A Quick Reference for Ebook-Related Terminologies

Here are some quick definition of terms related to ebooks or ebook devices. The list is by no means extensive and complete, but will be expanded from time to time.

Electronic paper (e-paper): A display technology that mimics the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. E-paper uses an electronic ink (e-ink) to display the text or images which has the ability to hold the text indifinitely without drawing any power. Electricity is only used when changing the text or images. Electronic paper is not digital paper, which is a pad to handwritten digital documents with a digital pen.

E-ink: An electronic ink technology for e-paper displays manufactured by the E Ink Corporation. The first ebook reader to use the e-ink technology is the Sony LIBRIe released in 2004. Almost all ebook readers manufactured after the LIBRIe use the e-ink technology due to its superior paper-like quality, non-backlit screen that allows readability under sunlight and eliminates eye-strain, and saves energy as it doesn't require electricity to hold images on screen.

Mobipocket: Mobipocket.com SA is a French company which produces the free Mobipocket Reader, a universal reader for PDAs. Mobipocket.com was incorporated in 2000 and bought by Amazon.com in 2005. Mobipocket also has a creator program to create and convert contents from other formats into MOBI formats. The Mobipocket reader and creator program can be downloaded from www.mobipocket.com.

DRM: An acronym for Digital Rights Management (or sometimes referred to as Digital Restriction Management). DRM refers to the technology to control the access to digital media or devices, e.g. the ebooks and ereaders. It prevents the copying and conversion of digital media into other formats by end-users or limits the access as defined by publishers or copyright holders.

PLR: Private Label Rights (PLR) refers to the type of content that can be bough or sold. Buyers can invest in PLR materials by claiming authorship of the content that has been altered or used. PLR products are generally available at affordable prices because the contents are shared among many buyers.

MOBI: Is a format used by the Mobipocket Reader and has the .mobi and .prc file extension. The .prc is used because PalmOS PDAs only supports the .prc and .pdb file extensions. Kindle uses the proprietary AZW format which is similar to the Mobi format with only a small difference in serial number scheme.

Ebook File Formats:

This is a list of some common formats used to produce ebook-type documents, but not necessarily compatible or used in all ebook devices.

• Plain Text: Published as .txt
• HTML: The markup language for most web pages
• MOBI: Published as .mobi or .prc
• AZW: Amazon's proprietary format, used by Kindle.
  
• eReader (formerly Palm Digital Media/Peanut Press): Published as .pdb
• Portable Document Format: Published as .pdf
• Desktop Author: Published as .dnl or .exe
• DjVu: Published as .djvu
• PostScript: Published as .ps
• Microsoft LIT: Published as .lit
• Newton eBook: Published as .pkg
• Apabi: Published as .xeb or .ceb
• Libris: Published as .lbr or .bin
• TomeRaider: Published as .tr2 or .tr3
• FictionBook: Published as .fb2
• IDPF: Published as .epub
• SSReader: Published as .pdg (used by a popular digital library in China)