Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric Carroll
John Scalzi is an author I love, and supports the DRM free movement.
His new book Lock-In listing specifically claims the book is in "DRM free" format as I expected.
But when I bought it, there was no Download epub button.
In talking to customer support they claimed this was due to it being an epub3 format.
When I challenged them on the DRM free point, they claimed it was the "new epub3 format", and that "epub3 format does not support download or sideloading".
I think this is bafflegab from customer service. I see no technical reason epub3 cannot be sideloaded. I demanded a refund as a result. Customer service told me to look for the blackberry icon to confirm Adobe DRM format download capability (even though this title is supposed to be DRM free).
Historically no download button meant kepub format (and a fast demand for refund from me).
Does anyone know what is actually going on here? Why is a DRM free book not available for epub download?
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For the most part, if the ebook claims to be a version 3.0 ebook, that makes it an epub3. The ACCESS Netfront renderer used by .kepub.epub is epub3 (mostly) compliant but the RMSDK version used for .epub is not.
If the book is DRM free, you can download the kepub using the desktop app and locate the ebook on your computer. What I do then is to copy it to a temporary location and add a .epub to the file name. You can then try adding it to Calibre or opening it in Sigil or with an epub reader application. So far the only kepub I've done that to that generated an incredible mass of error message from Sigil was a cookbook. No mention on the webpage that it was a fixed layout ebook.
You could try downloading a couple of previews since I haven't noticed them being DRMed just to play with. The ModifyEpub plugin for Calibre will clean up a lot of excess spans and other oddments Kobo adds to a .kepub to save some effort with Sigil or Calibre's editor.