Stanza: "Catalog Error. Could not connect to the server"

How to access free book catalogues like Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive using “Stanza” on the iPad

Summary

I just updated my iPad to IOS 5 and the Stanza app (book reader) started working again. I love Stanza, and was delighted. However, it showed only two books, and the Get Books button said "Catalog is empty" with a message box "Catalog Error. Could not connect to the server"

Thanks to kyteflyer I have now fully restored Stanza's ability to download from the vast free libraries of books on the internet like Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. Here's how to do it:

Step-by-step

(1) Launch Stanza on the iPad (it didn't work until I updated to IOS 5). Dismiss the Tip if you get one.

(2) Tap the Get Books button at the bottom of the screen. When you get "Catalog Error. Could not connect to the server" just click the OK button.

(3) Tap the Shared button in the middle at the top of the screen. Tap the Edit button top right.

(4) The main screen should now have "Add Book Source" in a white box at the top. Tap on it. It scrolls to a screen headed Add Book Source which has text boxes labelled Name and URL. Let's add Project Gutenberg: Type Gutenberg into the Name box and type http://m.gutenberg.org/ into the URL, then tap the Save button on the top right of the screen.

(5) Click the Done button top right and you should find Gutenberg is added to the list. Try tapping on it and it should retrieve the catalogue from Project Gutenberg (mine starts by giving categories Popular, Latest and Random, but this may have changed by the time you try it). Follow through into these categories to download free books, or click the magnifying glass button (top right corner) to search.

Here are some more book sources that worked for me:

Some of these give free books, others have books for sale:

http://m.gutenberg.org/
http://www.feedbooks.com/catalog.atom
http://catalog.oreilly.com/stanza/main.xml
http://allromanceebooks.com/epub-feed.xml
http://www.smashwords.com/lexcycle/
http://bookglutton.com/api/stanza
http://www.webscription.net/stanza.aspx
http://www.booksonboard.com/xml/catalog.atom
http://bookserver.archive.org/catalog/
http://www.manybooks.net/opds/index.php
http://www.legimi.com/opds/root.atom

For readers in French:

http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/opds/index.php
http://opds.youscribe.com/Catalog/catalog.xml

For readers in German:

http://stanza.beam-ebooks.de

For readers in Russian:

http://lib.rus.ec/opds

Acknowledgements

Thanks to kyteflyer and kr0w for these links.

See also

• Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format