[ 102 ]
[]Th WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EBOOK FORMATS[ DOWNLOADS AND STREAMING ]What you need to know
about ebook formats
IF YOU’RE DOWNLOADING EBOOKS FROM NON-OFFICIAL STORES
OR OTHER LOCATIONS, THERE ARE A FEW THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
[NATHAN TAYLOR]SO LET’S TALK ebooks. If you’re a reader
(and you probably are, since you’re reading a
magazine right now), ebooks are pretty damn
awesome. They can be read on mobiles and
tablets, can sometimes even be read out to you
with text to speech, and are excellent travelling
companions, adding no weight to your luggage.
But the world of ebooks can be confusing.
Unless you’re happy in a walled garden, where
you buy all your books from one vendor and
never try to download anything from someone
else, you’re going to come across issues of file
formats, DRM and compatibility. Thankfully,there are good tools for dealing with all of these.
But let’s start by talking about the file formats.EBOOK FILE FORMATS
There are, unfortunately, a huge host of different
ebook formats being used today. Some even
come in plain text or as Word documents.
But when it comes to the majority of
downloaded ebooks, the primary formats
you need to be aware of are:
* EPU B (.epub) is perhaps the most common
format you will encounter outside of the
Amazon store. It supports images andsounds, as well as interactive objects embedded
in pages. It’s open source and almost
universally supported by ebook apps and
readers (including Kobo) — with the very
notable exception of the Amazon Kindle.
* Mobipocket (.mobi, .prc) is the second most
popular ebook format and widely supported by
ebook reader apps. It supports images and
interactive objects (with Javascript), but no
sound. It’s natively supported by the Amazon
Kindle and Kobo eReaders.
* AZW (.azw) is Amazon’s proprietary format,
essentially a compressed variation on .mobi.
If you download a book from Amazon, it will
likely come in this format. It’s not supported
on Kobo ebook readers, however.
* PDF is Adobe’s portable document format,
used in business and government documents
since time immemorial. There are apps for all
platforms. Kobo eReaders support it natively,
but Amazon’s Kindle does not.
* .cbr and .cbz are special, being designed
specifically for comic books. They’re essentially
a bunch of jpg images of pages, ordered and
contained in a zip file. A comic book reader app
will support it, as well as Kobo readers.
The Kindle does not support it, however.EBOOK READER APPS
If you want to read ebooks on your mobile,
you’ll need the right app. We recommend:
* Google Play Books: It talks to the Google Play
store (much like Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s
iBooks), but you can also upload EPUB and
PDF format books sourced elsewhere and read
them. Unfortunately, it no longer supports
.mobi. It’s available on both Android and iOS.
* The Amazon Kindle app, available for
Android and iOS, essentially turns your mobile
into a Kindle, with the same format support
(.mobi, .a zw).
* iBooks, for iOS: A lot like Google Play Books
(except for iTunes rather than Google Play),
it supports EPUB and PDF formats, and you
can use iTunes to upload books acquired
outside the store.
* Although Aldiko has been an old-time fave for
both iOS and Android, we currently preferPROJECT GUTENBERG
One of the best sources of ebooks on the internet, Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) is an
enormous archive of 53 , 000 public domain works, including classic books for which the copyright
has expired. Where Amazon or Barnes & Noble might still charge you for Jane Austin, Mary Shelley,
HG Wells, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle or Oscar Wilde, you can get them all for free here —
and much more.Google Play books has a simple and effective interface
Astonishing Comic Reader is free on Google Play. for reading EPUB and PDF books.