Even in the last few years, e-books have been read by a niche audience. It did not reach more readers. Project Gutenberg was perhaps the first large-scale effort to digitize books into electronic format. Most still rely on PDF (Portable Document Format) to read electronic documents.
Source: jblyberg
Now, eBook readers are mainstream, and so are many eBook formats. Any eBook reader app you might have on your Android device — authors, readers, and even publishers have plenty of options to choose from when it comes to popular eBook formats.
Is it difficult to understand? Sometimes.. but not if you take the time to understand the difference between different file formats, mainly EPUB, MOBI, AZW and PDF eBook Formats.
See also: 7 best e-reading apps for Android
EPUB
The EPUB format is probably the most popular of all the formats and is widely supported on all platforms. Most e-readers like Apple’s iBooks, Kobo, Adobe Digital Editions, Barnes & Noble’s Nook or Aldiko on Android among others (almost 300) support .epub files. Amazon Kindle so far has not, but it could change very soon.
The EPUB format is an open standard. That means it’s free and publicly available although there are specific rules for its use. The EPUB standard is maintained by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), a global trade and standards organization.
EPUB can display reflowable content (which can adjust its presentation to the output device) and fixed-width layouts. It is very similar to HTML rendered pages with images.
MOBI
The Mobipocket e-book format, commonly known as Mobi e-books, is another open standard for publishing e-books. It was purchased by Amazon. It is also cross platform. E-books in this format can have a .prc or .mobi extension.
MOBI formats can contain complex content, including advanced navigation controls, indexing support, and high levels of compression. For instance, readers can add their own pages, freehand drawings, annotations, bookmarks, bookmarks, edits, and notes if the device supports it.
It may also include a dictionary. MOBI formats are suitable for smaller screens because the image size limit is 64K. The image size and image format (GIF) make it unsuitable for larger display devices such as tablets.
MOBI can also render reflowable content and fixed width layouts.
AZW
AZW is a proprietary format developed by Amazon specifically for the Kindle e-reader. It is derived from the MOBI format but has better compression and encoding in addition to a few other changes.
The AZW format has found its place in many platforms with Kindle reading apps in addition to Kindle. But AZW files can only be obtained from the Amazon online bookstore.
The AZW format is DRM (Digital Rights Management) restricted and locked with a device id that is automatically registered with the Kindle buyer’s user account. And the free DRM book also has the AZW extension but it’s really no different from a MOBI file.
Adobe’s Pet Format – Portable Document Format or PDF is one of the oldest and most used eBook formats. It’s been open since 2001. The PDF format supports fixed-width layouts and reflowable content. Due to their popularity, many tools exist to create, edit, and secure PDF documents. For instance, you can easily convert web pages to PDF and archive them.
PDFs can be digitally signed and securely locked to prevent editing, and this has also boosted usage there along with the fact that they are viewable and printable on almost any platform.
The PDF format is preferred because PDF files preserve the original layout of any document with any type of data – text, drawings, multimedia, video, 3D, maps, full-color graphics, photos, and even business logic.
See Also: 5 Ways To Edit PDF Online Easily
Conclusion
Many formats can confuse us. But the good thing is that there exist tools that can help us convert PDF to EPUB, MOBI or HTML or convert PDF for Kindle readers.
We hope this basic guide has helped you understand all the popular eBook formats available. Which one do you use most often.
See next: How to create PDF files and convert PDF to Word, Excel in Facebook
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
