Now that sounds like a dumb question, right? You might assume that you just want to be selling books in as many places as possible.Įxcept if you agree to sell your work exclusively through Amazon, you get to participate in Kindle Unlimited (KU). Fine.īut are you going to be exclusive to Amazon? Or sell via Apple and everyone else as well? So you’re going to have to create a mobi file. So, OK, you’re definitely going to sell your ebook on Amazon. Only in Canada and some other minor markets does Amazon have anything less than an absolute lock on the market. Their dominance of the UK market is somewhat similar. How come? Because Amazon (depending on what stats you look at) accounts for about 75-85% of all ebooks sold in the United States. The dumb choice is to sell your book with Apple and Kobo and all the rest, but not with Amazon. Now, there are basically two smart choices there, and one dumb one.

All e-stores – Amazon, and Apple, and everyone else.

Apple and Kobo and everyone else except Amazon.

When you are choosing your file format, you basically need to answer the question of where you want to sell your ebooks. What File Format Should You Choose For Your Ebook? In short, epub and mobi files are basically indistinguishable to users – with the exception that mobi files are kept within Amazon’s walled garden.

Mobi files have embedded “digital rights management” (DRM) that allow Amazon to restrict your mobi files only to devices that are associated with your Amazon account.

Allows Amazon to control your ebook from afar – and in particular,.

The only differences between a mobi file and an epub file is that the MOBI file:

Fit the text to whatever device you are usingĪnd what is a Mobi file? It is the same thing, in almost every respect.

The most universal and flexible ebook file format is the EPUB. When you think about it, an ebook is a bit like a special sort of webpage: a way to get text and images to appear on screen. You have to start converting your Word document to some other file format, and you don’t know which one to pick.

Only now it seems that ebooks are a totally different kind of beast from Word. What you have is a massive Word document and you can’t wait for the world to read it.

Epub into mobi