ePubs

What IS an ePub?

ePub is a special file format designed to deliver an electronic book

In general, a .epub file is a .zip file with a different name, except, what is inside the .zip is a set of files meeting a strict specification

If I get a .epub, how can I open it and "read the book"?

You can read the book inside an ePub file on your PC, with an ePub reader program, such as Stanza

You can load the ePub onto an ePub Bookreader device, such as the Kobo, Nook, Sony, or, many other models

You can use Calibre to convert the ePub into a Mobi, and then load the Mobi into an Amazon Kindle Bookreader

You can also use the Stanza app to read an ePub on your iPhone/iPod (a poor substitute for a proper e-ink reading experience)

Where can I get lots of free ePubs? I like free!!

The place that invented the idea of eBooks, Gutenberg.org, has over 40,000 titles available free, in "plain vanilla", ePub, or Mobi format

Gutenberg only has OLD stuff, like "King Solomon's Mines" or "Wizard of Oz", where can I get NEW stuff free?

We get some free new stuff from the Baen Books Free Library

Google has a growing list of sites that offer free books, usually (as is the case with Baen) as samplers to entice purchases of later titles.

Google also includes free titles in the ever growing list at The Google eBookStore

There are also pirate sites passing around low quality ripoffs of the latest best sellers, and the ocasional trojan...

Are there any cracks or other free ePubs on this site?

The only ePubs downloadable from this site are completely legal, ePub versions of the content of several of the pages.

I know I can install PrimoPDF as a printer on my PC, and "just print" to get a pdf file, which driver do I install to "print" an ePub?

That is not likely to happen, the ePub format is much more involved than the pdf format, a pdf is pages, an ePub is a Book

However, as a "seed" ePub for later editing, there is a Firefox add-on that will save the current web-page as a single-page ePub

If there won't be a print-driver, how can I - how did You - make the ePubs on this site?

In an ePub Publishing program - We use Calibre as a format converter and validator, with most editing being done in Sigil

2014 UPDATE Open Office Writer (Which is FREE!), can "import" many different types of Word Processor files, and edit them into great looking documents, AND, when you install the "writer2epub.oxt" plug-in, it will "export" a well formed ePub (which can't be re-imported), other tools can be expected to become available

How popular are these ePubs, do you think they will still be around next year?

There are several bookreaders that read ePub books, and, ebooks for Amazon's Kindle (which uses a different format) have been selling more copies than all print formats combined, since mid May of 2011 (according to Amazon) - this counts only paid downloads for Kindle, not any of the sites providing free copies.

It sounds as though our company should do up an ePub version of the user manual, is that a good idea?

Including an ePub edition of your user manual on the product distribution CD is a smart move; Can2Can is no longer in a position to help you with developing the three versions (print, web, and ePub are different media and require different page formats, "automatic" conversions always need some skilled touch-up, often a lot more)

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