6 Helpful Tips for Using Our Products & Services

In order to continually improve our products and services, we regularly review correspondence and support queries from our readership. Therefore we thought it might be helpful to compile a listing of tips provided in response to some of the most common questions just in case they are useful to you.

We’re also making a few updates to our various systems in order to comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), that comes into effect May 25, 2018. As part of these updates, we’re  consolidating our various mailing lists and are making a number of improvements which will make it much easier for you to manage and customise the content you receive from us. Therefore we’ve also included some further information on this process (#1) and how you can use these new features to manage your email preferences.

#1 Manage your email subscriptions and preferences

If you would like to sign-up for any of our mailing lists then please click here. If you are already subscribed then we will need you to confirm whether you would still like to receive content from us. You can do this by visiting this form and entering your email address and clicking “Subscribe”. You will then be able to request an email with a link to a form for updating your preferences. You can also update your preferences via your Online Academy account if you have one (further details are provided below) or using the “Update Subscription Preferences” link in the footer of any of the emails that we send you.

If you have an Online Academy account then you can also click here (you will need to sign-in first) or visit “My Account” and then “Click here to edit email preferences” to subscribe, unsubscribe or select which emails you receive from us. Our mailing lists are as follows:

• Practising the Piano – Blog posts (weekly) and occasional newsletters with general announcements, news and special offers pertaining to www.practisingthepiano.com. If you originally subscribed to our blog RSS feed then you will need to sign-up for this list in order to continue receiving updates as we will be discontinuing the older feed at the end of the month.
• Content updates – Notifications of new content and resources on the Online Academy (frequency varies from once every 1 – 4 weeks). If you are an Online Academy subscriber or have a free account then you will need to sign-up for this list in order to continue receiving these notifications.
• Graham Fitch – Emails with occasional updates regarding workshops and events and general news from Graham. If you originally signed-up to Graham’s mailing list then you will need to sign-up for this list in order to continue receiving Graham’s emails.
• Informance newsletter – Occasional emails regarding new products, eBooks and special offers (infrequent emails every 1 – 3 months).

#2 View eBooks on a computer without installing any software

You don’t need a tablet or eBook reader to view eBooks in ePub format as this format is supported by a number of apps on various operating systems. However, with the latest versions of Microsoft Windows 10, ePub support is built in to the Edge browser. Therefore you can view ePub files in the browser without having to download or install any additional software. Simply download the eBook you wish to view (in ePub format), right click on the file and select “open with”. Apple Macs with OS X Mavericks or higher also come with the iBooks app which can be used to view ePub files.

#3 A Neat Printing Solution

Although there are obvious plus points of having eBooks and digital editions e.g. saving shelf space and being green, sometimes you just want a nice hard copy of something you can put your thumb into, mark up with a proper pencil, and annotate with real sticky notes. However, if you baulk at the expense of printer ink and then the hassle of binding the papers once they’ve spilled out of your printer, then you might want to try an online printing service for printing copies of your eBooks or study editions for personal use. One example which we’ve recently come across is called Doxdirect and we’ve arranged a 20% discount with them for readers of this blog (valid until July). Simply enter PIANO20 in the voucher box when you complete your order.

If you own eBooks or study editions that you would like to print a copy of for personal use, then click here to login and view your library and then download the PDF version of the publication you wish to print. Otherwise please visit our store if you’d like to purchase and print any other publications.

#4 How to ensure that you receive emails from us

Although we use a best of breed platform for distributing email and maintain an excellent sender reputation, unfortunately we can’t always control whether our emails end up in your spam or junk mail folders. We’re often asked by customers why they haven’t been receiving emails from us for everything ranging from password resets through to content updates and special offers. One way of solving this problem is to white list our address by adding it (contact@informance.biz) to your “Safe Senders List”. The instructions vary depending on the email client or browser that you are using but here are some further instructions for widely used email applications.

Our emails also contain an “Add to my address book” link which allows you to add our email address to your address book upon subscribing. Otherwise if you don’t wish to receive emails from us, simply use the unsubscribe link provided within every email to do so quickly and easily (you can also unsubscribe from emails or choose which emails you receive via your Online Academy account by following the instructions provided above under #1).

#5 eBook files take up too much space on my tablet

Because our eBooks often contain numerous videos, their file sizes can be quite large if you opt for an enhanced version with embedded videos. Therefore if you are running out of space on any of your devices, we recommend using versions which do not have the videos embedded e.g. “Standard ePub” (Or any of the files for Practising the Piano Part 2 (Standard)) or Amazon Kindle. Although the videos will not be available offline, these versions will not store the complete videos on your device, thus freeing up space.

#6 How do I find articles i found useful on the Online Academy?

The Online Academy has a bookmark feature which enables you to create a list of links to articles and resources which you would like to be able to easily find and access on an ongoing basis. To add a page to your bookmark list, simply click on the “Bookmark” button on the top right hand side of the page header (please note that you will need to be signed in for this feature to be available). Your bookmarks will be available on the Online Academy home screen under “My Bookmarks” and also on your home screen.

In addition to bookmarking, we are busy developing a number of new features which will make it much easier to find and access content, including a recently viewed article list and news ways of browsing and searching for content.

We hope you’ve found these tips and suggestions helpful! You can also visit our support page for further help and information or to contact us if you have any questions or need any assistance.

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