I’ll be honest with you, I am not a fan of reading books digitally, to me it doesn’t replace reading real books with real paper that has its own scent with each page flip.
Yet I have formed this habit of buying digital books that “might” be interesting rather than wasting a space on my shelf, if it turns out to be an awesome book I will continue reading it on my iPad, Nexus, or Even my MAC since its just a PDF file which I can carry with me everywhere… A very simple user experience, unbelievably effective, I can even bookmark pages with iBook.
To cut the story short, I was interested in one of the books provided by Wiley but i wasn’t sure if the book was good enough to get a printed version so I decided to get the digital edition, checked out and downloaded the file.
At the beginning I thought “what the heck is this file (I sort of expected a PDF)” instead I got an ACSM file, I went back to the email they’ve sent, I tried looking for instructions, I’ve even downloaded the file again to see if I missed any useful instructions on how to read the damn book, turned out I needed something called Adobe Digital Editions (thank you Google & this forum post) which I have installed & i am gonna tell you why I hate this experience:
- Its not a PDF
- I had to install an application
- I had to register to be able to use the application ( I had problems getting registered )
- I had to import the file & download the ebook
- The viewport was awful & alot of content to read in a single slide, 3 – 4 pages
- The application is awfully slow
- A super lag that will help ya skip chapters without realising it
Perhaps Wiley have done this for a reason & that’s to protect their books from getting shared for Free AKA Piracy.
I managed to form a habit, a legal way to read digital books that I might have not bought in their paper (hardcover, paperback) form, so Wiley; be wise & roll this ACSM back or others might just as well “drop that habit” & seek for alternatives.
tip:
How to convert ACSM to PDF 🙂