E-book formats

E-books are very popular among book lovers from all over the world. After all, it is much more convenient to take a light reader with you than a heavy printed publication that takes up a lot of space. In addition, not every book can be found in printed form - rare, too old or, conversely, recently released editions that you can’t wait to read. Internet services, as opposed to bookstores, are replete with a variety of scientific, entertaining and educational literature for every taste.

In addition, each book is available in several formats, which significantly increases the user’s chances of comfortable familiarization with the publication.

Types of e-book formats

The main existing formats of electronic versions of books:

1. FB2 (FictionBook) - a fairly popular option created in Russia. The files in it are well structured and lightweight, easily archived and converted to other formats; almost every book on domestic portals is presented in this version. There are also special applications completely focused on FB2 files. There is one minus, but quite significant: most foreign e-books do not support FictionBook, with the exception of devices with Russian software.
2. PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) — focused mainly on small scanned A4 documents.It is convenient to work with it on a computer or laptop, but a reader with a smaller screen will not provide comfortable reading, because in this format it is impossible to enlarge the text and fit the entire page on the screen. PDF files are also quite bulky, which increases their download time. Moreover, this option is excellent for publications with a large number of illustrations or formulas.
3. EPUB (Electronic PUBlication) - a very common file type that is supported by most readers from both Russian and foreign manufacturers. EPUB documents are more like archived Internet pages: they have embedded images, text, graphics, and fonts. EPUB itself is very lightweight and does not require re-archiving or compression.
4. DjVu - similar to PDF, which makes it just as inconvenient even for wide-format readers due to small text and low image quality. Its advantage is that, unlike its “relative” PDF, in the presence of a separate text layer, editing is possible, as well as some interactive functions, for example, a table of contents.
5. DOC/DOCX and TXT - can be opened and edited on almost any electronic device, very popular for creating small text notes and texts. But in the case of e-books, files in such formats are often displayed incorrectly, which interferes with their perception.
6. MOBI (Mobipocket eBook) - created exclusively for Amazon Kindle electronic devices. It has a narrow range of possibilities for editing and formatting texts, but does not lose its popularity.

Reference! Recently, there has been an improved analogue of this format - KF8 (Kindle Format 8).

Which e-book format to choose

For a more comfortable reading experience, you should choose formats designed specifically for e-books. The list of book formats includes FB2, EPUB and MOBI. First of all, you should start from the characteristics of your reader and the list of formats available for use. The choice is also influenced by what actions will need to be performed with the text, just reading or editing and formatting.

Important! If you are publishing your own work, then you need to take care of the convenience of readers in advance and publish the book in several of the most common versions. This will not only expand the audience, but will also allow the publication to be placed on all major Internet resources for downloading and viewing e-books.

Do you need a reader that supports all formats?

Of course, the more formats an e-book supports, the better. On such a device it will not be difficult to correctly display a variety of publications and works, regardless of the volume, number of illustrations and fonts.

But even if the reader is designed for one format or several common ones, there is a fairly simple way out of the situation: conversion. The Internet space provides the user with the opportunity to easily convert a format to another while online, even if one of them is quite rare.

It is enough to know the correct name of the file types you need and have access to the Internet. Also, all popular libraries often present books in all popular formats at once. A list of them can usually be found in the description of the work itself, and you can easily download the one that is right for you.