Take Control of Bookle
The definitive documentation for the Bookle EPUB reader.
The EPUB format has become a mainstay for electronic books, but while the iBooks app does a good job in iOS, Apple hasn't ported it to Mac OS X. Here at TidBITS Publishing, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and, with the programming work done by our friend Peter Lewis of Stairways Software, we've created Bookle, a straightforward, elegant EPUB reader for Mac OS X that maintains a library of your EPUBs.
In the free Take Control of Bookle, you'll learn how to add DRM-free EPUB files to Bookle's internal library, remove unwanted EPUBs, and quickly switch among your books using the Library list in Bookle's sidebar. Then you'll learn how to scroll around within an EPUB using the mouse, trackpad, and keyboard. You can change the font, size, and background color for most EPUBs, and you can even have Bookle read out loud to you. A final chapter helps you find thousands of EPUB-formatted books to read—many of them free—and learn which tools you can use to create your own EPUBs.
- More Info
- Contents & Intro
- FAQ
- Blog
Bookle costs only $9.99 from the Mac App Store, and this book—which is also included in Bookle's EPUB library—is free, so you can get a sense of what Bookle can do before buying the software. Bookle is so easy to use that this ebook can document everything about the program in a mere 32 pages, nearly a third of which are front and back matter. Do note that Bookle cannot open DRM-shackled EPUBs; there's more discussion in the book of this anti-competitive behavior.
About Bookle 1.0: Our goal with Bookle 1.0 was to make it available quickly so people could start reading EPUBs on their Macs. Because of that, we postponed some advanced features—such as full library management—until we have a better sense of how people are using the program. And, to be honest, we didn't want to do too much right away in case Apple decides to add EPUB support to Preview or Safari. Check the Bookle UserVoice forum to see and vote for future features.
Book Info
- 32 pages
- Version 1.0
- Published Feb 05, 2012
- ~1 MB download
- ISBN: 9781615424009
- Read now with Table of Contents, Intro, Quick Start, and section starts.
iPad & Kindle
An EPUB is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info... A Mobipocket file is not currently available for this title.
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About the Author
Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS and of the Take Control ebook series. He has written numerous technical books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles - thanks to Contributing Editor positions at MacUser, MacWEEK, and now Macworld. He has been turned into an action figure.
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Book Reviews
Author Interviews
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Table of Contents
- Read Me First
- Introduction
- Manage EPUBs in Bookle
- Read EPUBs in Bookle
- Understand EPUB
- About This Book
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Read Me First
This book teaches you everything you need to know to read DRM-free EPUBs in Bookle, the EPUB-reading app created as a joint project of TidBITS Publishing Inc. and Stairways Software. Why? Because the Mac world needs a good EPUB reader. It was written by Adam C. Engst and edited by Tonya Engst.
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Introduction
Welcome to Bookle! This book, and the program that it documents, is a departure for us. Here at TidBITS Publishing, we’re used to helping people learn how to use programs designed and written by others. But Bookle is different. It’s the result of a four-hour drive that I took to a Mac user group meeting, which gave me ample time to ponder the state of the ebook world. By the time I finished the trip, I had decided that the Mac needed a native program devoted to ebook reading, and particularly one designed with a Mac user’s sensibility and that could display books in the EPUB format. Not being a programmer, though, I started thinking about who I could convince to write Bookle from my design.
Almost immediately, my friend Peter Lewis of Stairways Software came to mind, since he’s well known for writing programs like FTPd, Anarchie (later called Interarchy), and, most recently, Keyboard Maestro. Although Peter is from Australia, we’ve known each other since the early days of the Internet, when I accidentally invited him to visit me in Seattle for a week after nothing more than some email exchanges. (Moral of the story: It turns out that Australians will travel nearly anywhere when they’re on the right continent.)
Peter is a top-notch programmer, and with only a brief delay caused by throwing out his back in what I hope was not a Mac-related accident, he figured out the EPUB spec and built the Bookle app in record time. With Bookle and our test EPUB documents in Dropbox, we went back and forth for a while on testing and tweaking, and before long, Bookle 1.0 was ready.
It’s worth taking a moment to talk about what we mean by that 1.0 version number. We have lots of ideas for features we’d like to add to Bookle, ranging from support for additional formats to a full ebook library management interface, but let’s be realistic here—Apple is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Part of the reason I came up with the idea for Bookle is that Apple has failed to build EPUB reading support into Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in any way. Not in Preview, not in Safari, not in iTunes, not anywhere.
So our goal with Bookle 1.0 is to get a program out quickly that can help you read your ebooks in the here and now.
As long as Bookle remains popular and Apple doesn’t crush us underfoot with built-in EPUB support, we’ll keep improving the program with features we have planned and from feedback we get from users. We’ve started a UserVoice site at http://bookle.uservoice.com/, where you can vote for your favorite ideas and add new ones.
The one feature I don’t know if we’ll be able to add, though, is support for ebooks that are encrypted with digital rights management code (DRM), including many books from the iBookstore and other ebook resellers. DRM is generally thought of as a way of preventing digital content from being copied, but the side effect that big companies like Apple and Amazon really appreciate is that it prevents anyone from offering competing, interoperable ebook reader products.
Neither Apple nor Amazon will license their DRM systems, and while Adobe will license Adobe Digital Editions, its six-figure cost that effectively eliminates all but the largest of companies from the game. So, our apologies in advance, but I don’t think there’s anything we’ll be able to do with DRM-shackled ebooks.
But enough naysaying—let’s take a look at Bookle and EPUB!
Does Bookle do...?
Bookle is intentionally simple right now, so if a feature isn't documented in this book, it doesn't yet exist. Note that "yet," though. You can see and vote on current feature ideas in our Bookle UserVoice forum, plus suggest new ones.
Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle?
There are lots of great ways to read our ebooks on these devices. For more details, please read our latest Device Advice.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us if you have a question about this title!
Send Us Your Comments!
How could we not publish such kind words? If you'd like to send us your comments (good or bad, though we hope they're all good), just click the Feedback link on the cover of your copy of the ebook. Be sure to let us know if we can publish your comment. Thanks!
Update Plans
Although we have no schedule at the moment, we'll be updating this book to keep pace with significant changes in Bookle.
—Adam Engst
February 13, 2012 --
You've seen the announcements, maybe even downloaded the book and bought the software: now hear the swash-bookle-ing duo of Peter N. Lewis and Adam C. Engst share with Chuck Joiner of MacVoices the inside story of how the app came to be and describe the hair-raising adventures our heroes had along the way.
—Michael E. Cohen
February 9, 2012 --
Users of Bookle may see some EPUBs that display gibberish instead of text when those books are loaded into Bookle. This indicates that the book has been protected with some form of DRM (digital rights management) protection. For example, most non-free books in Apple's iBookstore are protected with Apple's FairPlay DRM system; similarly, EPUBs available from the OverDrive collections now offered by many public libraries are protected by Adobe's DRM system. Unfortunately, Bookle cannot display protected books and there is no easy way for Bookle to detect whether or not DRM protection has been applied to an EPUB, although the program's developers are working to add that feature. In the meantime, if you see gibberish instead of text in an EPUB in Bookle, chances are good that you are trying to read a protected book.
—Michael E. Cohen
February 9, 2012 --
Bookle 1.0.3 is now available as a free update in the Mac App Store to all purchasers of the software. The update fixes an issue where an EPUB's table of contents was not displayed on some Macs running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, improves the finding of display names for some older EPUB books, and fixes an issue where some EPUBs could have "-Temporary" appended to their display names in the Bookle library list.
—Michael E. Cohen
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