How to update ebooks in itunes?

I haven't found a smooth way to do this. I usually will remove, sync, re-add, sync the books. This is a pain to do and it happens a lot when you buy rough-cuts. I've been doing some searching and I found a couple of example where people have written AppleScripts to do this.

In the interest of solving my own problem I'm going to look at writing an script that can be run within a folder. If there are any ePubs in the folder it will automate the update process. At least that is what I hope it will do. If I get this working and stable then I will publish a post for it.

Well I found a great website that many people, except for me, seem to know about: http://dougscripts.com

Doug, out of his own need, has worked hard on creating useful AppleScripts for SoundJam (older audio software) and now iTunes. He wrote a script that you can attach to a folder and when you drop an ePub file in the folder it automatically adds/updates the file in the iTunes library.

I've got some testing to do. I know that it works great to add ePubs. What I need to see is if it will update (copy over) an existing ePub and then if the iPad/iPhone will recognize it during the next sync. I also want to make it so it supports PDFs as well. You can see his version of the code here:

http://dougscripts.c...or-ibooks-sync/

I will get something up by the end of the week.

Thanks for working on this. I do not know anything about apple script, so am eagerly awaiting your results. I've tried what I can to figure this out, but unless I'm overlooking the obvious, I can not even find an easy way to see which version of the ePub file I have and am using. Sorry if this has an obvious answer, but please do tell. Thanks.

No worries. I like working on these fun little things. Plus as I said earlier, I'm having the same troubles as you are so I'm solving my own problem as well. I'm going to start another thread with the code and instructions just to keep it clean.

I tried the script you provided and following are my results. Although I found your instructions very complete, succinct and easy to follow, the solution did not work for me. I have gone ahead and deleted the old books and replaced with the new versions, but wanted to provide you with my experiences in the hope that it will help you to develop a solution that many would find useful.

After setting things up as per your directions and downloading a new epub version into my downloads folder, I moved the file into the desktop folder and it was immediately gobbled up! Apparently, the transfer process into iTunes was initiated successfully. It disappeared from the desktop folder almost immediately. It is very difficult to determine which version of the epub file remains in iTunes as there is no definite version number that I can locate. Further, I can not open the book on my iMac in iTunes and once in the iBook app, you can tell even less about which version as there is not even a 'get info' option. However, using the 'get info' option on the iMac, within iTunes, I confirmed that the file size and date modified had not changed. Then I deleted the book from iTunes and once again downloaded the epub file from O'Reilly's into my download folder, dragged it into the new desktop folder and it magically appeared in iTunes. This time the file size and date modified were indeed different. I think this confirms that the file had not updated before. Also, if it had updated before, the old file would usually appear in the trash can and it did not.

Another thing I noticed, was that if I merely double clicked the file from within my download folder, a screen popped up asking whether I wanted to open this file that was downloaded from the internet and that it would be opened with iTunes. Choosing to proceed also placed the file in the book section of iTunes and did so without using the folder I had created on the desktop. I'm running the latest updates of everything, even the ones released today.

I noted that in my home folder under iTunes music there is a folder called "Automatically Add to iTunes" and I mention that as perhaps it is responsible for some of the above behavior. I believe that I must have installed that Apple script when I downloaded the very first O'Reilly books, but do not recall. However, I do not believe that to be an original iTunes folder. Right?

I hope this helps and again, wish to thank you for your time.

And one more thing that is interesting. Somehow I have two versions of the epub book iPad: The Missing Manual. One shows a file size of 9.2 MB and date modified of 10/16/10. The other is 20.7 MB and 3/7/11. When I sync with my iPad only one of the two shows up in the iBook app. As stated in the previous post, I can not tell which one it is. I wonder if this means that iTunes is 'smart' enough to sync the more recent of the two files. Incidentally, I had two versions of the iPad ebook before we started all of this updating stuff. Significant???

Let's bring this conversation over to the new topic since it has to do with the script.
CR