It supports more styles, fonts, and layouts.īehind the scenes, both formats are extremely similar to the MOBI format. Whenever you buy or download an ebook from Amazon, you will receive it on your device in one of the two formats. AZW3 arrived in 2011 with the release of the Kindle Fire reader. AZW is the older of the two it debuted alongside the first Kindle back in 2007. The AZW and AZW3 extensions are Amazon's two proprietary ebook formats. If you have a book in the EPUB format that you want to read on your Kindle, you can convert ebooks into a different format using Calibre. Almost all mainstream e-readers and computer operating systems support the format, but publishers can also wrap it in any DRM system of their choosing (although you can remove the DRM on any ebook you own).Īnd the downside? Amazon Kindle devices cannot read it (except for the Kindle Fire tablet). In many ways, it's the ebook equivalent of the trusty MP3-both in a good and bad way.
#EBOOK MEANING FULL#
Although not often seen, it can even support color images, SVG graphics, interactive elements, and full videos. Initially developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (which is now part of the World Wide Web Consortium), it superseded the old Open ebook format (OEB) in 2007.īecause EPUB is free to use, open standard, and vendor-independent, it has grown to become the most common ebook format. In this article, we look at some of the most common formats, explain their pros and cons, and tell you which readers support them.ĮPUB is the most widely adopted ebook file format. To complicate matters further, not all e-readers support all formats. Unlike MP3s, which you can throw onto any music player and expect them to work, ebooks are a maze of proprietary and open standard formats. Their lower cost and more portable nature means that they now account for 30 percent of all book sales in the United States.īut it's not all good news for consumers. More people are reading ebooks than ever before.