To prevent misunderstandings for foreign readers: This is not the official blog of txtr but an unofficial fan project – the official blog can be found here .  Also txtr has an official forum for its iPhone app.

The new version version 2.0 of the free txtr iPhone app recently released boasts with the ability to display Adobe DRM protected EPUBs. A really nice feature if there wasn’t a catch: it only seems to work smoothly with eBooks you purchased via the txtr Store.

Regional licenses as obstacles

For foreign users this is the obstacle – I quote Joscha’s (txtr staff) commentary on this topic on teleread.org:

As some of you know, I am working at txtr. You know what? We can not sell our books to you, no matter how much we want to. – Because books come with regional licenses, and even though they are just a bunch of bytes floating through the intarwebs, the current rights situation limits where we are allowed to let them flow to. So, no txtr Store in the US of A for now. Until we have acquired American licenses, and implemented a process to separate our platform into different regions.

On the other hand, it is technically possible to import Adobe DRM files that you have bought elsewhere into the txtr application. But at the moment that would require a working DRM pairing between your Adobe ID and txtr, which at the moment won’t work without a German authentication (usually via credit card). This is not a legal, but only a technical problem, however, and we will build a solution for it soon.

Translation of the official workaround

Until future versions of txtr.com will support the upload of “.asm” files from other eBook shops, for German users txtr has provided a work around which enables you to read any Adobe DRM-protected EPUB in the txtr iPhone app. Even though it seems not to work for non-German users I made a complete translation of the original German post by Birte (txtr staff) in the official txtr blog which gives the instructions – maybe it’s of some use to you if you somehow happen to get this German authentication (use at your own risk!): Mehr…