Txtr iPhone app - Adobe DRM, over the air downloads, and more

[Nate the great]

Wizpac released a free iPhone app yesterday. I haven't tried it yet (OS 3.0 is required), but it does look interesting.

The app store listing says that the txtr store has more than 20k( with about 7800 in English) in Epub encumbered by Adobe DRM. I looked at the store briefly, and it appears that the 20k figure is not inflated by including public domain works. You can download Epub bought at the txtr store from your Itouch or iPhone.

You can also download your own content. Some time back Wizpac added the ability to upload (and share) content to txtr.com. With this app you can download your documents to your Itouch or iPhone. Sweet.

But, there might be a problem. According to the one review in the App Store, the txtr for iPhone can't read DRMed Epub yet. Can anyone confirm this?


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Credit for noticing this app goes to Blue Monkey. Thanks.

[kjk]

I just downloaded it.
I cannot get my Adobe DRM'ed ePub to load.

Zelda's 3 Men in a Boat looks lovely though-they really have a nice ePub engine from what I can tell. No preference settings. Slow. But has real potential!

[Penforhire]

Has anyone compared this one to Stanza (also capable of loading your own)?

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Has anyone compared this one to Stanza (also capable of loading your own)?

Stanza:
Limited ePub features (it overrides font, layout, and margin settings)
Lots of preference settings (navigation, layout, etc.)
Multiple ways to upload your own books
Stable
Fast
eReader DRM only (for now)
Owned now by Amazon

Txtr:
Pretty rich ePub features supported
No preference settings at all
Loading own content means uploading to their website (tedious)
Slow
Adobe DRM support (Can't get it to work)
about 7K books in English, a lot more in German

There is something in the FAQ about needing my Adobe ID, but i don't see any option to apply it anywhere. Maybe a language problem? (They are a german site)

[BlueMonkey]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Credit for noticing this app goes to Blue Monkey. Thanks.

Thx as well for the credit

Originally Posted by Nate the great

The app store listing says that the txtr store has more than 20k( with about 7800 in English) in Epub encumbered by Adobe DRM. I looked at the store briefly, and it appears that the 20k figure is not inflated by including public domain works. You can download Epub bought at the txtr store from your Itouch or iPhone.

They offer lots of free content via Gutenberg, Munseys and Manualsmania in their public domain section - also some content from MobileRead (uploaded by mtravellerh and netseeker as far as I know).

Documents can be uploaded and arranged in collections (which again are shareable via RSS). Also you can subscribe external RSS-Feeds into such a collection (which offers vast opportunites...for example see the "Gratis eBooks via txtr.com" corner in the sidebar of my blog - this is the RSS-Feed of a txtr.com collection turned into a link list via google reader, so I can recommend free eBooks easily to my readers).

Originally Posted by Nate the great

But, there might be a problem. According to the one review in the App Store, the txtr for iPhone can't read DRMed Epub yet. Can anyone confirm this?

In their official blog (German) they have pointed out that at the moment only DRMed EPUBs and PDFs bought from their own store work right away with the app. For DRMed content from other sources you seem to need a little work around which they promised to explain as soon as possible. I will forward and translate this here as soon as they publish the instructions.

P.S.: Their not called Wizpac anymore - official name is now only txtr. The name was originaly merged from "Wizard" and "Bookpack". But they didn't like the meaning of "to wizz" when they found out about it

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by BlueMonkey

P.S.: Their not called Wizpac anymore - official name is now only txtr. The name was originaly merged from "Wizard" and "Bookpack". But they didn't like the meaning of "to wizz" when they found out about it

They're still listed as Wizpac in the app store.

[BlueMonkey]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

They're still listed as Wizpac in the app store.

Hehe...okay That went unnoticed by me as I don't own an iPhone/iPod touch Maybe Apple didn't get the news yet? According to txtr it took some weeks for them to get the app through their authorization loop...

BTW: txtr is planning at least to provide a corresponding Android application in the future. Whether there will be versions for Symbian or Blackberry is not decided yet.

[nikkie]

Originally Posted by BlueMonkey

In their official blog (German) they have pointed out that at the moment only DRMed EPUBs and PDFs bought from their own store work right away with the app. For DRMed content from other sources you seem to need a little work around which they promised to explain as soon as possible. I will forward and translate this here as soon as they publish the instructions.

Buzzkill! I was pretty excited about this. I expect that what you have to do though is authorize your device with the ADE software before trying to load ADE books. Has anyone tried this?

[BlueMonkey]

Originally Posted by nikkie

Buzzkill! I was pretty excited about this. I expect that what you have to do though is authorize your device with the ADE software before trying to load ADE books. Has anyone tried this?

Right - it seems tomorrow they will post details on how this works with EPUBs not purchased via their txtr store. There seems to be some kind of workaround. I will keep you updated

[BlueMonkey]

Joscha (txtr staff) made a comment on the teleread post on the subject. I'll quote it here as it explains the dificulties for DRM protected files not purchased via the txtr Store:

As some of you know, I am working at txtr. You know what? We can not sell our books to you, no matter how much we want to. – Because books come with regional licenses, and even though they are just a bunch of bytes floating through the intarwebs, the current rights situation limits where we are allowed to let them flow to. So, no txtr Store in the US of A for now. Until we have acquired American licenses, and implemented a process to separate our platform into different regions.

On the other hand, it is technically possible to import Adobe DRM files that you have bought elsewhere into the txtr application. But at the moment that would require a working DRM pairing between your Adobe ID and txtr, which at the moment won’t work without a German authentication (usually via credit card). This is not a legal, but only a technical problem, however, and we will build a solution for it soon.

And maybe also interesting: the next comment is from an Adobe staff member approving that this app is the first "built on the Reader Mobile 9 SDK which provides PDF and EPUB support as well as support for Adobe eBook DRM".

Well... hooray DRM

[Birte]

I'm Birte from txtr.
As BlueMonkey said, you can also read DRMed content from other sources, but you have to "work" a bit on it. Now we postet a "How To" in our Blog

Originally Posted by BlueMonkey

Thx as well for the credit

In their official blog (German) they have pointed out that at the moment only DRMed EPUBs and PDFs bought from their own store work right away with the app. For DRMed content from other sources you seem to need a little work around which they promised to explain as soon as possible. I will forward and translate this here as soon as they publish the instructions.

There is one Problem for Americans: The txtr-iPhone app right now needs one book from the txtr Store to be activated for DRM

[BlueMonkey]

Originally Posted by Birte

I'm Birte from txtr.

Welcome to MR Birte Nice to see you here as well!

Originally Posted by Birte

Now we postet a "How To" in our Blog

There is one Problem for Americans: The txtr-iPhone app right now needs one book from the txtr Store to be activated for DRM

Even though the above mentioned regional licenses seem to be obstacles I made a English translation of the instructions - maybe it is of some help if you somehow get a this "German authentification"

Here's what I wrote in my blog:

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The new version version 2.0 of the free txtr iPhone app recently released boasts with the ability to display Adobe DRM protected EPUBs. A really nice feature if there wasn’t a catch: it only seems to work smoothly with eBooks you purchased via the txtr Store.

Regional licenses as obstacles

For foreign users this is the obstacle – I quote Joscha’s (txtr staff) commentary on this topic on teleread.org:

As some of you know, I am working at txtr. You know what? We can not sell our books to you, no matter how much we want to. – Because books come with regional licenses, and even though they are just a bunch of bytes floating through the intarwebs, the current rights situation limits where we are allowed to let them flow to. So, no txtr Store in the US of A for now. Until we have acquired American licenses, and implemented a process to separate our platform into different regions.

On the other hand, it is technically possible to import Adobe DRM files that you have bought elsewhere into the txtr application. But at the moment that would require a working DRM pairing between your Adobe ID and txtr, which at the moment won’t work without a German authentication (usually via credit card). This is not a legal, but only a technical problem, however, and we will build a solution for it soon.

Translation of the official workaround

Until future versions of txtr.com will support the upload of “.asm” files from other eBook shops, for German txtr has provided a work around which enables you to read any Adobe DRM-protected EPUB in the txtr iPhone app users. Even though it seems not to work for non-German users I made a complete translation of the original German post by Birte (txtr staff) in the official txtr blog which gives the instructions – maybe it’s of some use to you if you somehow happen to get this German authentication (use at your own risk!):

Here the promised instructions on how to read EPUBs on your iPhone that not have been purchased from the txtr Store

If you buy a DRM protected EPUB not at txtr Store but elswhere (e.g. libreka.de) you will get a file with the extension “.acsm”. This file type is not yet supported by txtr.com which means that you won’t be able to get the eBook into your txtr iPhone app. But there exists a workaround:

1) To trigger the DRM activation of your iPhone, you need to buy a book from txtr Store. If you don’t want to spend much money on the activation, you coul buy this one for example
http://txtr.com/text/bsycz9
1,25 € (1,85 $) really won’t make you poor

2) Now download the EPUB on your iPhone. The iPhone will then ask you for your Adobe ID — if you already got one, you can use it here, else you will have to create a new one at Adobe. As soon as the EBPUB works you purchased at our store, all other EPUBs that are connected to the same Adobe ID will work. That was the trick. It is important that you use the same Adobe ID for your Adobe Digital Editions installation on your desktop and our iPhone App. Anyone who has not activated his Digital Editions on the first start will have to reinstall it and activate it using a valid Adobe ID!

3) Now simply open the non-txtr .acsm file (that’s what we want in the end) in Adobe Digital Editions on your desktop computer (in Adobe slang that’s called “fullfilling”)

4) Digital Editions will now create a EPUB file in the local file system. On a mac you will find this in ~/Documents/Digital Editions/ — the home folder of the user. There you will find a (DRM-protected) EPUB which you can upload to txtr.com.

5) On txtr.com you won’t be able to read it – as it is encrypted and our servers therefore are not able to open it.

6) But you can download it to your iPhone — if everything worked fine you should now be able to read it there.

This is really annoying, but all this DRM stuff really is complicated and one should excuse us that we have ensured an easy use for our own shop first. One of the next versions of txtr.com will support the direct upload of non-txtr .acsm files and then make everything a lot easier.

As I don’t own an iPhone or iPod touch I can’t test this workaround even here in Germany – Johannes from lesen.net has proven that it works, though. Good luck trying around – but at your own risk.
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[nikkie]

I'll wait for it to not require purchasing a book from them, if that ever happens. I'd otherwise love to use their app, as there is no other way that I know of at this point to read Sony DRM ePubs on the iPhone - which I hear is on its way.

That's really too bad about the regional licensing. I would like to purchase German books, as I can read German (though poorly).

[nikkie]

Just so everyone knows - you can read Adobe DRM from any source with txtr now. Does not work with library books though.

I also didn't like the app much because it's styling and layout were not adjustable or, in my opinion, good. Works in a pinch though if you bought something from Sony that you want to read.