Adobe Digital Editions - a Cautionary Tale
I buy a lot of e-books, mainly in the fields of writing and Internet marketing, but also for research purposes. In general I find e-books are good value for money, and I like the fact that I can get my hands on my purchase immediately.
Well, usually. Recently I purchased an e-book to help with background research on a book I'm currently working on. The e-book came from a company called Ebook Impressions and it was listed as being available in "Adobe Reader" format. I assumed from this that it would be in the standard PDF format, which can of course be opened in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program.
I was wrong, however. When I first attempted to download my purchase, all I got was a small file called ebx.etd. My computer couldn't open this, and I had no idea what it was.
Checking on the FAQ pages of the Ebook Impressions website, I read the following advice about this problem: "This typically indicates that you did not install Adobe Reader before you attempted to download your e-book."
Well, I did have Adobe Reader, but I knew it wasn't the most recent version. So, deciding that this could be the problem, I went to the Adobe website and downloaded version 8 of Adobe Reader, the most recent available. Then I tried downloading my e-book again.
More seemed to happen this time. The Adobe Digital Editions web page opened and invited me to install and launch its Digital Editions software. I didn't appear to have any choice, so I went ahead. After a few moments another web page opened with a black background, showing thumbnails of all the PDF files on my computer. All very interesting, but there was still no sign of the e-book I had ordered.
So I decided the time had come to contact Ebook Impressions' helpdesk. Here's the reply I received: "I am sorry you are having difficulties. Adobe Reader released their new version 8 and sometimes this affects our Adobe Reader ebooks. The best thing to do is uninstall Adobe v8 and install the older version Adobe v7, use the link below and select 'select version' - XP. Click 'Continue' and you should then see v7.0.9 download this version." And the appropriate link was provided.
As you may imagine I was getting a bit fed up by now, but I duly uninstalled Adobe v8 and attempted to install v7.0.9 instead. Unfortunately my computer wasn't having any of it. Each time I attempted to download the older version of the program, the installation process failed half-way through. I decided I had better cut my losses and reinstall v8, but now I had the same problem with this - for whatever reason, it now appeared impossible to install ANY version of Adobe Reader on my computer.
To cut a long story short, after a week without any means of reading PDF files, by persistence and scouring the Internet for help, I eventually managed to reinstall Adobe Reader Version 8. It works fine, but I STILL can't download my e-book. So I have given up, and asked Ebook Impressions for a refund.
Anyway, I thought I would share this sad tale with you. I'm not blaming Ebook Impressions especially, but it appears that Adobe Digital Editions is a new technology that simply cannot be relied upon to deliver on its promises. I think that e-bookstores using this platform should make it quite clear that this is how their e-books are delivered (or not). Ebook Impressions and other e-bookstores I have seen simply quote "Adobe Reader", which suggested to me (and I'm sure many other potential customers) that buyers would receive an ordinary PDF file that they could open in Adobe Acrobat Reader without any hassles.
So I would say, if you're thinking of buying an e-book and the store quotes "Adobe Reader" format, check if they mean Adobe Digital Editions, and if they do be very wary. Eventually, perhaps, this technology will be perfected and deliver untold benefits for readers and publishers, but right now in many cases it simply doesn't work.
And in case anyone is wondering, my courses such as Quick Cash Writing and other WCCL publications are delivered in good old plain PDF format, not Digital Editions!
Well, usually. Recently I purchased an e-book to help with background research on a book I'm currently working on. The e-book came from a company called Ebook Impressions and it was listed as being available in "Adobe Reader" format. I assumed from this that it would be in the standard PDF format, which can of course be opened in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program.
I was wrong, however. When I first attempted to download my purchase, all I got was a small file called ebx.etd. My computer couldn't open this, and I had no idea what it was.
Checking on the FAQ pages of the Ebook Impressions website, I read the following advice about this problem: "This typically indicates that you did not install Adobe Reader before you attempted to download your e-book."
Well, I did have Adobe Reader, but I knew it wasn't the most recent version. So, deciding that this could be the problem, I went to the Adobe website and downloaded version 8 of Adobe Reader, the most recent available. Then I tried downloading my e-book again.
More seemed to happen this time. The Adobe Digital Editions web page opened and invited me to install and launch its Digital Editions software. I didn't appear to have any choice, so I went ahead. After a few moments another web page opened with a black background, showing thumbnails of all the PDF files on my computer. All very interesting, but there was still no sign of the e-book I had ordered.
So I decided the time had come to contact Ebook Impressions' helpdesk. Here's the reply I received: "I am sorry you are having difficulties. Adobe Reader released their new version 8 and sometimes this affects our Adobe Reader ebooks. The best thing to do is uninstall Adobe v8 and install the older version Adobe v7, use the link below and select 'select version' - XP. Click 'Continue' and you should then see v7.0.9 download this version." And the appropriate link was provided.
As you may imagine I was getting a bit fed up by now, but I duly uninstalled Adobe v8 and attempted to install v7.0.9 instead. Unfortunately my computer wasn't having any of it. Each time I attempted to download the older version of the program, the installation process failed half-way through. I decided I had better cut my losses and reinstall v8, but now I had the same problem with this - for whatever reason, it now appeared impossible to install ANY version of Adobe Reader on my computer.
To cut a long story short, after a week without any means of reading PDF files, by persistence and scouring the Internet for help, I eventually managed to reinstall Adobe Reader Version 8. It works fine, but I STILL can't download my e-book. So I have given up, and asked Ebook Impressions for a refund.
Anyway, I thought I would share this sad tale with you. I'm not blaming Ebook Impressions especially, but it appears that Adobe Digital Editions is a new technology that simply cannot be relied upon to deliver on its promises. I think that e-bookstores using this platform should make it quite clear that this is how their e-books are delivered (or not). Ebook Impressions and other e-bookstores I have seen simply quote "Adobe Reader", which suggested to me (and I'm sure many other potential customers) that buyers would receive an ordinary PDF file that they could open in Adobe Acrobat Reader without any hassles.
So I would say, if you're thinking of buying an e-book and the store quotes "Adobe Reader" format, check if they mean Adobe Digital Editions, and if they do be very wary. Eventually, perhaps, this technology will be perfected and deliver untold benefits for readers and publishers, but right now in many cases it simply doesn't work.
And in case anyone is wondering, my courses such as Quick Cash Writing and other WCCL publications are delivered in good old plain PDF format, not Digital Editions!
Labels: e-books
Nick at 7:50 AM 
6 Comments:
True as it may be, I have discovered that your E-book course on winning competitions will not print. The Print feature has in fact been disabled. As we say in the trade: Is it a bug or is it a feature?
It's true that this facility has been disabled by my publishers, WCCL. The reason is to reduce the risk of copyright infringement, but I am sorry if it has caused you any inconvenience. It is a commercial decision taken by WCCL, and not one I have any control over.
It may be worth contacting WCCL via www.myhelphub.com to ask if there is any way around this restriction, or at least feed back to them your concerns.
Nick
Just searching to see if there was a solution to this problem and I found your blog.
Adobe Digital Editions is a pain in the neck. I paid for an e-book in what I thought was PDF format. Instead I received the same mysterious file as you and had to download and install this limited function program. I can't read my ebook on my PDA, I can't print any pages, I can't even transfer the document to read on my laptop. Digital Editions won't even read the text aloud. My only option is to sit in front of my monitor and read all 400+ pages from the screen. Well, I worked out a way around this. By taking screen shots of each page (not as difficult as it sounds, this only takes about 2 seconds per page using a Mac), I can batch process the images, cropping them and saving as JPEGs, which I can now read on my PSP. I could OCR the image files and save as text. I may be tempted to do this.
Adobe should warn customers that the files they are selling are NOT standard PDF files and that they cannot be opened or read by Acrobat or any other application that you might usually use to open a PDF.
I've downloaded Adobe Digital Editions (successfully I think) but receive an error message when I try to download my ebooks. It is an activation error message. Troubleshooting the Adobe site has not provided any help so now I've lost $20 plus dollars for three books.
I've downloaded books before in pdf format and it's great! Which is what I thought I was purchasing this time Going forward I will most likely avoid the ebook venue.
If anyone has any insights on how to fix this activation error problem, I'd appreciate your help.
Wendy
Hi, I also had a problem with a lost archive for Adobe digital editions. You could try the advice here:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb403051&sliceId=1
Also having problems with Digital Editions and my wifes Sony e-reader, she downloaded books from Waterstones site and now cant get them onto her reader as it needs to be "authorised" with Digital Editions. Trouble is it won't Sony say contact Adobe, Adobe are silent - anyone else with similar problems???
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home