Viewing your Library

In this lesson for the Books app on the iPhone, I take a look at the Library, which is where your books are reading, want to read, and have read are kept.

Where the Books are Stored
The books in your Library can be stored on your iPhone or in the Cloud. When you are looking at a book, and it has a cloud below the cover, this means the book is not on your iPhone and is in the Cloud. Tap on the book to download it to your iPhone.

Viewing your Books by Cover or by List
You can view your books in your Library by cover or in a list. To toggle between these views, tap on the icon with the three horizontal lines to the top right of your first books.

Sorting how your Books are Shown
To sort how your books are shown in your Library, tap on Sort on the left of your first books. When you tap on this, you can choose to sort by recent, title, author, or manually.

Removing a Book from your Library
To remove a book, you tap on the three dots or ellipsis. When you do this, you’ll have a number of options with one of them being Remove. When you tap on Remove, you’ll have a few options. These options will change depending on where the book came from. The options include removing the book from your Reading Now section, removing the book from your iPhone while keeping it in your library, hiding the book, which will hide it from your library, or deleting the book. If you hide the book and you want to show it again, you can go to your account to show any hidden books. You can also go to Edit in the upper right corner to remove books.

Adding a Book to a Collection
When you tap on Edit in the upper right corner, you’ll have the option to select books. Once you select the books you want to add to a collection, you tap on Add to… at the bottom of the Books app. From there you can choose which collection you want to add your selected book(s) to.

Viewing Books in your Collection
To view all the books in a collection, tap on Collections at the top of your Library. From there you’ll see all your different collections.

Adding, Removing, and Sorting Collections
To add a new collection, scroll to the bottom of your collection list and tap on New Collection…

To remove a collection, tap on Edit in the upper right corner while viewing your collections. Then tap on the red circle to the left of the collection you would like to remove.

To sort your collections, while in edit mode, drag the three horizontal lines to the right of the collection you want to move.

To rename a collection, just tap on the collection name while in edit mode.

Other Options
When you are looking at your library, below each book, you’ll see three dots or an ellipsis. When you tap on these, you’ll have many options including the following:

  • Downloading the Book if it is in the Cloud
  • Removing the Book if it is on your iPhone
  • Adding the book to your Want to Read Collection
  • Adding the book to a specific collection
  • Marking the book as finished and thereby adding it to your Finished Collection
  • Sharing a link to the book
  • Rating and Reviewing the Book in the Book Store
  • Loving the book so you will see more book like this in your recommendations
  • Disliking the book to see fewer books like this in your recommendations

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.

Lesson tags: iPhone Tutorials
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