You Can So Copy and Paste from an eBook!
Early reports about iBooks complained, and rightly so, about the lack of Copy-command ability in iBooks. Geez, who would want to copy so much of a book that it would be violating the copyright? Would someone really paste swathes of text someplace so he could transfer it to another platform or, you know, paste it into the Notes app because he’d rather read it from there? And so, no legitimate copying for quotes? Ah, but there is a way…
[April 8 update: This procedure works for DRM ("Digital Rights Management"- copy protection) books. Non-DRM ebooks have a Copy command that pops up as soon as you select text, so you don't need this trick on those volumes.]
Having done most of my quota of deadline-oriented writing for the day (I’ll do the rest after dinner!), I turned my thoughts, and one good hand, to the iPad to see what nifty things might occur to me.
I was searching for something inside a book – just for the sake of checking out the function – and needed to edit the search phrase, so I selected part of it… and, omg, realized that I could copy the selection!
So, that’s it: in the ebook, select the text you want to copy (double-click and drag on it), click Search from the pop-up menu, and when the search area is open, select the text in the search field and click Copy in the pop-up. You can paste it into whatever app you have that accepts text (I stuck it in the Notes application as a test.)
[I wrote this a little earlier today, but didn’t log on to my blog to paste it in. Just as I prepared to do so, I got an email from my husband about this entry today on Mac Fixit covering the same topic. Great Mac minds tip alike. And apparently at pretty much the same time.]
Only works in non-DRM books, as far as I’ve tested. Download a sample from iBooks; try copying. Now install a Gutenberg EPUB file (either free from iBookstore or via iTunes). Copy!
Glenn and I cleared up our “discrpency” via Twitter… he was referring to the built-in Copy function available for non-DRM ebooks, while I was showing a workaround for the DRM’d books… which, of course, told me I should have been more explicit in the blog entry, so I’ve edited it.
Well good to know that people are copying books and finding ways around the copywrite system on the Ebook site. I will make sure to publish my book the old fashioned way so that people won’t be so apt to copy it and give it away for free after all the hard work and effort I put into it.
Please note the title of this is “copy and paste FROM an ebook” not “copy and paste an ebook.” This has nothing to do with circumventing copyright issues. It’s for when you want to copy a phrase in case, for instance, you’re reviewing the book…”This author’s command of language, and his penchant for alliteration, as demonstrated in this paragraph [copy/pasted paragraph inserted here] make you wish the novel were 100 pages longer.” Or, if you’re writing a paper on some topic and wish to back up your statement with quotes from various sources, copying from the source makes much more sense than having to what… write it on a piece of paper while you view it in iBooks, then type it into your word processor? These are perfectly valid reasons for copying reasonable swaths of text from copyrighted material.
In fact, I don’t think you can copy a whole book, copyrighted or not, from iBooks, although I haven’t checked under the upgraded iOS4. The largest clump you can select for copying, even in a non-copyrighted book, is a single page, since you can’t drag to the next page once you’ve started a selection.
I’ve made my living as an author for almost 30 years now; I’m hardly a candidate for showing people how to circumvent copyrights (and, please note, it’s “copyright” not “copywrite”)/
Hi, Sharon
I could import ePub books on the ibooks shelf due to your tip. Is there any way to retain the original colored book cover intead of the generic non-colored one?
Chin
Well, I put off answering this because I’ve been experimenting with that very thing – trying to keep a book cover as the cover of the book instead of getting the generic one, with the “cover” pushed to being a graphic on the first page instead. I can create covers that appear as covers in other epub readers, like Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions, but they lose them in iBooks. It’s still at the top of one of my many lists!