The Japanese eBook store BOOKWALKER, owned by publishing giant Kadokawa, is by far the most draconian I've seen in recent years when it comes to eBook DRM: https://bookwalker.jp
Some examples of the lengths they go to:
- They used to have a desktop app that allowed reading offline. Not anymore. They're phasing it out in favor of their web reader which has no offline reading functionality. Presumably because people were cracking the DRM there.
- Their Android app detects root/custom roms and disables itself and starts spamming you with a new browser tab every few seconds, even if you don't try to open it at all (I have no idea why this is even possible on Android). It doesn't just use Android's built-in SafetyNet APIs either, it uses some custom methods that somehow managed to bypass Magisk's root hiding feature until version 18, when I discovered that it finally started working. But soon after that I found my account mysteriously locked, and upon contacting support it sounds like they were able to find out I was running under root somehow, and reinstated my account with the caveat that the next time they catch me my account will be disabled for good. That was the last straw for me, and I vowed never to do business with them again.
With that said, I do hope someone who's more well versed in the dark arts of reverse engineering than I am could take a crack at breaking the DRM in their Android app or Desktop app (they still post a really old version on their site, not sure if it's still usable) dump their entire library on a torrent somewhere and show them the futility of their ways. I honestly think their DRM only survived for so long due to sheer obscurity because they have a such a limited audience and not enough smart people are interested in fucking with them. I'd love to have some means to liberate the library of books I've already regretfully purchased on there (they lured me in with their frequent sales and rewards program).
By the way, if anyone's interested in buying Japanese eBooks, my current go-to store is Kobo (owned by Rakuten): https://books.rakuten.co.jp/e-book/
The biggest differentiator for them is they don't compress their images to oblivion like Amazon and Google Play does, which is really nice for light novels and manga where image quality makes a huge difference. Being Kobo, they also happen to be the only eBook store other than Amazon to offer their own line of eBook reader devices, most of which can be hacked to use a bigger sdcard for more storage (they literally use an sdcard for internal storage instead of emmc).
Of course, their DRM is easily crackable, but I would love to hear recommendations for DRM free Japanese eBook stores if anyone is aware of any.
I was happily surprised to find at least some of the manga (my Japanese is not good enough for light novels just yet) series that I read (or have read) on Kobo. My previous impression was that every publisher was pushing their own application and/or online store with DRM from hell. Unfortunately they seem to price digital editions the same as new physical copies (about JPY 600, which is ~USD 5.50), even for volumes that are well over a decade old. Thus I will probably stick to my current strategy of browsing the Book Off JPY 100 (plus JPY 8 tax) section and carry on reading physical copies as I rarely read the latest stuff anyway – still, wonderful to know that one has an option when you are out of the country. Lastly, bonus points to Kobo in that they appear to run campaigns with a free selection of manga volumes at the moment to get you hooked on a number of series.
Literally the only thing I miss from Bookwalker is their sales. They frequently have sales of 50% off + 30%+ cashback (mostly on Kadokawa published books, but sometimes from other publishers as well), which fueled a lot of my past impulse purchases that I've now come to regret.
The best I've seen so far on Kobo has been a 30% off coupon that requires a 10k yen minimum purchase. If you're price sensitive then used physical books is probably still the way to go. I couldn't recommend Bookwalker in good faith to anyone until their DRM becomes trivial to break, because if they pull what Microsoft pulled here all of your purchased eBooks would disappear without any possibility for recourse.
Some examples of the lengths they go to:
- They used to have a desktop app that allowed reading offline. Not anymore. They're phasing it out in favor of their web reader which has no offline reading functionality. Presumably because people were cracking the DRM there.
- Their Android app detects root/custom roms and disables itself and starts spamming you with a new browser tab every few seconds, even if you don't try to open it at all (I have no idea why this is even possible on Android). It doesn't just use Android's built-in SafetyNet APIs either, it uses some custom methods that somehow managed to bypass Magisk's root hiding feature until version 18, when I discovered that it finally started working. But soon after that I found my account mysteriously locked, and upon contacting support it sounds like they were able to find out I was running under root somehow, and reinstated my account with the caveat that the next time they catch me my account will be disabled for good. That was the last straw for me, and I vowed never to do business with them again.
With that said, I do hope someone who's more well versed in the dark arts of reverse engineering than I am could take a crack at breaking the DRM in their Android app or Desktop app (they still post a really old version on their site, not sure if it's still usable) dump their entire library on a torrent somewhere and show them the futility of their ways. I honestly think their DRM only survived for so long due to sheer obscurity because they have a such a limited audience and not enough smart people are interested in fucking with them. I'd love to have some means to liberate the library of books I've already regretfully purchased on there (they lured me in with their frequent sales and rewards program).
They have an English site too if language barrier is an issue: https://global.bookwalker.jp/