IBooks does not open. It only briefly shows an empty bookcase. I have all my important .pdf reference documents in my library. I was never able to figure out how to backup ibooks. I am afraid to reinstall the apps risking loss of data. Any way to save?

Question

IBooks will not open with new ipad and upgraded iOS. It only opens briefly to show an empty  bookcase. I installed the most recent update of iBooks. In apps store it says 'open'.  But the same thing happens...a brief flash.  Strangely, the image and list of my collection actually shows in miniature with all the open apps; so I can close it as I do any other app.
I have all my important .pdf reference documents in my library.    I am afraid to reinstall the apps risking loss of data. I was never able to figure out how to backup ibooks. Any way to save without access to the program?

Answer 1

Now that you have your PDFs on your computer's iTunes library you could try deleting and redownloading the app, and then sync the PDFs back to it - as long as you continue to keep a copy of the PDFs on your computer (and preferably on a backup as well) then if the same thing happens again then you could delete and reinstall again (you shouldn't have any problems with the iBooks app, but then you shouldn't have had a problem this time either).
You could try GoodReader (you could have the most important PDFs in both) - but the current version on iOS 7 isn't getting very good reviews in terms of its speed and crashes (it's description page says that a major update is coming soon).