“I have been buying (and activating) books from eReader for over 8 years now. No problems.”

I’d been using Amazon for probaby that long, too. No problems — until they exited the business…and the reader changed. Then, everything broke.

Who’s to say that won’t happen to any of the others next week, next month, or next year? It’s like everything else: it works great, until it doesn’t. I’ve learned my lesson.

I love the convenience of being able to carry around a veritable library of ebooks on my PDA, but I’ll say this about “real” books: I can still read the dead-tree books my great grandparents bought a hundred years ago. I doubt my great grandchildren will be able to say the same.

Scott_H: I had the exact same issues with Amazon / Adobe; I think I posted about them here. I have PDFs of books that I purchased but cannot use; partially because of Amazon going out of that business as you pointed out, but also because the DRM is tied to a device. I change devices all the time, but I typically don’t change credit cards so eReader’s scheme fits my needs best. They also have a mechanism to change the unlocks if I do change credit cards but yes, that assumes they’ll still be in business.

I have been buying (and activating) books from eReader for over 8 years now. No problems. They were Peanut Press back then.

Rick and Kevin, the problem isn’t the process, per se. I bought my ebooks in pdf format from Amazon and at the time it was very easy to activate the DRM on my computer. The problem is that, because of different DRM schemes, you are dependent on the specific bookseller staying in business and continuing to conduct business (with respect to DRM) the same way. As I’ve found out, that’s not a reliable solution — not even with Amazon.

I got a new laptop and I wanted to “activate” my new laptop so I could read my previously purchased ebooks (in pdf format) on it. However, no matter what I did, Adobe Reader 8 (the current version) wouldn’t let me activate the ebooks on the laptop. It seems that Adobe modified it’s DRM activation process when they released Adobe Reader 8. In the past, when you purchased an ebook (in my case, from Amazon), you would “activate” the DRM via a special website at Adobe. However, when they released Adobe Reader 8, they changed the way this works and would no longer support the activation of previously purchased ebooks for use with Adobe Reader 8. So, when I wanted to “transfer” the activation of my old ebooks to my new laptop, I was SOL. Adobe’s response was to re-download the ebooks from the bookseller and then try again with Reader 8 (because it would not work with ebooks I had already downloaded and activated with a prior version of Adobe Reader). However, the option to re-download from Amazon no longer existed.

The problem was exacerbated because the bookseller, in my case Amazon, decided to exit or modify their business. According to the email I got from Customer Support, Amazon no longer directly sells ebooks, and does not support previously sold ebooks. Apparently, they exited that business some time ago — I guess because they bought Mobibook and they expect all future sales to go through them. So, the option to re-download previously purchased ebooks no longer exists with Amazon — and my previous Amazon purchases won’t be honored by Mobibook, of course.

It was only when I stumbled upon another ebook seller’s web site while Googling for a solution, where they had FAQs regarding this issue, that I was able to resolve it. Obviously, I wasn’t the only person to face this problem. I found similar complaints all over the place. The ebook seller was obviously concerned for its business due to the changes Adobe had made with respect to activating DRM — I saw postings from them all over Adobe’s forums complaining about the situation and pleading with Adobe to be more transparent about what they had done.

The solution ended up being to uninstall the current version of Adobe Reader (since it no longer supports the previous DRM scheme) and re-install an older version. Once I reverted back to Adobe Reader 7, I was able to activate the DRM on my new laptop using the “old” procedure (fortunately, Adobe still makes version 7 and the “old” activation website available for download and activation).

As time goes by, I’ve no doubt that that solution will eventually disappear, too, and there will be no way to access my pdf-format ebooks using Adobe products. I don’t see how eReader is any different, in this regard. If they go out of business or get acquired and change their practices, you’ll be SOL with their DRM scheme, too. To avoid this problem in the future, I will be dumping all of my DRM’d ebooks into un-DRM’d pdfs and avoiding any DRM’d ebooks in the future.

Rick, I completely agree with you. If I have to have DRM on my eBook content, I’d rather it be eReaders DRM over anyone else’s. The fact that they tie the license to your credit card and not a device is a big plus. Simple and effective.

Scott_H,
If you’ve soured on eBooks because of DRM, you should check out eReader. They have the most sensible form of DRM on the planet. When you download the eBook, it gets encrypted with the credit card number on your account. You do not need to be online in order to unlock the title. In the event that you get a new credit card number, you can request that they reencrypt your entire online bookshelf, thus if you redownload a title, it will now use the new CC# (anything you previously downloaded still uses the old CC#.) Obviously with this system, you can share your books with anyone you are willing to share your CC# with. I’ve gone through 4 – 5 Pocket PCs and have been able to reread books that I purchased with the first one.

They have readers for a few different handhelds, as well as Windows.

Rick

Sorry for the rant above. I know it’s not directly related to this post, but I’ve soured on ebooks — at least those with DRM — and this post opened a freshly closed wound.

After my recent experiences trying to get my new PC to read ebooks I’ve purchased in the past (it’s a sordid tale involving Adobe and Amazon), I’ve come to the conclusion that DRM is just plain evil and turns the popular “customer first” mantra on it’s head — DRM presumes the customer is always wrong. I bought those ebooks, I didn’t rent them. Well, never again. I hope DRM dies a fast, but painful, death.

Downloading now. I too hope it works over WiFi, also. (Although I do have a data plan, WiFi is free.)

Eh. Big deal. Your iPhone will do that next year. And with a BETTER reading program too.

MobiPocket will hardly dry up and die. It’s owned by amazon. And amazon allegedly has that Kindle (snicker, snicker, what a dumb name!) reader allegedly coming out RSN…

This is the final nail in the Mobipocket coffin. I have been a long-time eReader user, but I didn’t see the platform growing much, so I switched to Mobipocket for the last couple of ebooks…now I will be switching back for good. After the DRM issues with Mobipocket and worst of all the lack of communication about it, I have no desire to deal with that company anymore.