If your Mac connects to the Internet via a WIFI router, click here for a simpler version of this tutorial.
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Step-by-step guide 
You only need to set up once following this guide.
1. Go to your home folder in Finder. In my case, it is “steven” with a house icon, right below “Applications” in the left pane.
2. Enter the folder called “Sites”.
3. Make a directory in “Sites” called BookZ
4. Enter the directory “bookz”, drop some txt files you want to read into this directory.
5. (CMD)-SPACE to bring up Spotlight. Enter “Web Sharing” and click enter.
6. Within “Sharing”, tick the “Web Sharing” option
7. Select the “Internet Sharing” item (not the checkbox), select “Airport” item (not the checkbox), and click “Airport Options” below.
8. Enter a name for your local network, in my case “MB”
9. Check “Internet Sharing” to enable WIFI connection between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac.
10. On the iPhone/iPod Touch, connect to the WIFI network you just established (”MB” in my case).
Click the right blue arrow to the right of the network name to get the Router address (10.0.2.1 in my case)
11. Fire up BookZ, use the “Web” tab, go to “10.0.2.1/~username/bookz” (repleace “username” with your Mac username, “steven” in my case). Tip: If the “~”sign doesn’t show when typing symbols, try the “Shift” key. Replace “10.0.2.1″ with your own router address obtained in the previous step.
12. This page correspondes to your “~/Sites/bookz” folder on your Mac. Click on the “.txt” files to import books into BookZ.
For subsequent imports, just drop the txt book into “~/Sites/bookz” folder, open BookZ and go to “10.0.2.1/~*username*/bookz”. (Replace “10.0.2.1″ with your own router address obtained in step 10)
Note: If you get “403 Error” instead of anything useful, please check out Apple’s official solution.
Please remember to turn off “Web Sharing” and “Internet Sharing” (otherwise people will be able to access your internet connection and see what’s under your “~/Sites” folder). You just need to turn them back on when importing books.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:04 am
this is so far the easiest way to get files from the computer to the iphone/ipod touch. I wish they mounted it as a drive like with the older gen ipods. it’d make things easier.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I use Filemagnet & BookZ together. I Send ebook using FileMagnet and want to read this ebook using BookZ. Is it Possble? You told that is possible right?
July 28th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Hi ybchoi,
Unfortunately, local file import is disabled in 1.0.2 and above due to the App Store policies. It was available in 1.0.0.
As an alternative, you could use Google Pages:
1. Upload any .txt file using Google Pages Web Uploader
2. Create a new page and insert the text file into the page (with Page Creator)
3. Download the file using BookZ
Or you could use the Web Sharing method which is amazingly fast for downloading books.
Regards,
Steve
August 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
BookZ is indeed the best of all the reader apps for iphone so far. I have been able to do everything you said it can, and enjoy reading a few books entirely on iPhone.
There are two big problems:
1. Poems in plain text format lost all their line breaks.(I use Text Edit and Make Plain Text command.)
2. When will it be able to decode Chinese text?
August 13th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
To TC:
To answer your questions:
1. BookZ tries to determine where the appropriate linebreaks are for better reading experience. This works for most of the novels but not poems. You could turn this feature off by going to Preferences and turn off Smart Layout.
2. To the best of my knowledge, Chinese text comes in 3 flavors: UTF8, GB2312 and BIG5. All these are natively supported (decoded) by BookZ. Take note that GB2312 is a very old standard which is replaced by GB18030. You could set Preferred Encoding to GB18030 in Preferences and Chinese text will show up properly.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
I love Bookz. Plain english
October 1st, 2008 at 6:34 am
[...] public links >> gettext How to get text files from your Mac to BookZ? Saved by mattischrome on Mon 29-9-2008 Get Text Messages from Our High School Ministry Saved by [...]
October 8th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Bookz is awesome…Its the best ebook reader available for the iPhone…Aside from the tiny problem that it only supports a couple file formats and the difficulty with getting files to it.
Hopefully, it will be upgraded to include other files such as rtf, etc. Thanks!
October 8th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Thank you for your comment–
I’m working on support for HTML files at the moment : )
October 9th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I have a local area WIFI network in my house (my Mac is connected to a wireless router by Ethernet). Why can’t I simply use my local WIFI network to download TXT files? Why must I turn on Internet Sharing from my local computer, which gives me dire warnings about disrupting my network? Why is downloading TXT files so complicated and difficult, compared to AirSharing or DropCopy?
October 9th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Dear Guy Immega,
The “Internet Sharing” method is for those without a local area WIFI network.
In your case, simply go to your Mac’s system preferences–>Network and note down the IP address for your Mac.
In BookZ, use Utilities->Surf and Download->IP address of your Mac’s IP address followed by “~username”. (username is your computer’s username). For example, my computer has the address “10.0.2.1/~steve”.
Bookmark the address and you won’t need to type it again : )
BookZ is designed to be a text reader whereas AirSharing and DropCopy are essentially file transfer utilities.
It is not easy to simply include the major feature of AirSharing/DropCopy into BookZ because there are many issues like memory shortage.
Nevertheless, I’m looking for better ways to transfer files.
Thanks for your feedback,
Steve
October 9th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Using the above IP address method, I get the message:
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /~username on this server
What do I do now? [There MUST be an easier way...]
October 9th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
“403 Forbidden” error happens to some who upgrades from Tiger.
Please kindly check out Apple’s official solution. (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307241)
October 11th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I’m running an iMac on an Airport network. When I follow your instructions my network get messed up; in fact, following your instructions Sharing says, “starting Internet sharing may affect network.” Now I cannot get on the Internet, nor move text files over to my iTouch.
You’d better give instructions for the res of us, or my money back. It don’t work.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Woodrackets:
Please check out the new tutorial at http://www.iphonesg.org/BookZ/2008/10/11/if-you-are-using-a-mac-with-a-wifi-router/
Thank you.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Admin:
It don’t work. Before making more claims, you’d better look at the Discussions folder on Apple.com. There’re a lot of people who are having trouble after the 10.5.5 OS update. I’m just one of ‘em. Web sharing seems to be next to impossible now.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
*Please check your email for a reply with picture illustrations*
My apologies for the inconvenience caused. This is a Leopard related problem. Since I don’t have access to your computer, all I can do is to try to explain things as clear as possible.
As mentioned in the Apple document, “403 Error” mostly happens to users who upgraded from Tiger to Leopard.
I got this error when I upgraded to Leopard and it was solved by following Apple’s solution (which is why I put it on the website for everyone’s reference).
Just for your information, Leopard seemed to slow down in my Macbook after the upgrade, so I used the Leopard disk, did an “Archive and Install” and everything worked flawlessly ever since.
Now I’m using 10.5.5 and the everything is fine, including “Web Sharing”.
Since this is an issue in Apple’s operating system, the best way to solve it is look for Apple customer service.
If you have AppleCare or your Apple Telephone Support is still valid, it will be much easier–just dial the toll-free number of AppleCare (found in Apple homepage->Support), explain that “Web Sharing” does not work for you and they will troubleshoot the problem, step by step.
If not, I will try my best to help you find out the cause.
May I know what the error message is after you followed the Apple document? Still getting “403 Permission denied”?
What is the permission for your home directory? Right click->Get Info and make sure “unknown” and “everyone” have “Read only” access.
What is your permission for your “~/Sites” directory? “unknown” and “everyone” should have “Read only” access as well.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
Woodrackets:
Is “Web Sharing” working for you now?
If not, there is an useful way to find out what’s wrong:
Use “Sportlight” to open “Terminal”:
Type “apachectl configtest” and the result will either be “Syntax OK” or some error messages suggesting why “Web Sharing” is not working.
With those error messages, it will be much easier to find out what’s wrong and put things right again.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
[...] is needed and Mac OS X Web Sharing is perfect for that purpose. Users are encouraged to follow the “Web Sharing” turorial to set up the connection between BookZ and your [...]
June 14th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Да,несогласен с предыдущими ораторами
^..^