panmacmillan.com offers DRM-free EVERYTHING

[simond]

Just had a reply asking which format I ordered in (MS Reader), so I'm guessing in some cases they didn't set the books up properly for downloading

[simond]

there has been a hitch with the MS Reader

Then he offered to send me it in Mobipocket, Adobe eReader or EPUB as an alternative

[Joerg_Mosthaf]

I also got three of the books, two as mobipocket (DRM free) one as .lit (Stealing Light) which failed to download. The customer support guy was very helpful and sent me the book as mobi (he offered ePub or mobi). He said, that they had a problem with the MS Reader books and that, contrary to the first impression (and links on the webpage), all ebooks were available as mobipocket books.
All three mobipocket books are definitely DRM-free and look good, but only "Empire in black and gold" seems to have a table of contents.

[Gibbo]

Originally Posted by simond

Then he offered to send me it in Mobipocket, Adobe eReader or EPUB as an alternative

Same here they've just send me the mobi version of Stealing Light.

[JSWolf]

is Ghost Brigade free of DRM? If so, I might get it and convert it to LRF.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by 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:



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.

You could try epub2lrf from Calibre if these ePub have no DRM.

[pdurrant]

I hope they sort their web pages out then - if I'd known they were all available in Mobipocket I might have gone for the 3 for 2 offer. As it is, I still don't know if I've been charge 6.99 or 8.04

Originally Posted by Joerg_Mosthaf

The customer support guy was very helpful and sent me the book as mobi (he offered ePub or mobi). He said, that they had a problem with the MS Reader books and that, contrary to the first impression (and links on the webpage), all ebooks were available as mobipocket books.

[pdurrant]

Yes, I've bought the Mobipocket version, and it's DRM free.

Paul

Originally Posted by JSWolf

is Ghost Brigade free of DRM? If so, I might get it and convert it to LRF.

[simond]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

is Ghost Brigade free of DRM? If so, I might get it and convert it to LRF.

Well it opened in a non authorised Adobe Reader software, not tried converting yet but it arrived as as an email attachment without any account details being needed

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You could try epub2lrf from Calibre if these ePub have no DRM.

I'm getting a generic error from the converter. I'll look into it later.

JSWolf, also, the ePub files are regular zip files. I can open the HTML pages inside it and open each and every file. So it has no DRM.

[salty-horse]

stevew, simond:

All of the files, with the exception of Perdido Street Station work fine.
The problems I've been having were caused by using calibre to upload the files to my PRS-505. It damages the files when trying to change their metadata.

Try uploading the files with the official Sony software or Abode Digital Editions. It worked for me.

Regarding Perdido Street Station, the file that contains the part 2 headline, also contains the entire text of part two. The entire text of part 2 is also available in individual chapter files, so this is a case of text duplication.

The same is true to parts 3-7.

To fix, just extract the epub file, and edit OEBPS/html/p2.html

Delete everything below the <h1> element with the title, and add </body></html> to the end of the file.
Do the same for the p3.html to p7.html

Now you need to zip the files. Since it's an ePub file, it requires special care when zipping -- the mimetype file has to be in the beginning, uncompressed.

Using unix tools, go to the directory where you unzipped the ePub and use these commands to re-create the ePub file.

zip -v0X perdido-fixed.epub mimetype
zip -vr perdido-fixed.epub * -x target.epub mimetype

My Sony Reader can now read the file successfully.

I have emailed those instructions to Macmillan

[simond]

Ah, only just got my new UK 505 today, I just dragged the epub file into the dir on the Reader, didn't even use calibre

Although I do prefer to manage books with calibre, I couldn't get it to accept Ghost Brigades epub version yet, not had a chance to look into it yet though

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by simond

Ah, only just got my new UK 505 today, I just dragged the epub file into the dir on the Reader, didn't even use calibre

Although I do prefer to manage books with calibre, I couldn't get it to accept Ghost Brigades epub version yet, not had a chance to look into it yet though

Did you drag the file onto the mounted drive? I don't know if that works
Try using the Sony or Adobe Digital Editions software

[simond]

It worked fine for me (much to my surprise!)

Edit: just realised, I meant I couldn't get calibre to accept Ghost Brigades, the 505 saw it fine

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by simond

It worked fine for me (much to my surprise!)

Edit: just realised, I meant I couldn't get calibre to accept Ghost Brigades, the 505 saw it fine

That bug will be fixed in the next release.