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The EPUB Format

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The EPUB format is an open eBook format recommended by The International Digital Publishing Forum. It is essentially a ZIP format. If you change its extension ".epub" to ".zip", the EPUB file becomes a true ZIP file which can be unzipped.

Format Specifications

The unzipped EPUB files may be divided into three categories: XHTML documents, packaging files and container files.

XHTML Documents. XHTML is a strict version of HTML. The stricter syntax enables web browsers or eBook viewers to render the document more easily. This is important for reading eBooks on devices with limited computing power such as cell phones. In an EPUB book, the main content is placed in these XHTML documents, which can have .html, .xhtml or .xml extension. We prefer the .html extension because it can be viewed by most web browsers on various computing devices.

Packaging Files. They include two files: one with the .opf extension and another with the .ncx extension. The .opf file contains book information (author, publisher, etc.) and a list of all files in the book package. The .ncx file tells the sequence and organization (parts, chapters or sections) of XHTML documents in a book.

Container Files. They must be placed in a folder named "META-INF". These files are used for encryption and digital rights management (DRM). For an eBook without DRM, the container file has only a few standard lines.

EPUB Viewers

Currently, the EPUB format can be viewed by Calibre, Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), EPUBReader, Stanza, Aldiko and a few others. Calibre renders CSS and table of contents very well, but it cannot highlight or annotate. ADE has the highlighting and annotation features. However, scrolling is not smooth when there are images or tables. Another problem is that the table cannot be centered and content may be lost for a long table. For instance, our Complete Poems by E. A. Poe can be displayed perfectly by Calibre, but a lot of contents are missing by ADE.

Calibre cannot run on any smartphone or any device with limited computing power because it is a huge program. ADE requires Flash Player which is not available on any smartphone yet (see Steve Jobs' open letter). At present, you may use Stanza to read EPUB books on iPhones or Aldiko on Android-operated devices. Apple's iPad tablet also supports the EPUB format. It contains a native EPUB viewer (called iBooks) and accepts 3rd-party applications for reading EPUB books. iBooks is also available on iPhone 4

Creating EPUB Books

A number of software tools are designed for making EPUB books, such as Adobe's InDesign or Calibre. Our web-based platform can help you convert Word to EPUB. It also includes an HTML editor for revising converted documents. The HTML editor is as easy to use as a regular word processor. You can even use the editor to write a book from scratch.

Free EPUB Books

Google has more than 500,000 public domain titles in the EPUB format and Project Gutenberg has over 20,000 titles. Our collection is relatively small (~ 1300 titles), but they have included essentially all popular classic books. An advantage of our EPUB books is that they all have correct hierarchical table of contents. Our eBooks are not limited to old books. Many of them are compiled and edited from contemporary sources such as U.S. National Institute of Health and Wikipedia. Some of them are original works submitted by users like you. We are also converting the professionally developed textbooks at Flat World Knowledge from their online version into the EPUB format (see An Innovative Business Model All Students Love).

Digital Rights Management

The most serious drawback of the EPUB format is its lack of a standard digital rights management (DRM), which is used to protect ebooks from pirating. Standard DRM is virtually impossible. A proprietary DRM can be cracked, let alone a "standard" one. Some companies (e.g., Adobe and Apple) apply their own DRM to the EPUB books. Then, it loses the "open" nature of the EPUB format. The DRMed EPUB books can be read only by the EPUB viewer designed by the company who created these DRMed EPUB books. If you bought ebooks from Apple, you can read them only on iPad and iPhone 4. Adobe is trying to make their ADE work on as many platforms as possible. This will increase the cost and contribute to the high price of ebooks.

For paid ebooks, there is a need for DRM. The best solution seems to design web-based viewers to read ebooks, such as our Web books.
 
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