After months of tweaking and testing, we're extremely pleased to pull back the curtains on the new Take Control account management system. Everyone who has ever ordered a book from us since our inception in 2003 now has an account. By logging in to your account, you'll be able to:

• See a list of - and re-download - all the ebooks that you've purchased, as well as any free updates. No more worrying about losing them!

• From an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, you can log in to the mobile version of your account, which has different options. Use it to read your ebook PDFs either in Safari or in the GoodReader app ($0.99). Once you've opened an ebook in Safari, if you are running iOS 4, you can open it in iBooks, too.

• Quickly determine if there are upgrade discounts for newer editions of ebooks you currently own. (But stay tuned, because we'll be starting a sale shortly and sales are a great way to pick up a bunch of updates efficiently.)

• For recent books, download EPUB and Mobipocket versions for use with ebook readers. We recommend PDF for the iPad, EPUB for the iPhone, and Mobipocket for the Kindle.

• Link multiple email addresses to your Take Control account, so orders from all of them appear in your library. If you received several copies of our welcome message at different addresses, that's an indication that you have multiple accounts that are ripe for merging in this fashion.

• Set the email address that receives Take Control-related email from us. For example, you'll receive our upcoming sale announcement at that address, if your Contact Me setting is set to Yes.

• Throughout the site, see which ebooks you own and which you're eligible to buy at a discount.

Finally, the new system enables us to send email in a more-targeted fashion (by book, edition, and date), which should significantly reduce duplicate or unnecessary messages.

To get started, you need to set up a password. (Passwords are encrypted in our system, so we can't just send one to you.)

Here's how to get your password and log in:

1. Go to the Forgot Password page.

2. Enter your email address, and click the Send Password Reset Instructions button. You'll receive an email message asking you to click a Web URL. If the message doesn't arrive, check your spam filters!

3. In the email message, click the URL. You'll get a second email message, this one containing your password.

4. Copy the password from the second email message.

5. Back on the Take Control site, click the Log In link in the top orange navigation bar on any page and, in the drop-down form, enter your email address and paste the password. (You can set a more memorable password later, so don't bother saving this one in your keychain or browser.) Your Take Control Account page appears, showing your purchased books in the Library tab.

Now, you can start taking advantage of your account! If you like to follow directions, click the Help tab, scroll down a short way, and work your way through the directions titled "What to Do after Your First Login." After that, keep reading in "How to Use Your Account."

Otherwise, here's an overview of what you can do:

• Change your password and real name (which was picked up from your order information). Click the Profile tab, and enter a new name and/or password, and paste your temporary password into the Current Password field before clicking the Update Profile button. (Changing your password requires logging in again.)

• If you want to be alerted to ebook updates, new books, and our sales, make sure you'll receive email from us. On your Profile tab, ensure that the Contact Me pop-up menu is set to Yes. (You'll need to enter your password and click Update Profile after changing it.)

• Associate additional email addresses with your account. If you have ordered books using different email addresses, you have multiple accounts in our system. To merge all your ebooks into one account, you need to link orders made using different email addresses together. In the "Email Addresses Used for Orders" section, at the bottom of the Profile tab, enter an address you used - or might use in the future - and click Add Email. You'll receive an email confirmation of this with a code to paste into the Authorization Code field that appears. You can repeat this process for additional email addresses. If you cannot receive email at an old address, contact us with your full name and the old address and we'll add it for you.

• Once you've associated multiple addresses with your account, you can select which one you want to receive Take Control-related mail using the Email pop-up menu at the top of the Profile tab. (You'll need to enter your password and click Update Profile after changing it.)

• Back in the Library tab, see what ebooks you own. If a bunch of ebooks appear to be missing, you probably bought them with a different email address (see above for how to link additional addresses with your account). Note that if you are logged in and you click the Check for Updates button on the cover of any Take Control ebook PDF, the system adds that ebook to your account. Cool, eh?

• If you've logged in from an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, the mobile version of the Library tab has different options. You can read your ebooks in Safari or download them directly into GoodReader. (We recommend GoodReader for reading PDFs on an iOS device. It's far more capable than iBooks or Safari.)

• If you've logged in from a laptop or desktop computer, read the bullet list at the top of the Library tab, which explains the links in the Free Download, Paid Upgrade, Special Offers, and Alternative Formats columns. Notice that you can scan the list to figure out which ebooks have free updates (and download those updates) and to determine if any have new editions available for purchasing. (If you have many titles in your library, note that adding library management features is on our to-do list!)

• If you shop for more ebooks (click the Catalog or Home links on the navigation bar, or use the pop-up menu on the navigation bar), notice that if you already own an ebook, you are told that you do. Also, you may see upgrade offers or special pricing based on ebooks that you already own. (As always, note that our cart can handle only one bundle/discount/coupon per order.)

• If you get stuck, click the Help tab (adjacent to your Profile tab) and read the directions there, especially in the third topic down - "What to Do after Your First Login" and the next topic after that - "How to Use Your Account." Of course, if the Help isn't helping, send us email and we'll see what we can do.

A big thank you to everyone who has helped us get this far with the account management system! Whether you requested a feature that we've now implemented, given us feedback on the beta version of your account, or simply bought an ebook (all ebook sales help to fund development), you've contributed to improving the back-end systems that power the Take Control series.

—Posted by Adam C. Engst on July 27, 2010