![]() Amazon used MOBI for its Kindle devices, while Apple used EPUB for what were then iBooks and are now Apple Books.įor a while, it looked like we might end up with a single standard, as most companies adopted EPUB. ![]() How does this play out in practice? Let’s demonstrate.A recently-announced change by Amazon might seem to open up the possibility of reading Apple Books on Kindle devices – but sadly this won’t be the case … Understanding ebook formatsįor years, there were two main competing ebook file formats: MOBI and EPUB. Once you open it in Dropbox and export it to the reader application, it becomes a permanent part of your mobile book collection and is then maintained by the reader application and not Dropbox. Thus when you open the file in Dropbox, it becomes available to Dropbox mobile (assuming you have data connectivity where you are). You need to take the book off the shelf in order for it to be available in the Dropbox cache (depending on the settings you specify, Dropbox for iOS will catch anywhere from 250-1000MB of data on the device, more than enough for ebooks). Think of your Dropbox folder like a virtual shelf when it comes to your book collection. Unlike the traditional desktop Dropbox application, the mobile versions for Dropbox do not actively push out their contents to the mobile user-ostensibly to cut down on wasted bandwidth and overage charges. Here it’s important to stress one aspect of the Dropbox iOS application. Open up the Dropbox app and navigate to the /Books/ directory we created earlier in the tutorial. Once you have the files copied on your computer to the appropriate directories, it’s time to grab your iPad. You can customize your sub-folders as you see fit. The last one isn’t as dry as it seems, we copy game manuals over to use during play. We further subdivided our books folder into /Books/, /Comics/, and /Manuals/. Once you have Dropbox set up (or if you already have an account and everything is ready to go) make a new folder in the root of your Dropbox account /Books/. While you don’t have to install the desktop app, it really defeats the whole push behind this effortless syncing tutorial, so we highly suggest it. They provide a great getting started tutorial that will walk you through setting up your account and installing the desktop application. If you don’t have one already, head over to and sign up for one. Getting Started with the Basic Setupīefore we proceed you’ll need to have a few things in order. It’s important, however, that the application you choose supports the “export” function and will allow Dropbox to import a file into it-more on this later in the tutorial. You can substitute your own reader applications in depending on the formats you want to read. If, for example, you have no MOBI formatted ebooks, you can skip downloading the Kindle app as Stanza will handle ePub, PDF, and Comic book container formats (like CBZ) just fine. The free applications you require are dependent on the kind of ebooks you read. A free copy of Stanza eBook Reader and Kindle for iOS.A free copy of the Dropbox iOS application.A free Dropbox account and the desktop Dropbox application.An iOS device (we’re using the iPad because it’s best suited for reading with its larger screen).For this tutorial you’ll need the following things:
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