Okay, so I had a response from All Romance eBooks help desk this morning. They sent me to a different page where I was able to download Adobe's Digital Edition application despite the fact that I'm running Lion and the other page didn't recognize Lion. (Thus the "your system's not up to date" accusation. Hmm, Adobe, project much?) So anyway, I downloaded the damn application and that part worked.
But when I tried to open the file for the ebook I purchased, it still didn't work. Digital Edition didn't recognize it. Well, I'd say there was a pattern here except I've been pretty skeptical about this file all along. It looked to me like a link to a page where the actual download would happen, not the ebook itself. So I decided to try downloading the book again, using Firefox this time, instead of Safari, which I have been using because it's fully featured in Lion.
Sure enough, the link led me to another page where I was able to download the real file. And it opened in Digital Edition. Finally. Why didn't the link work properly on Safari? Damned if I know.
Now, in the meantime, ARe had confirmed my fear that Stanza won't open a secure epub file. They recommended using Blue Fire, which I already have -- I have seven different ereading applications on my phone. Their advice was to use iTunes to transfer the book to Blue Fire. I couldn't figure out how to do that, so I fell back on my tried and true method of emailing the file as an attachment, opening it in my phone and selecting an app. Stanza was listed! Woo hoo! I tried opening it with Stanza and was told it wasn't compatible. Boo! So, I'm reading it on Blue Fire, which isn't terrible. I have my black background and grey text, but not the font and the line spacing I want, but I guess I'll survive.
The thing is, I've purchased lots of other ebooks, none for more that ten dollars, ever. And every single one of those behaved the way I wanted it to -- downloaded, and opened in the app of my choice -- with no issues. So why did I just spend 13 bucks to work like a dog and wind up with something less than what I actually wanted? Because some companies would rather control my choice of reading platform and wage an ineffective battle against piracy than ever get my return business.
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