Downloading Ebooks
How To Download an Ebook, Unzip the Zip File and Read Your Books On Your Computer.
You Can Now Download Your Purchased Product
The message on a web page after you have purchased an ebook generally reads “You can download the product you purchased from the links below.” If you have bought other digital products before and know the procedure, you just scroll down a little way and click the links to download your books.
For people unfamiliar with this, the following information will explain for you, what you need to do, to download and read your new ebooks.
The Steps
- Create a download folder on the desktop if needed
- Right Click the link of the download on the sales page.
- Choose “Save Target As…”
- Find browse or drop down menu and navigate to the desktop folder
- Click Save – download will start.
- Click the zipped icon and extract file from compression packaging.
- Click on the pdf icon of each book to read it.
More Information
Downloading from a Link
Your mouse has two buttons called a left click and a right click. Depending on the link either of these may work. A normal left click will generally immediately start a download and place the download in a temporary file on your computer. You may not know where this is!
Save Target As For Downloading |
My preference is to use the right click which brings up a dialog box. (see left) I choose the “Save Link As…” or ” Save Target As…” and then choose a folder by using BROWSE to put the download somewhere, so that I can easily find it again.For first timers, create a new folder on your desktop and call it downloads. To do this right click on the desktop and choose NEW->Folder and type in downloads. Then browse to this folder (see below)and select it. When you click save, the download will start to transfer the file and put the zipped package into this folder.
With a fast connection this will not take long. Slower internet connections will take longer and are more prone to “time out”. If this happens just try again at a different time. The link is still there in the email so don’t delete this email until you have your product safely. |
Extracting Documents from a Zipped File
The products are stored on the web in a folder and to conserve space and reduce download time they are packaged into small folders and are compressed or zipped up. Think of it like the packaging on a product. You need to unzip them to read them.
Most modern computers have an unzip program already installed. Zipped package icons differ according to the default program that is there. I use a program I installed myself called izark because it is less complex than some and has less problems with extracting files.
If you don’t have an unzip program already installed you may need to download and install one. The following link leads to the FREE izark unzip software that will do this for you. Download and install it.
Download izark – (Click the first download button on that page)
Think of unzip software as merely box cutters. They have more complex usages for zipping up files for email attachments and for archiving which you can explore, but in their basic form they simply open the box for you.
Once the unzip program is installed, double click on the zip icon of the folder you downloaded and then click the ”extract” icon as below. This restores the files inside by decompressing them and places them in a normal folder next to the icon of the zipped file.Then close this box.
It is a good idea to burn the zipped and unzipped folders to a CD and label it. If at a later date, you ever have computer issues, you then have a backup copy of your purchase that you can copy over to a new computer.
Reading Your Digital Books
If you buy digital books of fiction from best selling authors from stores that market current publications in digital form, you will probably need to also buy a reader for them that is specific for these books. This protects publisher and author copyright from theft. You won’t need to do this for these books.
There is only one program that universally reads a common document on all types of computers whether Mac or PC and that is Adobe Acrobat which reads a document called a PDF. Luckily this program is FREE!
Download Adobe Acrobat Reader for pdf
If your files are showing an icon something similar to the above icon, you already have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed and can just open a file and start reading. If however you click a file and you get a message that says your operating system needs to know what program to use, download the free software from the page at the above link and you will see that after installation the icon will change and you can open the books.
Now You Can Breathe!
The first time you do all this you may feel confused and that it is a struggle to understand and get it right. But once you have a download folder, and you have installed an unzip program and the adobe acrobat reader, the next download you want to do is a breeze.
Trust me! You can breathe now. Open a book and enjoy.
