What's a good study strategy as far as content a day and hours a day if a person is planning on taking the april mcat and they start to study in january?
Which books you use depends on how much understanding you have the basics. If you have a good understanding of the prereq courses, you won't need detailed books. For those scenario, Kaplan and EK combined are good. For more details, TPR or TBR are better.
It all is relative to your strength and weaknesses. If you are taking the Kaplan Course, I recommend that you take advantage of all their practice material and also accompany it with EK's Verbal 101 book and 1001 bio book.