Chapter 9. Read iBooks and ePeriodicals

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You’ll learn to:

  • Buy books, magazines, and newspapers for your iPad

  • Find free books

  • Sync books across your devices

  • Copy audiobooks and PDF files to your tablet

  • Customize your books’ looks

BOOKS IN EASY-TO-USE, PAGE-TURNING form have been around since the second century or so. But now ebooks are wooing many people away from the world of ink, paper, and tiny clip-on book lights. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, the Barnes & Noble Nook, Google’s Nexus 7, and the Sony Reader are among the big names in the ebook/book-friendly tablet playground, but the iPad is right in there kicking it up as well.

With its high-resolution color touchscreen, the iPad takes the ebook experience to a new level. True, the Kindle Fire and Nook have color screens and the Fire is cheaper, but the iPad’s big bright display makes books, newspapers, and magazines look amazing.

The books themselves—especially Apple’s gorgeous iBooks textbooks—have evolved into interactive creations. Along with access to the iPad’s built-in dictionary, many iBook titles have searchable text, hyperlinked footnotes, and embedded margin notes and bookmarks that make the whole reading process more engaging and efficient. The latest version of iBooks (released in October 2012) even downloads updates to books—like corrected editions—automatically. So flip the page of this book to see how much fun you can have reading ...

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