Beautiful ebooks (reflowable)

amoroso · 10-20-2010, 07:12 AM

What are your favorite examples of beautifully formatted ebooks in popular reflowable formats such as ePub or Mobi?

I mean ebooks that provide good tradeoffs between typographical beauty, adaptability to reflowing and user customization, consistency of presentation across reading systems and file format conversion, and that are possibly available for free download so that they can be enjoyed and studied. In other words, outstanding books that take advantage of formats especially designed for ebooks.

This query is inspired by another thread about using PDF for generating beautiful formatting.

FlorenceArt · 10-20-2010, 07:55 AM

I usually don't much care about typography and formatting, except when it's too horrible to ignore, which unfortunately happens much too often. The only book whose formatting I noticed in a good way is Ulysses, in the Penguin Modern Classics collection (ePub). I just wish it had been proofread as lovingly as it was formatted. There are not THAT many OCR errors, but still too many for a book like this, which is already hard enough to understand.

Ken Irving · 10-20-2010, 08:31 AM

First on my list is Zelda Pinwheel's version of Three Men in a Boat.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48377

I came across this when I was trying out freebies and mostly finding junk with typewriter quotes, weird page breaks and the like, so it was a cool, shady oasis in a very big desert. I have tried it across a variety of PC-based epub readers, as well as the Nook. Allowing for differences in screen size, the pages essentially look the same on every reader I have - like they came directly from a nicely formatted paper book. She marked it as an experiment "to see how far i could push the epub format," and I'd say it worked out very well. This and Elizabeth Castro's EPUB Straight to the Point, with its attached samples of Walden, are the two things I'm using to study epub formatting.

GeoffC · 10-20-2010, 08:46 AM

LDBoblo · 10-20-2010, 08:56 AM

I haven't seen any so far. Apart from the examples above, you may take a look at ePub Zen Garden for some samples of presentation variation.

GeoffC · 10-20-2010, 09:04 AM

Shame epubzengarden hasn't expanded their range ...

10-20-2010, 07:12 AM	#1
amoroso Groupie Posts: 185 Karma: 1004070 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Italy Device: Kindle for Android, Google Play Books	Beautiful ebooks (reflowable) What are your favorite examples of beautifully formatted ebooks in popular reflowable formats such as ePub or Mobi? I mean ebooks that provide good tradeoffs between typographical beauty, adaptability to reflowing and user customization, consistency of presentation across reading systems and file format conversion, and that are possibly available for free download so that they can be enjoyed and studied. In other words, outstanding books that take advantage of formats especially designed for ebooks. This query is inspired by another thread about using PDF for generating beautiful formatting.

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10-20-2010, 07:55 AM	#2
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	I usually don't much care about typography and formatting, except when it's too horrible to ignore, which unfortunately happens much too often. The only book whose formatting I noticed in a good way is Ulysses, in the Penguin Modern Classics collection (ePub). I just wish it had been proofread as lovingly as it was formatted. There are not THAT many OCR errors, but still too many for a book like this, which is already hard enough to understand.

10-20-2010, 08:31 AM	#3
Ken Irving Writer Posts: 86 Karma: 65586 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: New York Device: Nook "1st Edition" Wireless, Nook4PC, NookStudy, Kindle4PC	First on my list is Zelda Pinwheel's version of Three Men in a Boat. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48377 I came across this when I was trying out freebies and mostly finding junk with typewriter quotes, weird page breaks and the like, so it was a cool, shady oasis in a very big desert. I have tried it across a variety of PC-based epub readers, as well as the Nook. Allowing for differences in screen size, the pages essentially look the same on every reader I have - like they came directly from a nicely formatted paper book. She marked it as an experiment "to see how far i could push the epub format," and I'd say it worked out very well. This and Elizabeth Castro's EPUB Straight to the Point, with its attached samples of Walden, are the two things I'm using to study epub formatting.

10-20-2010, 08:46 AM	#4
GeoffC Chocolate Grasshopper ... Posts: 27,599 Karma: 20821184 Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Scotland Device: Muse HD , Cybook Gen3 , Pocketbook 302 (Black) , Nexus 10: wife has PW

10-20-2010, 08:56 AM	#5
LDBoblo Wizard Posts: 1,385 Karma: 16056 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Asia Device: Kindle 3 WiFi, Sony PRS-505	I haven't seen any so far. Apart from the examples above, you may take a look at ePub Zen Garden for some samples of presentation variation.

10-20-2010, 09:04 AM	#6
GeoffC Chocolate Grasshopper ... Posts: 27,599 Karma: 20821184 Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Scotland Device: Muse HD , Cybook Gen3 , Pocketbook 302 (Black) , Nexus 10: wife has PW	Shame epubzengarden hasn't expanded their range ...