Digital Books
 Epub Books |
 Kindle Books (Mobi) |
 PDF Books |
Which Format Do I Need?
EPUB (Most Readers, Except Kindle)
The EPUB format is widely supported. Most eReaders (Apple's iPad, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Adobe Digital Editions, Aldiko on Android among others) support .epub files. Amazon Kindle does NOT support epub at this time. EPUB displays re-flowable content (that can adjust its presentation to your device) and also fixed width layout - very similar to HTML pages with images.
MOBI (Kindle)
The Mobi ebook format is owned by Amazon. MOBI formats support indexing and compression. Some devices allow readers to add their own pages, freehand drawings, annotations, highlights, bookmarks, corrections, and notes. MOBI formats are suited for smaller screens because the image size limitation is 64K. Often image size and image format (GIF) puts MOBI at odds with larger display devices like tablets. MOBI also displays re-flowable content and fixed width layout.
PDF (All Readers & Computers)
Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is the most used. PDF format is preferred as PDF files preserve the original layout of any document which has any type of data - text, drawings, multimedia, video, 3D, maps, full-color graphics, photos, and even business logic. Many digital readers support this format as a 'drag and drop' feature after downloading to your computer. Even if you don't have a digital reader, choose the .pdf format as it will open using Adobe Reader on your computer.
