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Comment by tsuujin | Hacker News Reader

Fair warning to all: the watermark on the epub purchased from the publisher is pretty obnoxious. On Apple Books it floats over every page and in some cases covers actual text.

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Could you post a screenshot? I’m deciding between the physical and digital versions and have never seen a watermark in an e-book before.

Sure thing: https://imgur.com/a/4CTsLSD

I’m sure this is software related, and I’m on the iPadOS 16 beta, so it may be less of an issue for others. On my phone it folds into the header and truncates, but on the iPad it is super obnoxious.

Man, is that obnoxious. Yet another example of a DRM effort that will probably inspire more piracy.

I would honestly just rather have the drm than that watermark. Dark pattern success?

I'll buy an ebook but read a copy from LibGen because that version doesn't have my email address as the first sentence of every page. It's hard to read books instead of doing something more entertaining, this minor annoyance doesn't help.

Another data point: this is not the case with the publisher-provided epub when viewing with Apple Books on macOS (Monterey 21G72).

Same with my iPad Pro running iPadOS 15.6. No problems with the Books app, just a single line at the top, out of the way of the text.

Well, I’m running the iPadOS 16 beta, so it’s possible my frustrations will be yours too in a few months.

I hope they fix this though. I’m submitting feedback.

Update: the most recent iPadOS beta has improved this drastically. The watermark now sits in the notification area at the top of the screen and is relatively unobtrusive.

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