When you come out of the printed books world, you get to hear the terms such as eBook, ePUB,Mobi, and pdf very commonly. By the time, you must be curious about these terminologies and why they are so popular. To say very precisely, eBook is a short form for ‘electronic books’ i.e. the books available on electronic medium whereas ‘ePUB’ ‘Mobi’ and ‘pdf’ are its most popular formats. ‘ePUB’ comes higher in the rank because it is the first open eBook standard which is based on current industry support and specifications. There are different methods and approaches available for converting from pdf to ePUB conversion and vice-versa.
eBook
The eBook is a general term used for”electronic book”. An eBook is typically a book that has been made compatible to be read on anelectronic medium.The main intention behind eBook conversion is not printing but to read it on acomputer screen or reading devices such as iPad or Kindle.It is a standard term for any electronic book available in different formats such as PDF, Mobi or EPUB. The popularity of eBooks can be seen by a large number of retailers and publishers providing support to eBook reading applications.
EPUB
EPUB or electronic publication formatis perhaps the most popular and open standard formatwhich is extensively supported across different platforms. The eBooks in ‘.epub’ format are supported by almost everyreading application like Adobe Digital Editions, Apple’s iBooks, Aldiko on Android and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Being an open standard format, it is availablewithout any cost.
In appearance, this format is very much alike in presence to HTML rendered pages along with images. The most significantfact about this format is that it is coming up as the first choice of the reading devices as well as thepublishing industry.
Adobe came up with a portable document format i.e. PDF which supports the portability of files.PDF is one of the prevalent and widely used eBook formats.It supports reflowing content and fixed width layout. Files with .pdf format offer the ability to be digitally signed. It can also secure the file and disable any kind of editing. Due to this reason, it is preferred where there is a need of only viewing or printing on any device.
This format is well known for maintaining the original layout of the file having adifferent type of data such as3D, drawings, text, multimedia, maps, video, photos, and full-colour graphics.
ePUB format is comparatively newer format compared to the PDF but it has a huge potential as it is created for the modern world where devices are of different screen sizes.
