The e-books they are becoming more and more popular. When we buy a digital book, it is usually cheaper than a physical one, pollutes less, and, in addition, we can take it with us (along with dozens of other books) anywhere. There are many bookstores and specialized stores that have made the leap to digital books and allow us to buy them there. However, we must be careful with the device where we are going to read it, especially if we have an Amazon Kindle. Otherwise, we may have wasted money.
The Kindle is the electronic book reader, or e-book, from Amazon. This is the best reader we can buy today, a very basic device but it has everything you need to be able to read comfortably: customization options, electronic ink, illuminated screen, etc. A device that, for 100 euros (or less, if we find the right offer) we can get hold of.
When we buy this ebook reader, it automatically allows us to link it with our amazon account so that everything we buy in this store can be automatically downloaded to it and ready to read. Also, if we connect it to the computer, we can copy other ebooks that we can download from the Internet, free of rights, as long as they are in EZW3 or MOBI format. However, what about EPUBs? What happens when I buy a book at another store, such as La Casa del Libro?
DRM: the cancer of digital
Whether in the world of software, in video games, or, as we are seeing now, in electronic books, DRM is always there to give us more problems than solutions. These “anti-copy” measures, which are well known to be useless, only cause problems for users. Crashes and problems for players in the case of Denuvo, for example, or the inability to read our favorite ebook on our Kindle eBook.
La Casa del Libro allows you to download and read its ebooks through its official app for Android and iOS. But, since reading on a Tablet is horrible, it also offers us its own eReader, a device with very limited power, and quite expensive, which, as if that were not enough, uses android 4.4a version that dates neither more nor less than 2013.
Because of this DRM, it is not possible to download and read the books on any other device that does not load the official app of this online store. And, even if we manage to get it out (which is very easy), we won’t be able to take it to any other device, or convert it to another format, since it has this hateful DRM. A problem if we like to read on the Amazon Kindle.
It is possible to copy them to the Kindle, but with many problems
As with everything, there are always ways to bring things to other platforms. But it is a very complicated process, and bordering on illegal. What we have to do is download the EPUB that we have bought from this online store (or any other store that uses DRM) and load it into Calibre. We won’t be able to open it or do anything with it, but there is a Caliber add-on that allows us to Remove DRM from EPUBs.
The process, broadly speaking, what it does is eliminate this security measure and save the book in an open format, such as PDF. Once we have it in PDF, and without the DRM, we can convert it to any other format, such as Amazon’s EZW3. We send it to the device from the caliber itself, and we can now read it.
Of course, it is important to take into account that, in the process, text formats and styles may have been lost, so it would not be strange to find some somewhat chaotic lines or paragraphs, and unexpected line or page breaks. It is the price to pay for removing the DRM from a book that, although we have bought and paid legally, they do not let us enjoy.
