This page has historic interest only. Check out the updated version.

An electronic book (commonly abbreviated e-book) is a text and image-based publication which can be read on a computer or other digital devices such as an e-book reader.

The rise of multimedia digital downloads in recent years has been truly extraordinary. The impact has been so great in respect of digital music downloads that they have more than doubled in the past 4 years and caused a continuing decline in sales of CDs. This has led to some music labels have even decided to stop releasing singles on a physical format. We do not forsee that major book publishing companies will abandon paperbacks. However, the expansion of digital downloads equally applies to books. The biggest booksellers have reported that they now sell more digital books than paperbacks.

Digital books are well established. Project Gutenberg, an online library of books that can be downloaded free of charge, has been expanding its collection since 1971. Almost its entire library consists of books that are available in the public domain, although there are a few copyright texts which are also included.

The popularity of digital e-books has been accelerated by a number of dedicated portable e-book readers. Amazon Kindle, Sony’s eBook readers, and Barnes and Noble nook are extremely popular devices which have enabled readers to conveniently access a huge library of books, magazines and newspapers on the move. What is particularly noteworthy is that Linux is the operating system that runs each of these devices.

However, Linux is also an attractive way of reading e-books on a desktop computer or notebook. Linux has a good range of open source software which helps users to organise their e-book collection, catch up on a novel, or even to create and publish their own e-book.

To provide an insight into the free software that is available, we have compiled a list of 7 of our favorite e-book software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to read, organise and create electronic books. We give our highest recommendation to Calibre.

So, let’s explore the 7 e-book tools at hand. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

This page has historic interest only. Check out the updated version.

e-book Tools Calibre A complete e-library solution Sigil WYSIWYG e-book editor FBReader e-book reader that makes it simple to access free literature Lucidor Simple e-book reader Evince Document viewer for multiple document formats Okular Powerful universal document viewer EPUBReader Firefox add-on which lets you read ePub-files in the browser

Return to our complete collection of recommended free and open source software including our latest additions.