Reflowable, Fixed Layout or Web PDF?

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An ePub publication’s content is by default reflowable and most reading systems dynamically paginate and resize the content. Adapting content display to the screens rather than forcing the reader to pan and zoom around pre-formatted content (and, more generally, making content accessible to different devices and end users) is one of the key characteristics that distinguishes ePub from PDF, a portable document format designed to represent print-replica content.

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However, ePub3 can also, like PDF, represent fixed-layout, pre-paginated content. This can be useful for certain kinds of highly-designed content (illustrated children’s books, cookery books, digital magazines, etc.). In cases where there is a need to maintain the exact layout of the printed product within the eBook the page breaks are fixed, and text can appear over background images. The drawback is that the text cannot be re-sized, and so the readability is greatly reduced on smaller screens. These are designed to be viewed on a larger-screen device, such as a tablet.

 

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Reflowable ePub2 and accessible WCAG compliant ePub3

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This is the industry standard utilised by all popular devices and tablets except Amazon/Kindle. Our reflowable conversions are device-optimized to ensure a consistent reading experience across eBook readers and Apps. This means that you can resize the text, change the font and view an eBook on different screen sizes, and the text will reflow to fill the viewing area. We optimise images for legibility, and we minimise file size for speedy downloads. ePubs can be read on all general e-readers (except Kindles unless using a Kindle App) as well as tablet computers and smart phones including: iPads, iPhones, Kobo and Android tablets.

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Reflowable Kindle

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As of the end of June 2021 Amazon are removing their support for their proprietary Mobi format for its Kindle devices and adopting the ePub format. The KF8 (Kindle Format Eight) remains.

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Fixed layout ePub

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To convert books that have an elaborate or highly designed page layout, such as many children’s illustrated books or cookery books where the content on the page remains static. Changing the alignment could either change the flow of reading or change the meaning of the content.

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KF8

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This is Amazon’s own version of a fixed layout ePub3 format. KF8’s fixed layout is similar to ePub3’s fixed layout, however instead of having an xhtml file for each page, there is a file for each spread. For KF8, we use percentages instead of pixels for future-proofing. KF8 fixed format also has some extra code for magnified text boxes. Therefore there are a lot of things you can do in Kindle, and not in EPUB, and vice-versa.

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ePDFs

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In environments such as the classroom, PDFs remain a viable alternative to the ePub eBook, and their usability to readers can be increased in several ways. PDFs preserve the original layout of a document, giving you complete control over page design and presentation. PDFs will generally only be read on regular sized computer screens.

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We enhance PDFs with bookmarks, internal and external hyperlinks, and audio/video content with an optimised file size. We can further improve the accessibility of your PDFs for screen-reading and text-to-speech systems by tagging the structure and the reading order of content and providing new descriptive text for images.