(Previously Stanza had its own separate area on Fictionwise and couldn’t get at your previously purchased books. Not sure when that was fixed, but is right handy).

Apple’s automatic backups store all the metadata for the apps (the ebooks and settings in the case of eReader) but not the executable app itself, so using iTunes to restore your iPhone’s latest backup doesn’t help. Grabbing the .ipa file(s) for the previous version of an app from a backup of your iTunes folders doesn’t work either as iTunes only recognises the latest .ipa file for that app and I can’t find any way to override that. It’s a real flaw in the App Store/iTunes/iPhone system, being able to go back to a previous app version is a basic requirement that is frustrated by the way Apple handles iPhone/touch backups and app signing, etc. in iTunes.

Bad news – eReader 2.0.2 is a complete disaster.

Midnight, an ebook on the desktop, no wireless Internet access, and eReader 2.0.2 makes a very unhappy customer.

When all of my procedures for getting eReader books onto my ipod disabled. I wondered if Fictionwise was morphing into another evil empire of restricted access. I gave up, signed up with another ebook vendor and switched back to Stanza. The untimely release of a buggy update cost me time, aggravation and money. And it cost Fictionwise customer loyalty.

Manybooks and other urls will be coming back as well, just a week or maybe two max from now. This change was due to a complex issue regarding the apple terms of service that’s hard to even describe. But we have a fix coming.

I wondered back when Apple announced that additional content would be sold through their store with the advent of OS 3.0 whether it would be a dealbreaker for e-book sellers with their own App Store apps. I wonder if these alternate-option removals might be the first harbinger of something of that nature.

On the other hand, I suppose it might just be that autosync doesn’t play nice with Manybooks and starts trying to download their entire catalog. I could see something like that happening.

“Due to some integration issues regarding how the App store works, we have temporarily removed Manybooks.net from the “Add Books” page. We expect this to be restored shortly as we work through some technical issues. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but rest assured it will be back soon.

Thank you for your patience.”

I wrote back thanking her and asking if the option to manually enter any location would also be restored, and am waiting for a reply.

Seriously, this is a dealbreaker for me. Where eReader has been my ebook reader of choice for many years now, I flatly refuse to be locked into a single system. I want to be able to download books from other sites and from my own server.

We’ll have a way to turn off auto sync from your account probably today. We’re also correcting the error message display issue but that will happen in 2.0.3

-Steve P.

Now, it’s time for each of us to complain directly to the ereader folks!!

2.0.2 also downloads the README for version 1.2 instead of 2.0.2 so it’s very hard to find out how this new syncing feature works, or is supposed to work. Having to manually switch off auto-sync on a per title basis in the app is crazy, it should be off by default.

That it automatically tries to sync every time it’s launched, and pops up a stupid dialog box saying “sync failed. no internet connection” if your device is not online, is simply beyond belief. That certainly should be off by default and switched on in settings somewhere.

Even more unbelievable is that under the “+” (add content) button they’ve now added a “sync new books” button, but have *removed* the old buttons to get content from your own local webserver and the button for manybooks.net too! I don’t know if they’ve done this on purpose but if they have they’ve lost me as a customer. Without the correct version of the app’s README it’s hard to know though.

The only way I’ve found to stop it auto-syncing whenever it’s launched (and the device is connected to the internet) is to deliberately use a wrong login name/password, then it just ignores the login failure and gives you no message at all at startup! Once it’s launched if you want to manually download a title from your bookshelf you have to manually enter the correct username/password, and after downloading it go back and reset them to the wrong values before quitting so it won’t be able to auto-sync the next time it’s launched. Irritating beyond belief, but what else can you do to stop this nonsense?

It complains every time I open eReader without an internet connection.

When I do connect, I spend minutes scrolling past error messages about the books in my bookshelf that are not in eReader format.

Is there a way to disable this function?