Technology Reviews

Update: Reading Library eBooks on my Droid — Aldiko 2.0

A few months back I posted instructions I’ve been using to read eBooks from my local library on my Droid 2 phone using TXTR. Yesterday I received news that Aldiko 2.0 (http://www.aldiko.com/) has been released, providing support for any eBook using the Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM) protocol. I’ve found a personal preference for Aldiko over TXTR, but I’m especially glad to see that Aldiko allows for direct importing of eBooks. No longer do I need to transfer the eBook to my Droid, then upload it to the txtr.com website, then retrieve it back to my phone!

So here’s the steps for transferring eBooks to my Droid. This post assumes you’ve already taken the steps listed in my last post on the topic to create your Adobe Digital Editions account, have the Adobe Digital Editions software installed on your desktop computer, and that portion of the setup completed.  You’ll also need to have installed the Aldiko 2.0 app on your Droid and provided it with your Adobe credentials.

  1. Check out a book of interest from your library through the My Media Mall site.
  2. Use Adobe Digital Edition to open the downloaded file on your desktop.  The downloaded file is not the ePub, but a file that points Adobe Digital Edition to the ePub using your computer’s authorization account.
  3. Connect your Droid to your computer.  If a bookshelf called Aldiko doesn’t show up in Adobe Digital Edition, restart Adobe Digital Edition and it should show up then.
  4. Drag the downloaded book to the Aldiko bookshelf and confirm it’s now there.
  5. Eject the Droid from your computer and disconnect the USB cable.
  6. Tell Aldiko to import the new book.
    1. Open Aldiko
    2. Click on the home icon in the upper left corner of the app screen
    3. Choose SD Card
    4. Click on the folder titled “Digital Editions” (click on the words, not the checkbox to the right, unless you want to import everything in that folder)
    5. Click on the checkbox to the right of the new book you just transferred to your Droid.
    6. Return to the Aldiko library view by touching the home icon in the Aldiko app and choosing your favorite library view.
    7. Begin reading 🙂

One side note: this only works with Adobe DRM ePUB books.  I’ve discovered that neither TXTR or Aldiko work with Mobipocket eBooks.  For that I’ve had to use the iReader app.

0 thoughts on “Update: Reading Library eBooks on my Droid — Aldiko 2.0

  1. tried all this. my android unit shows up on adobe digital, but when i drag a book over to put it in (even tho’ it shows the green + sign that its a go) it gives me the message “No permission to copy document here”. Both the device and my laptop are authorized to adobe. I’m pretty frustrated.

    1. I’ve now switched to using the Overdrive Media Console for Android app to read my library books (see http://overdrive.com/software/omc/ ). Once configured with my Adobe Digital Media account info, and once I specified from which library to download books (I used my library’s instructions for this), I’ve since been able to download eBooks directly to the app and read them using that app. Much cleaner!

  2. Before going to the trouble to try this, check the list of libraries at My Media Mall. It looks like only IL libraries.

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