set up an account in the iTunes Store, you can use the iBooks app to buy books at the iBooks Store. (See Chapter 3 for more about iTunes.) Open iBooks and, if your bookshelf is displayed, tap Featured at the bottom of the screen and begin exploring. When you find a book you want to buy in the iBooks Store, tap it and then tap the price button (see Figure 10-5). The button changes to the Buy Book button (see Figure 10-6). (If the book is free, these buttons are labeled Get and Get Book, respectively.)

2. Tap the Buy Book or Get Book button. If you haven’t already signed in, the iTunes Password dialog appears.

tip If you have signed in, your purchase is accepted immediately. No returns are allowed, so tap carefully!

3. Enter your password, and tap OK. The book appears on your bookshelf, and the cost is charged to whichever credit card you specified when you opened your iTunes account.

Figure 10-5

Figure 10-6

tip You can also sync books you’ve downloaded to your computer to your iPad from any Apple device through iCloud. Content can also be synced by connecting the USB connector to your computer and using iTunes, or by setting up iCloud and choosing to automatically download books by tapping Settings ⇒ App & iTunes Store. See Chapter 3 for more about syncing content.

Navigate a Book

1. Tap iBooks, and if your library (the bookshelf) isn’t already displayed, tap the Library button.

2. Tap a book to open it. If it’s stored online, it may take a few moments to download. The book opens, as shown in Figure 10-7. (If you hold your iPad in portrait orientation, it shows one page; in landscape orientation, it shows two.)

3. Take any of these actions to navigate the book:

· To go to the book’s table of contents: Tap the screen to display various tools and then tap the Table of Contents button at the top of the page (it looks like a little bulleted list) and then tap the name of a chapter to go to it (see Figure 10-8).

· To move to another page in the book: Tap and drag the slider at the side of the page up or down.

· To turn to the next page: Place your finger anywhere on the right edge of a page and tap or flick to the left.

· To turn to the preceding page: Place your finger anywhere on the left edge of a page and tap or flick.

Figure 10-7

Figure 10-8

tip To return to the Library to view another book at any time, tap the Library button. If the button isn’t visible, tap anywhere on the page, and the tools appear.

Adjust Brightness

1. iBooks offers an adjustable brightness setting that you can use to make your book pages more comfortable to read. With a book open, tap the Font button, shown in Figure 10-9.

2. In the Font dialog that appears at the top (refer to Figure 10-9), tap and drag the Brightness slider to the right to make the screen brighter, or tap and drag the slider to the left to dim the screen.

3. Tap anywhere on the book page to close the dialog.

Figure 10-9

tip Try tapping a Themes circle in the Font dialog to choose a different background color, which is covered in the next task.

tip Bright-white screens are commonly thought to be hard on the eyes, so setting the brightness halfway relative to its default setting or less is probably a good idea (and saves battery life). Sepia mutes the background to a soft beige that may work better for some people.

Change the Font Size and Type

1. If the type on your screen is a bit small for you to make out, you can change to a larger font size or choose a different font for readability. With a book open, tap the Font button (it sports a small letter A and a large A, as shown in Figure 10-10).

2. In the Font dialog that appears (refer to Figure 10-10), tap the button with a small A on the left to use smaller text, or tap the button with the large A on the right to use larger text.

3. Tap Fonts. The list of fonts shown in Figure 10-11 appears.

4. Tap a font name to select it. The font changes on the book page.

5. If you want to add a sepia tint to the pages or to reverse black and white, which can be easier on the eyes, in the Font dialog, tap White, Sepia, or Gray or Black to choose the theme you want to display. Black causes the iPad to detect a dark environment and automatically display the page in Night mode, even if another theme is set.

6. Tap outside the Font dialog to return to your book.

Figure 10-10

Figure 10-11

tip Some fonts appear a bit larger on your screen than others because of their design. If you want the largest font, use Iowan.

tip If you’re reading a PDF file, you’re reading a picture of a document rather than an electronic book, so be aware that you can’t modify the page’s appearance using the Font dialog.

Search in Your Book

1. You may want to find a certain sentence or reference in your book. To do so, with a book displayed, tap the Search button, shown in Figure 10-12. The onscreen keyboard appears.

2. Type a search term (or tap the Dictation key on the onscreen keyboard and speak the term) and then tap the Search key on the keyboard. iBooks searches for any matching entries.

3. Use your finger to scroll down the entries (see Figure 10-13).

4. You can tap either the Search Web or Search Wikipedia button at the bottom of the Search dialog if you want to search for information about the search term online.

Figure 10-12

Figure 10-13

tip You can also search for other instances of a particular word by pressing your finger on the word and tapping Search on the toolbar that appears. If what you’re looking for is a definition of the word, consider tapping Define rather than Search on this toolbar.

Use Bookmarks and Highlights

1. Bookmarks and highlights in your e-books are like favorite sites you save in your web browser: They enable you to revisit a favorite passage or refresh your memory about a character or plot point. To bookmark a page, display the page and tap the Bookmark button in the top-right corner (see Figure 10-14). A red ribbon appears in the top-right corner of the page.

2. To highlight a word or phrase, press a word until the toolbar shown in Figure 10-15 appears.

3. Tap the Highlight button and then tap the button with 3 colored circles. A colored highlight is placed on the word and the color palette shown in Figure 10-16 appears.

4. Tap one of these options:

· The Colors buttons: Tap any colored circle to change the highlight color.

· The Remove Highlight button: Tapping the white circle with an A in it removes the current highlight color, allowing you to apply a different color.

· The Trash button: Removes the highlight and hides the Highlight menu.

· The Note button: Tap the Note button to add a note to the item.

5. You can also tap the arrow button at the right end of the toolbar to return to the Copy, Define, Highlight, and Note tools. Tap outside the highlighted text to close the toolbar.

6. To go to a list of bookmarks and notes, tap the Table of Contents button on a book page.

7. In the table of contents, tap the Bookmarks or Notes tab. As shown in Figure 10-17, all bookmarks or notes are displayed on their respective tabs.

8. Tap a bookmark or note in one of these lists to go to that location in the book.

Figure 10-14

Figure 10-15

Figure 10-16

Figure 10-17

tip The iPad automatically bookmarks the place where you left off reading in a book so you don’t have to do it manually. Because that information is stored in the iTunes Store, you can even pick up where you left off on your iPhone, Mac, iPod touch, or another iPad.

Check Words in the Dictionary

1. As you read a book, you may come across unfamiliar words. Don’t skip them; take the opportunity to learn new words! With a book open, press a word and hold it until the toolbar shown in Figure 10-18 appears.

2. Tap the Define button. A definition pop-up menu appears, as shown in Figure 10-19.

3. Tap the definition, and scroll down, if necessary, to view more.

4. When you finish reviewing the definition, tap anywhere on the page, and the definition disappears.

Figure 10-18

Figure 10-19

tip If a definition doesn’t appear, you can tap the Manage button to choose the dictionary from which your definitions will come.

Organize Your Library

1. iBooks lets you create collections of books to help you organize them by your own logic, such as Tear Jerkers, Work-Related, and Great Recipes. You can place a book in only one collection, however. To create a collection from the Library bookshelf, tap Select.

2. On the screen that appears, tap a book and then tap Move. In the Collections dialog shown in Figure 10-20, tap New Collection. On the blank line that appears, type a name.

3. Tap Done, which closes the dialog and returns you to your library. To add a book to a collection from the library, tap Select.

4. Tap a book and then tap the Move button that appears in the top of the screen (see Figure 10-21). In the dialog that appears, tap the collection to which you’d like to move the book and the book appears on the bookshelf in that collection. To change which collection you’re viewing, tap the button with the current collection’s name (or tap All Books if you’re not displaying a category) to display other collections, and tap the one you want.

5. To delete a book from a collection, tap the button in the top middle of the Library to display a list of collections. Tap the collection and it displays; tap Select, tap the book, and then tap Delete.

Figure 10-20

Figure 10-21

tip Tap the My Books tab at the bottom to remove categories and list the most recently downloaded book first.

Delete Books in Collections

1. To delete a book, tap the List view button in the top-left corner. Swipe to the left on a title in the list, and then tap Delete.

2. To delete a collection, tap Select and then Select All and then tap Move. Swipe to the left on any collection, and then tap Delete to get rid of it (see Figure 10-22). A message appears, asking you to tap Remove (to remove the contents of the collection from your iPad) or Don’t Remove.

Figure 10-22

tip Note that if you choose Remove, all titles within a deleted collection are returned to their original collections in your library, the default one being Books.