Athene Docs › Adding Books
Adding Books
Tap + on the Library for every way in. Whatever you bring is copied onto your shelf, and a file that isn’t an EPUB or PDF becomes a book as it arrives.
Add Books
At the top, Open Shelf for free classics, and, with a US App Store account, Book Stores beside it. Under Your Own Books:
| Files | Books in iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or on your device, or a whole folder. |
|---|---|
| Computer | From a browser on a computer on the same Wi‑Fi. |
| Web Link | A link to a book file, or a shared link from a cloud drive. |
| Calibre | Your calibre or calibre-web library. See calibre. |
| Zotero | Your papers. See Zotero. |
| Mail & AirDrop | How to send a book from another app. |
| OPDS Catalog | A library that publishes an OPDS catalog. |
When a book arrives Athene says Added to your library, with a Read button, or Already in your library if it’s on your shelf already.
Open Shelf
About 70,000 classics from Project Gutenberg, free and yours to keep. Browse Popular, the books in your own language if it isn’t English, and shelves from Adventure and Romance to Poetry, Philosophy and Children’s, each with See All; or search by title, author or subject. Tap + on a cover, or open a book’s page and tap Add to Library. A tick on a cover means it’s on your shelf.
These books are in the public domain in the United States. Where you live, check that they are there too.
Monthly Specials
With Settings › Extras › Monthly Specials on, the months that have one put a themed shelf of classics at the top of Add Books, such as Spooky Season in October. Get All adds every book and files them in a collection named after it. Touch and hold the card to hide it until next month.
Files
Tap Files and pick one book or several. iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive all appear in Files once their apps are installed. A file that’s only in the cloud is downloaded first.
A whole folder
Pick a folder instead of a file and Athene looks through it, and every folder inside it, for books.
- A calibre library, such as one kept in iCloud Drive or Dropbox, is recognised as one. Athene says how many books it holds, and Add All adds every one in its best format, with calibre’s titles, authors, covers, series, descriptions and tags.
- Any other folder: Athene says how many books it found and asks before adding them.
Books already on your shelf are skipped, so adding the same folder again later brings in only the new ones. Tap Stop at any point; the books added so far stay.
From a computer
- Make sure your iPhone or iPad and the computer are on the same Wi‑Fi.
- Tap Computer. Athene shows an address like
192.168.1.20:8765/ab3k9x. - Type the whole address, with the letters after the last slash, into a browser on the computer, or tap Copy Address and send it to yourself.
- Drop books onto the page, or click Choose Files….
Keep the From a Computer screen open while the books arrive; each is listed with a Read button. It works over Wi‑Fi only, not over mobile data or a VPN, and nothing leaves your network. A book can be up to 600 MB.
A web link
Tap Web Link and paste a link that leads straight to an EPUB, PDF or MOBI file, or a share link from Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive, then Add to Library. A share link must be shared publicly, so that it can be downloaded without signing in. If the link leads to a web page rather than a book, Athene offers to Keep the Page as a Book.
From Mail, Messages and AirDrop
Open the book in Mail, Messages, Safari or any app that has it, tap Share and choose Athene (under More if it isn’t in the row). With AirDrop, send the book to your device and choose Athene when asked. On iPad you can also drag books from another app onto the shelf.
Athene is offered for EPUB, PDF, Kindle and Word files, Pages documents, FB2, RTF, text and HTML. For an ODT, CBZ or HTMLZ file, save it to Files first and add it from there.
OPDS catalogs
An OPDS catalog is how book servers and online libraries share their books: Kavita, Komga, calibre-web, COPS, Ubooquity and many more. Tap OPDS Catalog, then Add a Catalog, and enter its address, which is often the server’s address followed by /opds, with a username and password if it has them. To try one, tap Project Gutenberg under To Try.
Browse the catalog by its folders and tap a book to add it; Athene takes its EPUB, or its PDF if there’s no EPUB. Touch and hold a catalog to remove it. Over the open internet a password is only sent to an https address; plain http is for addresses on your home network or VPN.
Book Stores
With a US App Store account, Book Stores lists stores that sell books without DRM, so they’re yours to keep: Kobo, Smashwords, Humble Bundle, StoryBundle, Baen Books, Leanpub and Pragmatic Bookshelf, and two free libraries, Standard Ebooks and the Internet Archive. Each opens in your browser; download a book there, then add it from Files. Athene takes no part in any sale and no share of it.
Formats
| Format | What happens |
|---|---|
| EPUB | Opens as it is, including Kobo’s KEPUB. |
| Opens as it is, in the PDF reader. | |
| MOBI, AZW3, AZW, PRC | Kindle and Mobipocket books without DRM, turned into EPUB. |
| Word, Pages, ODT, RTF | Documents (.docx, .pages, .odt, .rtf), turned into EPUB with their headings and pictures, and from Word and Pages, their cover. |
| FB2, TXT, Markdown, HTML | Turned into EPUB, as is HTMLZ, calibre’s zipped HTML. |
| CBZ | Comics, turned into a book with one picture to a page. |
What Athene can’t open, and says so when you add it:
- Books locked with DRM: from Kindle, Adobe (including an .acsm “download ticket”, which isn’t the book itself) or Readium LCP. If the store offers a DRM-free download, that version will open.
- Kindle KFX and Topaz files, and Kindle Print Replica books.
- Older Word (.doc) files: open them in Pages or Word and save them as .docx.
- Other formats, such as CBR or DjVu, and books inside a zip: unzip them, or convert them to EPUB with calibre.
Written for Athene 3.4. Something here wrong, or missing? Write to athene@theadipost.com.