panmacmillan.com offers DRM-free EVERYTHING

[zelda_pinwheel]

panmacmillan is taunting me. i was looking through the list of books available by author and got very excited to see some books by Colin Dexter. strangely, the price was listed as 0.00£. could it be ??? Colin Dexter, in drm-free epub, for free ???

you can guess that it was too good to be true. in fact those books may be listed on the site already but in the detail page you discover that they are "not yet published". *sigh*

[pdurrant]

Was the Mobipocket eBook DRM free too?

Paul

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I was able to download an ePub and a MOBI, but a LIT download failed for me. I want to compare the formats, and hence the multiple versions.

[Peadar Ó Guilín]

Thanks for providing this link igorsk. The selection is tiny, but spectacular.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Was the Mobipocket eBook DRM free too?

Yes. I also bought Cultural Amnesia by Clive James as a MOBI when it first came out in May and it (in all versions) has always been DRM free.

[TheJohnNewton]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

And for those with a Mac and Kindle, Stanza will allow you to open the ePub book and then export it to Mobi/Kindle format. Alas, the Kindle doesn't natively support ePub files (yet, and may never).

BOb

FYI, there is a PC version of Stanza out now.

[pdurrant]

Thanks. I've tried to buy "Ghost Brigades" by John Scalzi. I got four email acknowledgements of the order. I'm confused as to whether I'm going to be charged £6.99 or £8.04. I can't download it yet, as the order is "Waiting for acknowledgement", but who or what has to acknowledge it I have no idea.

I realise it's early days, and I'm delighted that they've decided to use non-DRM formats. I just wish their site was a bit more polished.

Oh - and their prices should be lower too. I could have bought the paperback from Amazon for just £4.46. It's very odd to have the eBook priced higher than the paperback.

Still, things are definitely looking up for non-DRM eBooks from major publishers.

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Yes. I also bought Cultural Amnesia by Clive James as a MOBI when it first came out in May and it (in all versions) has always been DRM free.

[Elsi]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

In addition, if you live in the US there is no VAT - so three £6.99 ebooks cost me £11.91.

Will they sell to someone in the USA? I saw several books I wanted -- and while books in the UK are simply more expensive than their counterparts in the USA (complicated by the exchange rate!) it looks like Pan MacMillan is keeping the digital price down to the same price as the paperback. If they'll sell to me, I'm going to keep my eye on this site because of the DRM-free editions.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Elsi

Will they sell to someone in the USA?

Yes. They presumably subtracted the VAT because my address is in the US. When I bought Cultural Amnesia in May, they actually sent me an order confirmation by air mail, as well as via e-mail. So they do seem to be setup for international purchases, although the printed invoice was overkill.

[sianon]

Originally Posted by Gibbo

Did you have any problems downloading the ebook?. I'm getting an error when start to download

No, the download was fast and no issues at all.

Karen

[sianon]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

This is presumably a DRM-free Adobe PDF ebook, since a Secure (DRMed) Adobe PDF needs Adobe Reader or Digital Editions.

When it is available, the best DRM-free option is MS Reader (LIT) format. This converts well to LRF using Calibre. If you have a Windows PC, Secure LIT can be down-converted to DRM-free using ConvertLIT - so again LIT is a good choice. DRM-free MobiPocket (PRC or MOBI) can also be converted to LRF by Calibre, and Secure MOBI can be cracked using mobidedrm. An advantage of Secure MOBI over Secure LIT is that it does not require a Windows PC.

I usually do purchase in LIT as it really is so easy to remove the DRM and to convert. Lit was not available for the title I wanted, it was Mobi or Adobe. I have used Mobidrm however I have about 6 titles that I cannot convert using this. It just produces a file with no content.

The PDF book I purchased has password security on it and would not convert using Calibre because of this.

Karen

[salty-horse]

Hi,

I tried loading some of the available books. Specifically, The Ghost Brigades, Perdido Street Station, and The Scar.

All of them load in Adobe DE, but none load on the PRS-505. ("Invalid page" error).

Looking at the epub files themselves, they seem to have many errors.
Here's the output from epubcheck:

ghost-brigades.epub: mimetype entry missing or not the first in archive
ghost-brigades.epub/package.opf(6): use of deprecated element 'dc-metadata'
ghost-brigades.epub/package.opf(19): warning: text/html is not appropriate for XHTML/OPS, use application/xhtml+xml instead
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(3): required elements missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(4): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(10): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(16): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(22): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(28): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(34): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/toc.ncx(2): assertion failed:
first playOrder value is not 1
ghost-brigades.epub/html/cover.html(10): element "img" from namespace "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" not allowed in this context
ghost-brigades.epub/html/cover.html(10): required attributes missing
ghost-brigades.epub/html/cover.html(11): unfinished element
ghost-brigades.epub: resource page-template.xpgt is missing
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.adobe.epubcheck.opf.OPFChecker.isBlessedItemTy pe(OPFChecker.java:125)
at com.adobe.epubcheck.opf.XRefChecker.checkReference (XRefChecker.java:190)
at com.adobe.epubcheck.opf.XRefChecker.checkReference s(XRefChecker.java:163)
at com.adobe.epubcheck.opf.OPFChecker.runChecks(OPFCh ecker.java:120)
at com.adobe.epubcheck.ocf.OCFChecker.runChecks(OCFCh ecker.java:60)
at com.adobe.epubcheck.api.EpubCheck.validate(EpubChe ck.java:119)
at com.adobe.epubcheck.tool.Checker.main(Checker.java :47)

The individual html files seem small enough, so this isn't about the 300kb file size limit.

Has anyone else succeeded in loading these books onto the Sony Reader?

I have contacted Macmillan about the issue and will post updates on this thread.

[stevew]

I've downloaded Perdido Street Station from the Panmacmillan site and getting the same error you describe. I have also contacted them and will post their response

[simond]

I have the same problem with Ghost Brigades and have emailed them too

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sianon

I just downloaded a book for from the site which is a secure Adobe PDF format. When downloaded to my PRS 500 works just fine. Has all the usual issues about PDF meaning small fonts on the small screen, however reading it in landscape format works well. So there is hope for those of us with the older machines.

Karen

Karen,

If it was in "secure PDF" format, the PRS-500 would not have displayed it. It can't display secure PDF - only DRM-free PDF.

[Taylor514ce]

Three books from their buy 2 get 3 link, minus VAT and with the discount, adds up to 21.98 pounds, which is 40 dollars. That isn't such a great deal, though it isn't awful. But if the EPUB files are buggy, then it's a no-go.

Though it is nice to see The Ghost Brigades out. That means TOR will have it through Baen any day now, right? The Sony store doesn't yet have it.