mad about ebooks

It starts with an email. My inbox is split into the default Gmail tabs: Inbox, Social, Promotions, Forums. As a rule I ignore everything but Inbox, but the little previews sometimes draw me in. 

On that day, I am drawn in: University of Chicago Press tells me there’s a sale. 75% off all ebooks.

Until about a year ago, this would have meant little to me. I’ve had trouble acclimating to ebooks, unless under extreme duress—for instance, if no other format exists. 

But the size of my apartment has been a good motivator to get serious about electronic reading. (My partner admitted that he had quietly curbed his own purchases of physical books, because he could tell we were running out of space, and he knows I’m a maniac. True love!)

So last fall, I bought a Boox Palma. This is a phone-shaped e-ink Android device. That means that you can download any app in the Google store. I can have Google docs, a notes app, Substack, email, the Kindle app, any other e-reading app I want, and a PDF reader: in one eye-friendly, travel-ready place. It's been a great little tool for me, and I've done more e-reading on it than any other device.

Which means: I can finally make use of these great sales.

I browse Chicago Press’s website. Without Model by Theodor Adorno looks interesting. It is $4.50. I buy it. Yay!

After checkout, the site tells me there are a few ways I can read my book. But if I want to do anything beyond reading it in my browser, I’ll have to take more action.

Uh oh. I’ve been spoiled by Verso, where you can buy an ebook and, you know, download it. But how hard can it be?

There are exactly two options, each with a minimum 5-step process. My eyes are glazing over. I pick the one that seems easier. 

I have to download Adobe Digital Editions. Then I have to make an Adobe account, connect Digital Editions with the Adobe account, and verify my purchase on the specific device that I’m using. And you can’t verify for more than one device. 

Ugh. I guess I need to do this on the Palma. 

When I try on the Palma, it’s impossible to locate my newly-purchased file on the Chicago website. I need to find it before I can begin the process at all. (I tried to get back onto the page to add details to this blog post, and I couldn’t find it. And I refuse to buy another ebook from them. So we must rely on my memory.) I even tried to start fresh with the second, non-Adobe option, but encountered problems with it by step 2. Finally I referred to the page still open on my computer, typed the URL on the Palma (a site called “BookVault” - insidious!), and clicked around in frustration until eventually there it was. 

GREAT. Let’s keep going. 

I click through the authorization process, get all the way to the end, and receive…. an error message. 

I’m fuming. I have an easier time viewing private medical records on my doctor’s infuriating online portal than accessing one book that I just purchased. With money. I feel like expending at least this much effort in finding a pirated copy of the book just to spite them, but my pirating knowledge isn’t current anymore. (Since typically, when people have money for stuff, they stop pirating!) 

I take a break. 

When I return, I use a backwards method. I locate the actual .epub file in the Digital Editions application folder on my computer. I copy the .epub file out of the folder, and attempt to load it into the Palma like I would with a PDF. When it refuses to open in my PDF reader app, I ask it to "open with Adobe Digital Editions." This somehow gets the process going, and it appears to work. Sort of. 

For some reason there are two copies of Without Model, which appear indistinguishable in the app’s library. One of them loads in laughably a small font. Zooming doesn’t lock the text to screen-width, so reading is basically impossible. 

On the second copy, the zoom works. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m just gonna try not to touch anything. 

Adobe Digital Editions is one of the shittiest ereader apps I have ever used. Herein lies the heart of the situation: the app doesn’t actually need to work. In fact, making it work would be a waste of time and money. Because the only point of the app is to lock down books with DRM. Since there are no other choices, the reader will have to live with it. 

A quick search shows endless posts and threads about how terrible Digital Editions is. And apparently, academic publishers are increasingly relying on this software to distribute electronic texts.

It took me almost an hour to get a single ebook into a technically readable form. The app I'm forced to use against my will makes the reading experience a royal pain in the ass. What is the point of this? It seems shockingly out of scope for publishers to be so afraid of piracy that they're willing to make their books so difficult to access. And a real pirate would have found a way around this nonsense—so the only people they’re screwing are those who are trying to buy the book. 

I guess the point is: get your ebooks from Verso. And maybe brush up on Calibre?