When my Blackberry Tour failed last week, I decided to upgrade to a new Droid 2 phone. One thing I had just begun doing on my Blackberry was reading eBooks. With the additional screen size, I was hoping the Droid would prove an even better interface for eBooks, and it has. I especially like the Alkido reader for its easy and configurable navigation and the simplicity with which it moves between day and night reading. I’ve already read several eBooks available from Project Gutenberg using either my Blackberry or Aldiko on my Droid 2.
My next hope was that with the move to Droid 2 I could finally begin reading the type of eBook provided by libraries. Most libraries seem to use My Media Mall to distribute Adobe DRM ePub eBooks. Aldiko promises to support these books soon. In the meantime, I found references that suggested txtr would be able to work with the Adobe DRM ePub format. It wasn’t obvious how to make this work, but alas I was able to successfully read books from my library using txtr on my Droid2. Here’s how I did it using my Mac to transfer the books. Steps should be similar from a Windows PC.
Install and authorize the software on your computer and Droid
- Sign up for an Adobe Digital Editions account at: http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
- Adobe Digital Editions on your computer and authorize your computer
- Connect your Droid via USB cable. If everything is working properly, when you restart your Adobe Digital Edition software, your Droid should show up as a bookshelf in Adobe Digital Editions
Checking out and reading eBooks
- Check out a book of interest from your library through the My Media Mall site.
- Use Adobe Digital Edition to open the downloaded file. The file is not the ePub, but a file that points Adobe Digital Edition to the ePub using your computer’s authorization account.
- Connect your Droid to your computer. If it doesn’t show up as a bookshelf in Adobe Digital Edition, restart Adobe Digital Edition and it should show up then.
- Copy the new book to the Droid bookshelf.
- The txtr app doesn’t seem to find the book on the Droid 2 where Adobe Digital Editions puts it, so next go to http://www.txtr.com and login with your txtr account. With your Droid connected to your computer, upload the new .epub book from the “Digital Editions” folder of your phone to the Private Texts folder on the txtr.com site.
- Once the download is finished, eject your Droid device and disconnect the USB cable.
- In txtr, go to Archive and select Private Texts. Select the new ePub book from the list and then select download.
- Once it finishes downloading, you will be able to read the eBook for the remainder of the checkout period.
Here’s to hoping a better solution is found soon! In the meantime, at least there is a way to read library books on my Droid 2, which is more than I can say for my old Blackberry…
I’ve been able to pull up eBooks on my Droid ‘Classic’ that were transferred to ADE.
I’m using both the Kalahari.net Reader and the OverDrive Media Console Android v2. Not sure which made my device show up in Digital Editions (it didn’t before I installed these two apps, but I didn’t check between installs, either) but simply ‘dragging and dropping’ eBooks from the ADE library to the device allowed me to open my titles in each application.
Not sure if this helps, but I hope it does!
BTW – I’ve also heard that the Aldiko 2.0 reader (paid version) allows the same functionality that I describe above.
hi thanks for posting this, i barely remember how i ended up here in the first place (was trying to D/L a neal stephenson cyber punk novel) unfortunately it appears this wont work for my droid x or maybe it will but not for MY droid x i dont have service right now cause im out of work i have the net in my home but not on my droid im sure something will be figured out soon i was looking forward to reading some old dragonlance novels too it’s impossible for me to read a book when i’m on the computer i get easily sidetraked do to severe a.d.d. but if i could transfer the book to my phone i could read while traveling or at the beach or taking a bath
hey i was wrong it does work for me this is great, rather read than watch history channel natgeo and discovery channel lose every ounce of integrity anyway