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I have a bunch of ePub files that I have bought from Barnes & Noble that I'd like to be able to read in my Kindle App. Is there anyway to do this?

UPDATE for those who are lecturing me on the law and morality:

Simply breaking DRM is not illegal in the US according to 5th Circut Court of Appeals (see this article for a quicker analysis). Basically it's legal to remove DRM on your own files as long as you don't then use them to violate the copyright. Even if you disagree with the decision, at the very least it's debatable, not illegal.

I do not download pirated music or movies. I don't pirate software. I don't even use a copy of software that a friend "lends" to me.

I purchased these books (originally as pdb files) to be used with eReader for Android (when it still worked). Later, when B&N released the Nook App, they deleted my .pdb files and replaced them with ePub files that only worked with their App, which is terrible compared to the Kindle App. I wouldn't have purchased them if I knew they'd do this. Were they within their rights? I don't know but probably. Honestly, I don't care, I just want to read my books. I have no intention of violating the rights owner's copyright.

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  • This would be going against the terms and conditions of the purchase, and would therefore be considered illegal.
    – user3463
    Nov 8, 2010 at 17:29
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    It is not illegal. Please see the update to my question.
    – matt
    Nov 8, 2010 at 18:43
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    @remtscho, No it's not illegal, at least not by the 5th District Federal Courts interpretation, which until overturned, is the law of the land in the US. That article you cited is from 2004. That Federal Court decision is from July 2010. Further more they are different scenerios. That case ruled that the software copying the DVD was illegal. A more reasonable comparison to what I want to do would be a cracking a DVD that can only be played in a Sony DVD player, so it can be played in my Toshiba DVD player.
    – matt
    Nov 8, 2010 at 22:43
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    Even if it was illegal in the US, which it seems not to be, who cares? US law doesn't dictate what you're allowed to do in other countries, and this is an inherently international site. It's a valid question and a common problem.
    – Neil
    Dec 5, 2010 at 20:55
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    Also, going against the "Terms and Conditions" of a purchase isn't necessarily illegal, if the terms aren't enforceable. If the terms said you had to take off your pants every time the CEO of the company tells you to, you could agree to those terms and you wouldn't be breaking the law if you failed to comply.
    – Neil
    Dec 5, 2010 at 20:58

2 Answers 2

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Some guy with a blog called "I♥CABBAGES" seems to have reverse engineered ePub DRM, and some other guy wrote a detailed How-To guide here:

Free epubs from Adobe ADEPT DRM

Which refer to scripts you can find here:

Circumventing Adobe ADEPT DRM for EPUB

Note: If you get the error: "Not an ADEPT EPUB", then your ePub file is missing the META-INF/rights.xml file in its archive because it probably wasn't downloaded from the publisher correctly. Here's how to resolve the issue:

  1. Re-download the book from the store you bought the book from and observe that you just get a .acsm file instead of a .epub file.
  2. Instead of inspecting the contents of this .acsm file to get a link to a .epub file, you will have to open the .acsm file in Adobe's "Digital Editions" software (which is a horrendous piece of crap, by the way).
  3. After opening the .acsm file, Digital Editions will put a working .epub file in My Documents/My Digital Editions on Windows. It probably does something equivalent in MacOS, use your intuition to figure out where it might put the file.
  4. Run the scripts mentioned on the Circumventing Adobe ADEPT DRM for EPUB page on this .epub file.

There is also a method specific to Barnes & Noble:

Circumventing Barnes & Noble DRM for EPUB

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  • If you use Calibre as well you can convert the epub file (without DRM now) to MOBI and send the file to you Kindle from inside Calibre. Works really well!
    – noocyte
    Jul 1, 2011 at 13:20
  • This method did not work for me and I fear the epub DRM that has been applied to my books is updated to 'fix' this weakness.
    – AndrewPK
    Feb 1, 2012 at 4:09
  • First link (know-how.posterous.com/free-epubs-from-adobe-adept-drm) is no longer available.
    – Derek Mahar
    Jan 4, 2017 at 16:11
  • All these links to programs in posts are not longer available.
    – Yura Kosyak
    Aug 11, 2020 at 9:42
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    All these links to programs in posts (or most of them) are still available. For example web.archive.org/web/20130319002329/http://…
    – Ed999
    Oct 31, 2020 at 22:14
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There is a blog post with tools that worked for me:

DRM Removal Tools for eBooks

It has updates to original tool from "I♥CABBAGES" and also plugis to Calibre.

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