Converting a ADE document (Adobe Digital Editions, acsm) to PDF

Question

I have downloaded a book from Google Play. The book is a .acsm, which actually isn't the book itself but just a purchase ticket that allows me to download the book on Adobe's servers. I installed Adobe Digital Editions on my computer and downloaded the book. Which programs allow me export the book into a DRM-free PDF?

Any OS or license is fine, but it should be gratis (unlike ebook-converter.com's ePub to PDF Converter).

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This is how I exported the book from Google Play's My Books:

In ADE, the print function is grayed out, so I cannot get away with virtual printers it seems:

Answer 1

You can use Calibre for this, which was already recommended multiple times for book conversion. An Article named DeDRM plugin for calibre describes a plugin to achieve exactly that:

The DeDRM plugin can remove DRM from Kindle eBooks […], Barnes & Noble ePub ebooks […], any ebooks using Adobe Digital Editions DRM, and the older Mobipocket and eReader ebooks.

^{(emphasis mine)}

The article describes in detail how to install, customize and use the DeDRM plugin, and was obviously written by the plugin's author. The plugin itself can be found at Github.

While I'm using Calibre for years (and am quite happy with it), I have not tried that addon myself. But seeing it having been starred at Github almost 1.000 times, forked almost 100 times, and watched more than 100 times, seems pretty convincing :)

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Step-by-step instructions for Microsoft Windows 7.

1. Install DeDRM pluging:

2. Import ADE books into Calibre (The DeDRM calibre plugin removes DRM from ebooks as they are imported into calibre):

3. Save the DRM-free PDF somewhere else on the disk:

Answer 2

I created a program called Knock to convert ACSM files to DRM-free PDF files at the command line on Linux:

[user@computer:~]$ knock ./example.acsm
downloading the file from Adobe...
removing DRM from the file...
DRM-free PDF file generated at ./example.pdf

The program is gratis and libre. It doesn't use Adobe Digital Editions and it doesn't use Wine. It is completely free and open-source software for native Linux.