A quick guide to eBook file formats. Big Picture stuff and almost guaranteed to contain rash generalisations.
To summarise, right up front, there are three main types of ‘electronic documents’ of interest here:
- mobi
- epub
For our purposes, I’m going to keep this simple: pdfs are NOT really ebooks. We can come back to that later – maybe another post or have a look here – but for now we’ll look at mobi and epub. Here’s the promised Big Picture view:
Type | Comment |
---|---|
mobi | Amazon. Kindles; including the ‘hardware’ reader and the software apps. |
epub | Everyone else. Other hardware readers, like my Kobo, and assorted reader apps |
You can find epub and mobi eBook files at a number of places online. Some free and a lot costing money (Amazon etc). We’ll definitely cover sources soon, but in another post.
Now, some quick background:
mobi
This was a separate company – with their own ebook format – and Amazon bought it some years ago. They have also enhanced it into the .azw (and other?) formats. Key here is they added DRM; Digital Rights Management. This is to ensure you have the rights to that file/book; aka Have You Paid For It? Yes=you can read it; No=… you can guess the rest.
epub
More of an open standard. If you know the Internet, these are basically web-pages-in-a-file; yes, they are HTML. My understanding is they can have DRM, but it’s not compulsory.
But, surely they can all get along and support each other…
- Can a Kindle device or app read/use epub files? No, not unless you convert them
- Can the other readers/apps use mobi files? Probably No, not unless you convert them.
🙁
Your Local Library
Your library probably has at least one way for you to access eBooks. You can do this via:
- PC app or Browser (yuk)
- Phone or Tablet app
- Physical eBook reader (like my Kobo)
Important: as a general rule, you can’t use a Kindle with your library’s eBooks. Not sure why, maybe something to do with the licensing of Amazon’s mobi/azw ebooks.
But life is never quite simple. Your library probably also has assorted offerings (aka apps) like BorrowBox, cloudLibrary, RBdigital etc.
Think of it like this: these are a bit like streaming the book; as you do with music (Spotify) or video (Netflix). You don’t see ‘files’ and you don’t download them. Hey, it’s an analogy; don’t overthink it 🙂
These are ‘closed, one-stop’ app systems; you log in, find the book and read it in that one app.
In the background, cloudLibrary uses ePub books, with DRM. Not sure about the other systems.
Some library apps also support eAudiobooks and eMagazines. But that’s for another day…