This is the post: From new member Retreever… (hi, Retreever!) “Just bought a Acer A100 tablet – Android OS – downloaded Android reader app from eReader.com but it won’t unlock any books. eReader support says it’s a known bug but they have no visibility to a fix. Really PO’ed,I bought the tablet because I like reading in bed and the laptop is too clunky. Anyone have any suggestions?”
My first question is what source of e-book. If it’s one of ours, to unlock it, first of all, you unzip it on your PC. Then you’ll have a number of files, including ePub, pdf, etc. I would think any reader worth its salt ought to be able to read a pdf.
I’d suggest trying a different ereader app. There’s a bunch out there. Maybe a different one won’t have such an unfortunate bug. Pretty fatal sounding. An ereader app that has a known bug for not opening a standard format? Opening books is what is made for. Ouch.
Not much help here, as I don’t have an Android OS device.
However, the Kindle for PC app has been refusing to complete startup for over a month, so I’ve switched entirely to the Kindle for iPad app and iBooks. The only alternative for the PC app seems to be to go back, unsanctioned, to an older version no longer visible via Amazon.
Regarding the Android OS app, I would suggest looking carefully to be sure the site is legit. — Isn’t there an app store via Android itself?
I have a Color Nook from Barnes and Noble, which is an Android device. I rooted it to an SD card per the instructions of the fellow that wrote the “Nook Book”. I then loaded and ran the Nook Android Reader app. For a while it worked perfectly, but it too has stopped working, pretty much after B and N pushed tablet software version 1.3. I exchanged a few e-mails with the Nook Book author – he suggested that it was a known problem with the Nook App in the App store. After fiddling around, I can get the Color Nook to work as a book reader if I unroot by taking the SD card out. Which is a pain. I’ll need to mess with it more when I get one of those Round Tuits.
With that said, I sounds like my problem is almost certainly not your (Retreever’s) problem. But he should be able to load something like Aldiko or a different generic reader. Aldiko runs well on my android phone. And it is likely what I will go to if I cant get the B and N software to work.
The people over in the MobileRead fora are usually pretty helpful with questions like this. You can browse without joining, but you will have to sign up to post questions. Here is a link to the fora: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ — what can I say, they speak English mostly, Latin not so much. As you’ll see, they have places for particular devices and Androids in general.
Ain’t technology marvellous..until it goes wrong. I’ve been programming and using computers since the early 80s but you know what? The older I get the more fed up of them I get. Either I’m turning into a curmudgeonly old git (entirely possible) or else the young bloods inheriting ‘my’ career aren’t as clever as they think they are.
Actually I think the problem is that companies can only reliably make money off hardware (which is probably true for authors as well if you consider paper to be hardware). As a consequence the software side of things gets relegated and under resourced. Issuing a firmware update rarely earns you any money. But selling a new model does.
I’m beginning to think that Victor Meldrew might be my new hero:
If Retreever’s sole purpose was to get a platform to enable R to read in bed, I wonder why R didn’t get a Kindle, or the B&N reader or some other such ereader, and download the Calibre converter program to R’s PC/laptop.
The reason I bought my Kindle was it’s ease on the eyes, and because it could hold 3500 books. It would make sense to me to assemble a “to be read” stack of ebooks on the PC from the cheap, free, and reasonably priced ebooks that are out there, use the Calibre converter program to convert any books that needed to be in a different format, and then hook the reader to the PC and drag and drop the whole lot from the PC to the reader. That’s what I do.
I’ve found that the Calibre format converter program pretty much levels the playing field as far as formatting goes. That’s my 2 cents’ worth.
The only eBooks I’ve got are on my Android ‘phone and they out of copyright works. The complete Sherlocks, some Ghost stories and Huckleberry Finn. That’s the funny thing about my smart phone. I don’t have one single reason for owning it – there’s just a number of things it does passably well that together make it useful.
Having a bit of light reading for those odd boring half hours in a waiting room is one of them.
A 5Mp camera is another.
Most of my music collection available another.
Being able to send and receive email turns out to be quite handy.
Sat-nav sometimes good although I don’t use it much.
Ironically telephone calls is not on that list. I’m not much of a telephone user at the best of times 🙂
It may not seem helpful advice, but I would recommend against buying ebooks that are “locked” with DRM. Don’t patronize sellers and publishers of such products. There is a ton of stuff out there that is free and worth reading. Get acquainted with the literature of the 19th century, for example. I consider the policies of CJ and her colleagues in Closed Circle to be enlightened. I would buy more there, but I already own almost every book she’s written. 🙂 I look forward to the day when her main works are published there.
Having said that, MobileReads mentioned above is a great source of ebooks, pointers and help for all the various readers and software. Including coping with DRM. The Gutenburg Project is another fabulous source.
<rant>I bought a Sony reader because it easily let me put my own stuff on it, not just books from their ebook store. And I can back it up and protect my investment as I choose. That’s why I didn’t buy a Kindle. I understand newer versions of Kindle are better at letting put non-Kindle store ebooks on it.</rant>
I quite agree about the DRM. Honest people are going to pay for their books, and my readers tend to be honorable people. Book-thieves won’t like my stories much.
I do use our Kindle for on-road reading and editing and have no trouble loading things on: I just hook up the USB and have my computer treat the Kindle as a flash drive.
This is the kindle with a keypad, a feature worth paying extra for. We convert the .wpd file (my word processor) to (I can’t remember which at this hour) either .pdf (which my processor does) or to .prc (which requires .wpd > .html >.prc via mobiread converter.
That means that as I read it in the car and find a mistake or typo I could actually type a short change right into the file, but it’s more convenient to put a honking great capital X where a mistake is: that can be searched in a trice.
So when I settle down to edit, once at a place where I can spread out, I don’t have to reconvert the file and move it back and forth. I just prop the kindle up and search for Xs, then make the change at the corresponding spot on my actual master file (the original .wpd) on my computer.
This is sooooooooooo much more convenient than lugging 20 lbs of paper in a shopping bag in the footwell of the car and trying to sort it out in the passenger seat, or preventing our acrobatic traveling cats from sitting on it as I read. Kindles are so frustrating to cats: no room for the butt.
Thank you, CJ, for that tidbit of info on one’s own work being editable on a Kindle. I am mulling over some form of e-reader (although lusting after a what I would like to see in the next IPad release). Top for me is its ability to handle PDFs of out of print non-fiction (in my academic field of Celtic Studies and Scottish History) and onto which I can put on and lightly edit my own novel (that I would also like to read e-mail on it, download and store photos, etc. has me yearning for that luxury, fictitious IPad).
I agree with you both, but the difficulty arises if you’d like to generate some income for your favorite living authors and/or you’d like to be able to read their books electronically. Lots of living authors whose e-book rights are in the hands of their publisher are only published in DRM-protected format, and often in some way limited as to platform/device, and very often also limited as to availability outside the USA or UK.
For instance: I’ve got Patricia Briggs’ books in paper format. Thanks CJ for pointing me to her, with the left sidebar link! She’s had bad luck with their house renovation so I’d guess she could use some income realy well just now; and I’d like to be able to read her books digitally when I (eventually) get an Ereader, so I thought I’d spend my monthly book-allowance by buying them as e-books now.
As her publisher apparently uses geographically-limited contracts, I mostly wasn’t allowed to buy them (I live in the Netherlands) from my usual e-book stores. Finally, I was allowed to buy them at Kobo (new to me), but they are heavily ‘DRM-protected’. To read them I need to register both with Kobo and Adobe, and install their own proprietary Ereader.
I cannot get Calibre to read these books, or add them to the rest of my e-book library in Calibre.
Am I being a grumpy klutz to consider it very strange that each publisher or digital bookstore can demand I install a separate bookcase (Ereader-program) in my home (computer, laptop, eventual Ereader-device), that’s strictly for their books alone?!
When I’m not allowed to buy them from any other (online) bookstore, and which store I can buy from is decided by the publisher, on a book-by-book basis?
I am so happy with the way Closed Circle run their shop!!
I don’t think that’s being grumpy or unreasonable. What the major publishers and the ebook reader makers are missing is that the same DRM and platform limits will eventually become self-limiting to a vanishing point. What happens when the platform OS or hardware leaps forward? What happens when a manufacturer or software company, a publisher or a bookstore chain or web company goes out of business, or the design changes drastically? Customers then need an upgrade or cross-upgrade path, or they are left with a library of useless files.
The best chance is then an open format or a range of commonly accepted formats, able to be converted. That gives customers the best chances for enjoying their reading and listening and watching material.
Sadly we already know the answer to these questions: when there’s a new OS, or new hardware, or just a change of design, customers are precisely left with a library of useless files. It happened when Adobe switched DRM schemes, it happened when Microsoft shut down their ebook division, it happened in some lower-profile cases, like Embiid, and it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen again.
Well, at least CC books will remain in the hands of the user, who will be able to apply conversions to new formats of whatever device you buy; or to print them out.
This is the post: From new member Retreever… (hi, Retreever!) “Just bought a Acer A100 tablet – Android OS – downloaded Android reader app from eReader.com but it won’t unlock any books. eReader support says it’s a known bug but they have no visibility to a fix. Really PO’ed,I bought the tablet because I like reading in bed and the laptop is too clunky. Anyone have any suggestions?”
My first question is what source of e-book. If it’s one of ours, to unlock it, first of all, you unzip it on your PC. Then you’ll have a number of files, including ePub, pdf, etc. I would think any reader worth its salt ought to be able to read a pdf.
I’d suggest trying a different ereader app. There’s a bunch out there. Maybe a different one won’t have such an unfortunate bug. Pretty fatal sounding. An ereader app that has a known bug for not opening a standard format? Opening books is what is made for. Ouch.
I did get a selection by searching “android 3.2 ebook app” —anybody know if it’s safe to download another and try it? Precautions, anyone?
Not much help here, as I don’t have an Android OS device.
However, the Kindle for PC app has been refusing to complete startup for over a month, so I’ve switched entirely to the Kindle for iPad app and iBooks. The only alternative for the PC app seems to be to go back, unsanctioned, to an older version no longer visible via Amazon.
Regarding the Android OS app, I would suggest looking carefully to be sure the site is legit. — Isn’t there an app store via Android itself?
I have a Color Nook from Barnes and Noble, which is an Android device. I rooted it to an SD card per the instructions of the fellow that wrote the “Nook Book”. I then loaded and ran the Nook Android Reader app. For a while it worked perfectly, but it too has stopped working, pretty much after B and N pushed tablet software version 1.3. I exchanged a few e-mails with the Nook Book author – he suggested that it was a known problem with the Nook App in the App store. After fiddling around, I can get the Color Nook to work as a book reader if I unroot by taking the SD card out. Which is a pain. I’ll need to mess with it more when I get one of those Round Tuits.
With that said, I sounds like my problem is almost certainly not your (Retreever’s) problem. But he should be able to load something like Aldiko or a different generic reader. Aldiko runs well on my android phone. And it is likely what I will go to if I cant get the B and N software to work.
The people over in the MobileRead fora are usually pretty helpful with questions like this. You can browse without joining, but you will have to sign up to post questions. Here is a link to the fora: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ — what can I say, they speak English mostly, Latin not so much. As you’ll see, they have places for particular devices and Androids in general.
Ain’t technology marvellous..until it goes wrong. I’ve been programming and using computers since the early 80s but you know what? The older I get the more fed up of them I get. Either I’m turning into a curmudgeonly old git (entirely possible) or else the young bloods inheriting ‘my’ career aren’t as clever as they think they are.
Actually I think the problem is that companies can only reliably make money off hardware (which is probably true for authors as well if you consider paper to be hardware). As a consequence the software side of things gets relegated and under resourced. Issuing a firmware update rarely earns you any money. But selling a new model does.
I’m beginning to think that Victor Meldrew might be my new hero:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Meldrew
If Retreever’s sole purpose was to get a platform to enable R to read in bed, I wonder why R didn’t get a Kindle, or the B&N reader or some other such ereader, and download the Calibre converter program to R’s PC/laptop.
The reason I bought my Kindle was it’s ease on the eyes, and because it could hold 3500 books. It would make sense to me to assemble a “to be read” stack of ebooks on the PC from the cheap, free, and reasonably priced ebooks that are out there, use the Calibre converter program to convert any books that needed to be in a different format, and then hook the reader to the PC and drag and drop the whole lot from the PC to the reader. That’s what I do.
I’ve found that the Calibre format converter program pretty much levels the playing field as far as formatting goes. That’s my 2 cents’ worth.
The only eBooks I’ve got are on my Android ‘phone and they out of copyright works. The complete Sherlocks, some Ghost stories and Huckleberry Finn. That’s the funny thing about my smart phone. I don’t have one single reason for owning it – there’s just a number of things it does passably well that together make it useful.
Having a bit of light reading for those odd boring half hours in a waiting room is one of them.
A 5Mp camera is another.
Most of my music collection available another.
Being able to send and receive email turns out to be quite handy.
Sat-nav sometimes good although I don’t use it much.
Ironically telephone calls is not on that list. I’m not much of a telephone user at the best of times 🙂
It may not seem helpful advice, but I would recommend against buying ebooks that are “locked” with DRM. Don’t patronize sellers and publishers of such products. There is a ton of stuff out there that is free and worth reading. Get acquainted with the literature of the 19th century, for example. I consider the policies of CJ and her colleagues in Closed Circle to be enlightened. I would buy more there, but I already own almost every book she’s written. 🙂 I look forward to the day when her main works are published there.
Having said that, MobileReads mentioned above is a great source of ebooks, pointers and help for all the various readers and software. Including coping with DRM. The Gutenburg Project is another fabulous source.
<rant>I bought a Sony reader because it easily let me put my own stuff on it, not just books from their ebook store. And I can back it up and protect my investment as I choose. That’s why I didn’t buy a Kindle. I understand newer versions of Kindle are better at letting put non-Kindle store ebooks on it.</rant>
I quite agree about the DRM. Honest people are going to pay for their books, and my readers tend to be honorable people. Book-thieves won’t like my stories much.
I do use our Kindle for on-road reading and editing and have no trouble loading things on: I just hook up the USB and have my computer treat the Kindle as a flash drive.
This is the kindle with a keypad, a feature worth paying extra for. We convert the .wpd file (my word processor) to (I can’t remember which at this hour) either .pdf (which my processor does) or to .prc (which requires .wpd > .html >.prc via mobiread converter.
That means that as I read it in the car and find a mistake or typo I could actually type a short change right into the file, but it’s more convenient to put a honking great capital X where a mistake is: that can be searched in a trice.
So when I settle down to edit, once at a place where I can spread out, I don’t have to reconvert the file and move it back and forth. I just prop the kindle up and search for Xs, then make the change at the corresponding spot on my actual master file (the original .wpd) on my computer.
This is sooooooooooo much more convenient than lugging 20 lbs of paper in a shopping bag in the footwell of the car and trying to sort it out in the passenger seat, or preventing our acrobatic traveling cats from sitting on it as I read. Kindles are so frustrating to cats: no room for the butt.
Thank you, CJ, for that tidbit of info on one’s own work being editable on a Kindle. I am mulling over some form of e-reader (although lusting after a what I would like to see in the next IPad release). Top for me is its ability to handle PDFs of out of print non-fiction (in my academic field of Celtic Studies and Scottish History) and onto which I can put on and lightly edit my own novel (that I would also like to read e-mail on it, download and store photos, etc. has me yearning for that luxury, fictitious IPad).
I agree with you both, but the difficulty arises if you’d like to generate some income for your favorite living authors and/or you’d like to be able to read their books electronically. Lots of living authors whose e-book rights are in the hands of their publisher are only published in DRM-protected format, and often in some way limited as to platform/device, and very often also limited as to availability outside the USA or UK.
For instance: I’ve got Patricia Briggs’ books in paper format. Thanks CJ for pointing me to her, with the left sidebar link! She’s had bad luck with their house renovation so I’d guess she could use some income realy well just now; and I’d like to be able to read her books digitally when I (eventually) get an Ereader, so I thought I’d spend my monthly book-allowance by buying them as e-books now.
As her publisher apparently uses geographically-limited contracts, I mostly wasn’t allowed to buy them (I live in the Netherlands) from my usual e-book stores. Finally, I was allowed to buy them at Kobo (new to me), but they are heavily ‘DRM-protected’. To read them I need to register both with Kobo and Adobe, and install their own proprietary Ereader.
I cannot get Calibre to read these books, or add them to the rest of my e-book library in Calibre.
Am I being a grumpy klutz to consider it very strange that each publisher or digital bookstore can demand I install a separate bookcase (Ereader-program) in my home (computer, laptop, eventual Ereader-device), that’s strictly for their books alone?!
When I’m not allowed to buy them from any other (online) bookstore, and which store I can buy from is decided by the publisher, on a book-by-book basis?
I am so happy with the way Closed Circle run their shop!!
Thank you. 😉 We try.
I don’t think that’s being grumpy or unreasonable. What the major publishers and the ebook reader makers are missing is that the same DRM and platform limits will eventually become self-limiting to a vanishing point. What happens when the platform OS or hardware leaps forward? What happens when a manufacturer or software company, a publisher or a bookstore chain or web company goes out of business, or the design changes drastically? Customers then need an upgrade or cross-upgrade path, or they are left with a library of useless files.
The best chance is then an open format or a range of commonly accepted formats, able to be converted. That gives customers the best chances for enjoying their reading and listening and watching material.
Sadly we already know the answer to these questions: when there’s a new OS, or new hardware, or just a change of design, customers are precisely left with a library of useless files. It happened when Adobe switched DRM schemes, it happened when Microsoft shut down their ebook division, it happened in some lower-profile cases, like Embiid, and it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen again.
Well, at least CC books will remain in the hands of the user, who will be able to apply conversions to new formats of whatever device you buy; or to print them out.