When we decided to publish our books in eBook format, we did not just mean to produce files that can be opened on your computer. Of course, we think it is important to provide formats that are meant to be read on a computer screen, but we think it is more important to keep an eye on the huge development of eInk technology and the eBook readers that use it. We are convinced that, while we are quite at the beginning of this road, this is going to be the way many will read books in the near future. Therefore we plan to release eBooks that support the various formats of these devices. Of course we cannot support the myriads of file formats, but can select the most important ones (most of which can be transcoded into further formats). One of the basic formats of AMERICANA eBooks will be PDF – this is the version we release to be read on computers: the only format we plan to compile for this purpose. The rest – the majority – of the formats will be specifically eBook formats.
One of the best known and most widespread format is ePub. This can be read on iPads or iPhones (Apple’s iBooks), on Sony Reader and on Barnes & Nobles’ Nook as well among many others. Another format to be used is planned to be Mobipocket’s mobi. This is another widespread format that is highly similar to the Amazon Kindle format AZW – so close in fact that technically there is only one sign difference in the code. With that in mind we plan to use the mobi format in order to make the eBooks accessible on all devices that support this format, including not only eBooks readers but PDAs and smartphones and the many operation systems they use from Android to iOS.
Apart from these main formats we are looking into the possibility to publish our eBooks in further formats, like Microsoft’s LIT, or simple txt and html compilations. If you have any further suggestion, we would love to hear it.