Apple Books and DRM

[HoneyRyder]

Over past few years I've been buying ebooks outside Apple garden. To keep things organized I was importing those books to Apple Books. All books I bought were DRM free. Recently I wanted to export all books I got from 3rd party bookstores and move to Linux. Guess what? All my books bought outside Apple garden are DRM "protected". In other words I cannot use book on devices other than Apple's. Any idea how can I get my books back? I found the app that does the trick but it's paid. Eventually I will buy it and get my books back but want to be sure that there's no other way.

 

[galad]

What do you mean by DRM "protected"? The only difference I can see when I copy a book from the Books app is that it's not a zip file. You can just zip it again (right-click in Finder -> archive), remove the .zip extension and leave the .epub one.

 

[HoneyRyder]

What do you mean by DRM "protected"?

By "protected" I mean that I cannot open exported book on non-apple device. Here's the timeline:

- I bought the ebook on some site
- I've imported said book to Apple Book
- I wanted to move the book to Linux, so I exported it by drag-and-drop from Book app (I've also tried to copy it using terminal)
- instead of getting epub file I got a zipped directory. After unzipping I got the directory named the same as the book with some bs content
- exported book cannot be imported to any ebook reader I've tried.

 

[galad]

Because it's not a zip file, zip it back like I wrote above. I just tested it with Calibre.

 

[HoneyRyder]

I had to double check. It doesn't work. On mac I dragged and dropped a book to a desktop. I got some-book.epub.zip file. Tried to import this file to Calibre, it worked but I cannot open the book. I removed zip extension from the file, tried to import again, still not opening.

 

[HoneyRyder]

Ok, I think I got something. I was able to import zip to Calibre and convert it to epub. I am able to open the book but metadata is messed up and the cover is missing.

 

[galad]

I'm on Ventura, I guess it could be creating a different file structure or a zipped file on a different macOS version. What are you running?

 

[HoneyRyder]

I'm on Ventura too. I've imported all my books to Calibre, converted from zip to epub and every single one was missing cover and some metadata. Still need to check if the content is ok but I was wrong blaming Apple about adding drm to my books.