While the PlayStation Vita had the potential to be more than just a gaming console, its limited success outside of Japan hindered the development of more smartphone-esque features. However, Sony released an eBook Reader for the Japanese market, which didn’t make to Western markets, and thanks to CtrlAltGraphene and MatNyaga, it received an English translation and the ability to add your own books. In this article, we’ll be looking at how to install and use their work!

Part I: Installing the patch & translation on your PSVita

Contrary to many mods for the PSVita, getting the E-Book Reader to work requires more than just a simple VPK/plugin installation since it involves the installation of a PKG, 3 plugins and a translation patch. It’s important to be at your PC and have a USB cable handy since this tutorial will require the use of QCMA. If you’re an absolute beginner, this tutorial probably isn’t for you since some bits are left out for brevity’s sake.

You’ll be starting your journey with QCMA & Package Installer to get the ‘Reader’ app on your PSVita

The steps for the first part as follows:

1. Before starting, you need to be able to install PKG files on your PSVita – This requires you to have QCMA installed on your PC and Package Installer on your PSVita
   • On FW 3.60, you can use SilicaAndPina’s PKGENABLER to enable Package Manager – If you’re on another firmware, you’ll have to look around yourself since I can’t personally confirm which package enabler solutions work on those
   • Alternatively, you may log into a Japanese PSN account to get it from PSN. It’s also possible to use other software, that’s not exactly legal, to get the E-Book Reader on your PSVita
2. Proceed to install the E-Book Reader’s PKG which can be downloaded from the Reddit link at the bottom. You’ll also have to install rePatch reDux0 2.71 & 0syscall6
   • If you had previously installed/used the application, uninstall it and remove any files bearing its title ID (PCSC80012) from ux0:/user and its sub directories
     

     After installing the Reader app on your PSVita, you’ll need to update it by pressing the Update Button on its LiveArea bubble (not shown here)

3. After getting it installed, press the update button on its LiveArea bubble as the mod requires version 1.62 (latest version at the moment) of the application – This step must be done for the patch and translation to work
   • To get the update button, you may need to open the application at least once.
4. Download the translation patch and the plugin [the plugin makes the reader app work better, has additional translations and lets you add your own books from ux0:/book] from this link
   • 4 different versions of the plugin exist with fake authentication/guide book on or off.
5. Extract the ZIP file you downloaded from the step above and place the ‘PCSC80012’ folder (from Translation/rePatch inside the ZIP file) in ‘ux0:/rePatch’ while putting ‘ReaderMod.suprx’ (from Plugin/) in ‘ux0:/tai’
6. Reboot your PlayStation Vita to enable the plugins you installed in step 2
7. Run the ‘Reader’ app and if it loads up in English, you’re clear to move to step 8
8. Go back to VitaShell, open taiHEN’s config.txt, create a section called ‘*PCSC80012’ and add ‘ReaderMod.suprx’ to it
9. Reboot your PlayStation Vita and open the ‘Reader’ application again
10. Congratulations, now you’ve successfully installed Sony’s official E-Book Reader application on your PSVita together with the English patch and the plugin letting you add your own books among other things

After finishing this section, you’ll get an English UI and the groundwork for adding your own books finished!

Part II: Adding your own books to the mix

Now that you managed to successfully install the eBook Reader application and have it in a language that you can understand, adding your own books is up next. To do this, you have to:

1. Download Vita Book Edit to a Windows PC
   

   Vita Book Edit works well enough despite the bug described in Step 6

   • This application lets you add your own books to the PlayStation Vita
2. Connect your PSVita to your PC via USB
3. Open VitaShell, put in USB transfer mode and press SELECT to enable it
   • Your PSVita should now be connected to your PC as an external USB device like a pen drive
4. Open the Vita Book Edit utility you downloaded in step 1
5. Press ‘ux0: Location (Memory Card)’ and select the drive your PSVita is mounted as (E: in my case)
6. Press ‘+ (Add Book)’, select the ePub file you wish to add, fill in the details and press ‘Save Details’.
   • Only ePub files with png/jpg/svg files as pages are supported (not plaintext ePubs) so you might need to do some conversions yourself. Kindle Comic Convertor helps you convert CBZ files and image sets to the supported ePub format.
   • In version 0.5 of Vita Book Edit, there’s a bug in which ‘cover.jpg’ might not be generated in the directory of the new book. To remedy this, add a cover.jpg file to ‘ux0:/book/00000000BLKSTOK1/book[num]’.
7. Congrats, you have successfully imported your own book.

The Sample Book (provided in the ZIP file mentioned in Step I) is now present in the bookshelf in all its glory!

Conclusion

Without a doubt, the efforts to get Sony’s official E-Book Reader to work with user-imported books and in English have produced some pretty cool results which the developers behind it should be applauded for. However, its official instructions are a tad sparse and the Vita Book Edit utility can afford to see some fixes (and perhaps the ability to automatically convert plaintext ePubs to the accepted format) so we’ll see what the future holds for the project!

Reddit Release Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/vitahacks/comments/e7lndq/release_ebook_reader_pcsc80012_translation_custom/

For a hassle-free eBook Reader that’s not as pretty as this one, use Bookr Mod.

Misc Screenshots

Viewing the translated manual

Actually adding a book through Vita Book Edit