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Hi guys,
Thank you for all your comments and assistance. It is very much appreciated. However these replies just go to illustrate, in my mind at least, that we still have a long way to go before e-books are a reliable medium suitable for anyone. If I've understood the problem correctly the issue seems to be with the encoding, so presumably no matter where I buy the book from it will have the same encoding errors which stem from the master copy put out by the publisher?
I would imagine that most people who buy e-books just want to read them. The fact that it becomes necessary to dismantle the files, download and install various other programs to overcome the DRM and correct the errors, and then reassemble the files seems vastly overcomplicated. The publisher should simply acknowledge their errors and supply the customer with a correctly formatted file. Waterstones, the online bookstore I bought the novel from were hopeless when it came to providing technical support. In fact after several weeks of waiting for a reply all they did was reimburse my money without a single word of explanation. So I still have no idea if it would be safe to download again either from them or from another website. Contrast this with how easy it is to exchange a book in a real shop which is done in minutes.
Mcmillan clearly have a quality control problem if they can release books where every page has encoding errors. I think my next step will be to write to Mcmillan and explained the situation and see what their response will be (if any). I will then return to this thread and update it with their reply.
Kind regards
Mark
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