EPUB eBook Files
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What are EPUB files, and how can I use them?
EPUB, short for "electronic publication" files, is an open file format for electronic books (eBooks). EPUB's main features include:
- Open source
- Free flowing text (no set page structure), with adjustable text/font sizes
- Inline images
- Readable by many eBook readers (e.g. Nook, Kindle) and tablets (e.g. iPad, Xoom, Galaxy Tab).
Many books, including textbooks, are available in EPUB format. EPUBs may be useful for your course for distributing textbooks, syllabi, articles, or other types of text-heavy handouts. To create an EPUB file, you will need specific software that can export EPUB files, such as Calibre, Adobe InDesign, Stanza, iWork Pages, or similar.
Users of your EPUB file will need to ensure they have EPUB reader software on their device. Some software EPUB readers available include:
- Desktop Computer Readers
- Mobile Device EPUB Readers
- iBooks App (iOS)
- Kindle App (iOS, Android)
- Stanza App (iOS)
- CoolReader
Some readers also offer extra functionality, such as text highlighting, bookmarking, note annotations, and dictionary word lookups. Alternatively, there are also hardware eBook readers that support EPUB files natively, such as the Nook or Kindle.
What are examples of successful uses of EPUB files?
The Human Health and Disease (INDE220-223) course started providing an EPUB version of their syllabus for students in Spring 2011, alongside a PDF version of the same syllabus. Many students have downloaded the file for reading in iBooks on their iPads.
How do I start using EPUB files?
Creating EPUB files is fairly simple with the right software. First, you will need software that can create/export EPUB files. We recommend using iWorks Pages, as it can easily export .doc files as .epub directly. Alternatively, Calibre can convert .pdf files into .epub, although the conversion does not always look identical, as the EPUB standard has fewer formatting options than the PDF standard.
After the file is created, you can distribute the EPUB file as you wish (e.g. through email, through a web page, through Dropbox.com). How users will retrieve the file will depend on their device (for mobile devices, they can usually open from email or a web page; desktop users simply download the file to their computer and open it; eBook device users may need to transfer the file to the device using USB).
Creating and reading EPUBs tutorial (visit video's YouTube page for High Resolution)
EPUB File Recommendations
EPUB files:
- Work best for documents that are heavy with text, and with inline images. Tables and graphs created in documents may not necessarily translate well into the EPUB format, unless they are images.
- Work best with source documents that use proper styling. Some software (such as iWorks Pages) use styles in a document to build the table of contents and page headings for EPUB files. Using document styles also ensures consistency in text formatting (font sizes, bolding/underlining/italicizing, etc).
- Do not support embedded video or audio.
- May have low image quality. Some software (such as Adobe InDesign) have options for customizing image compression in the EPUB files, but most software generally greatly compress images for lower resolutions. This is because EPUB files are intended to be read on mobile devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, eBook readers) which usually do not have high resolutions.
- Require all elements to be "inline". "Floating" elements (such as images or text) in a document will not be included when creating EPUB files.
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