I am new to EPUB, and based on recommendations have started converting all my Christian writings that I give away from my
free Christian books ministry site.
I have discovered some things about EPUB (in general), the iPad and iBooks app, and also how to properly configure a webserver to host EPUB files (without them being seen as .ZIP files by Internet Explorer) that I wanted to share.
I was first drawn to EPUB by getting a new Apple iPad this week. I wanted to try to figure out how to create my existing Christian books that I already in HTML and PDF format to EPUB. This began an interesting journey of discovery.
I tried just about every EPUB creator and converter program I could find for either the Mac or PC. None did the job to my standards except for Atlantis Word Processor. I converted from my master .RTF files and had to do some page break issues as I originally used Apple's Pages word processor to make my word processor files. Once I created the EPUB's and checked them carefully (and of course validated them and preflighted them), I was ready to publish them on my webserver (or so I thought).
Internet Explorer 8 saw them as .ZIP files from my webserver (Linux running lighttpd light webserver). I found out the MIME types were not being set correctly, so I configured lighttpd.conf configuration file by adding:
".epub" => "application/epub+zip",
This fixed the problem and now Adobe Digital Editions opens the files right from Internet Explorer 8. I also tested this on my Mac Pro (using Apple Safari browser) and it downloads the EPUB file(s) correctly which can viewed with a program like Calibre.
Since I have written about 44 Christian books and writings, I plan to convert them one by one (due to word processor conversion page break issues with formatting in EPUB) to EPUB files to give away free from my web site.
Uploading through iTunes 9.1+ is so easy. You just drag the file to the "Books" tab in iTunes and drop it there, then force a Sync with the iPad. I understand that Apple just announced at the iPhone 4.0 software developer's meeting this week that all iPhones and iPod Touched will get a version of their iBooks app when the iPhone OS 4.0 is released this summer. That would add almost 85 million new EPUB capable reader devices worldwide (~50 million iPhones and 35 Million iPod ouched per Steve Jobs).
I am looking forward to see how EPUB grows and expands. I am glad making EPUB files is relatively easy (using Atlantis), ad hopefully my above MIME webserver config setting will help others to host their EPUB files on their web servers so users can download, save, and view their works.
Any hints or suggestions about making and distributing EPUB files would be greatly appreciated! I have not yet mastered table of contents creation, though I know Atlantis can do it somehow.
It was such a thrill to see books I had written appear in the iBooks app on my iPad. Now I can have the text flow and fonts changed at will. I also put the EPUB files on my Sony PRS-505 Reader and they work fine (except for no justification).
I chose not to embed fonts in the EPUB files to keep them smaller, and to avoid any copyright issues on including copyrighted fonts. I used Times New Roman as my default, so most devices will use that or another font that they have, such as the default Palatino font use on iBooks on the iPad.