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ePub Reader Software

Several different software programs either support or plan on supporting the ePub format.

The following is a list of the programs that claim to support the format, and my testing of it.
Each section has a link to the program's web site, an overall rating (1 - 10, 10 being the highest), a section with ratings of separate features (note: "Ease of use" is very subjective, and consists of a composite of Bookmarking, single-key page turning, navigation, etc), and my comments about the programs support of the format and other features and shortcomings.
Please note that the focus of these reviews is on the programs support of the ePub standard. Other functions and uses of the software may be covered briefly, but is not the focus of this review.

Update: 8/18/2008
I've decided to re-vamp the way I'm testing format support. I am now using each program to open ebooks from eight different sources. (See the Books page for more information on where to find ePub books.) I'm opening one file from each of the sources on that page (plus a sample from dotReader's website, and an old file from my site, and a new one after I updated my ePub creation process.)
Each book is now ranked from 0 to 8. 0 means that it was unable to open any of the sample ePub files, and 8 means that it was able to open all of them.
(If you want a copy of all the books I use to test for this score, e-mail me.)

These reviews were made as of: October 12th, 2007, and updated on the dates shown below.
The version number of the software reviewed is listed below. Any updates to the reviews will happen at the release of a new version, and the time of the update and the version of the software will be noted in the appropriate section below.
If anyone is wondering where I hear about these programs, I primarily use two sources: Google, and Teleread.

Reviewed Programs

Adobe Digital Editions

Link: Adobe Digital Editions
ePub Format Support: 8
TOC support: 10
Ease of use: 7
Over-all Rating: 8
Version: 1.5

Pros:

Cons:

Of all the programs reviewed here, Digital Editions was the best at opening ePub files generated by any processes. And it has library management and bookmarking features.
The downsides are that the library management features are really light on features, and it's really hard to see the interface elements. Possibly the biggest annoyance is also it's greatest strength: it's written in Flash. This lets the application run on almost any platform, updates are automatic, and it's easy to install. The downside of this is that you can't download the installer to install on other computers, you have to go to Adobe's website from each of them. Also, because of the Flash interface, it doesn't act like a regular program: there are no menu bars, you can't right-click on anything, and you have to have Flash installed to install Digital Editions. This last one isn't really a problem, almost everyone has Flash installed these days, but in principle you shouldn't have to install a whole different program just to install the one you really want.

Updated on 5/20/2008:
Version 1.5 is now out. I've played with it a little, and the only difference I can see is that they've added DRM support so you can now read copy protected PDF's with Digital Editions.
This version was also supposed to support the latest version of OS X, but I haven't had time to test it yet.

FB Reader

Link: FBReader
ePub Format Support: 6
TOC support: 0
Ease of use: 8
Over-all Rating: 6
Version: 0.8.7b

Pros:

Cons:

FB Reader has the second best ePub standard support out of all browsers tested. It opened all files without errors, but displayed some images and headings differently than the HTML said it should be handled. Also, lack of support for the NCX table of contents specified in the ePub standard makes navigating books more difficult than it could be.

Updated on 11/27/2007:
An OS X build has been contributed, and a few minor updates have been released. Still no support for ePub table of contents.

Updated on 5/20/2008:
Version 0.8.17 is now out. There haven't been any ePub related updates since the reviewed version, so I won't do a new review yet. The updates consist mostly of bug fixes and support for a few more platforms.

Well, I've updated the format support score for FBReader. I don't quite know how to score this one. Most of the other programs either would open a file, or not open a file (some with minor formatting errors, but if it opened it, all the text was there at least.) FBReader will open every file in my test suite. Some of them (my file, and the one from Adobe's site) it displays perfectly. Others (Notably, the one from Web-books), it only displays one chapter from the book, the rest of the book is just no there.
One could argue that only test books that pass epubcheck verification should be tested, but as the standard evolves there will be books based on the older spec out in the world. A reader program should still be able to open these books.

Openberg

Link: Openberg
ePub Format Support: 8
TOC support: 0
Ease of use: 5
Over-all Rating: 5
Version: 5

Pros:

Cons:

Openberg was able to open all types of files thrown at it. The low score comes from the cons listed above. Since Openberg is a plug-in for Firefox, it brings with it certain advantages and disadvantages. If you're surfing a web site that has a link to a ePub file, the file opens in the browser and you're off and reading. This is a great thing from a usability standpoint, but there are problems with the approach, as noted above.

Mobipocket

Link: Mobipocket
ePub Format Support: 6
TOC support: 1
Ease of use: 8
Over-all Rating: 8
Version: 6.2

Pros:

Cons:

As far as software goes, this is hands down the best one of the bunch. The interface, number of features, ease of use, and platform support FAR out-classes anything else in this review.

Updated on 11/27/2007:
Version 6.1 is out, with minor changes. ePub support is slightly better. And I stress the slightly. It seems from my testing that Mobipocket can now import any of the ePub files I throw at it... sort of. It imports them fine, but still doesn't support the ePub table of contents. It shows the contents menu, but doesn't have any entries in it. As far as importing goes, it's still a fickle process. The first file imported imports beautifully. After that, if you want to read another ePub book, you have to close then re-open Mobipocket, then it will import and read the book, but it won't show up in the Mobipocket library.

Update for 5/20/2008:
Version 6.2 is out, and I've just downloaded it and put it through it's paces. I've imported a handful of ePub books with this version and haven't had a single error. I've been able to import multiple books in a row, and all of them imported without any errors. All the books made it into the library, and I was able to open all of them. All CSS and images and such appear to display properly.
The only real problem I have with Mobipocket now is that the ePub table of contents does not display properly. In all of the books I imported, none of them displays the table of contents. The "Content" button only displays "First Page" for all ePub books. This probably isn't a big deal for fiction, but could get irritating for other types of literature.
I also have a very small pet peeve for version 6.2: You can only import one book at a time. This wouldn't be such a big deal in daily use, as I don't usually download that many new books at once, but when I have 190 ePub files to import, it gets to be irritating fairly quickly.

dotReader

Link: dotReader
ePub Format Support: 3
TOC support: 0
Ease of use: 7
Over-all Rating: 4
Version: 0.11.3

Pros:

Cons:

This program had trouble with almost all the ePub files I tried to open. It will open some, but won't open the ones from Adobe's website or Feedbooks.com. It will open some hand-created files, but not others.
I think the reason for this that Digital Editions uses an .xpgt file for handling layouts that isn't in the spec, and I think dotReader is choking on it. What should happen, is if the software sees something that it can't interpret, it should ignore it. All the other readers in this review do that and open the files fine.
It also had problems displaying some images and headings as the HTML said they should be handled.

Stanza

Link: Stanza
ePub Format Support: Windows: 8 OS X: 8 iPod: 7
TOC support: iPhone: 9 Desktop: 8
Ease of use: iPhone: 9 Desktop: 6
Over-all Rating: 8
Version: Beta 12

Pros:

Cons:

I'm going to review the desktop and iPhone/iPod Touch versions separately below, as they each have strengths and weakness that they don't share.

Desktop

Let me preface this by stating that the program is still in beta, thus the fairly high score despite the lack of some features that are normally a show-stopper for me.
One of the nicest things about Stanza is it's multi-column display. By default, it displays a book in three columns, but the number is customizable.
The OS X desktop version of Stanza was able to open any ePub file I threw at it. (With the new Beta 12, the Windows version now opens all books just as good as the OS X version.) It did not correctly display and center titles that use a HTML header tag - the title on these books was the same size and typeface as the rest of the document. The cover image, for all books that include one, was displayed, but the scaling was inconsistent. One book had a small cover that was blown up so large it was blurry, and others had a large cover that was not scaled down -the cover image spanned several pages. (again, all of these books display perfectly in Digital Editions.) Note: The FAQ on the Stanza website states that formatting is stripped by design.
One of the things missing is library management features. This doesn't really bother me; I name all of my books with the title and store them in folders by genre, but most of the other readers have it, and it's a nice feature if you have a lot of books, or need to find a particular book quickly.
Notes on the Windows version:
I also tested the ability of Stanza to export a text file to ePub format. Stanza did a fairly good job of making a decent ePub file from completely non-formatted text. I was impressed by this. The only weirdness was a lack of author and title information (I'd be more surprised if it DID find this info from a non-marked up text file) and some words were weirdly hyphenated. I'll take that for a zero-effort conversion! Looking at the raw text from several different export options, Stanza appears to auto-hyphenate any long word so that any reader software can re-flow the document more easily. This makes the output look nice, but in my personal opinion harder to read; I imagine this can be most appreciated on devices with a smaller screen. With a little more work (this is still a beta app, remember) I'd use Stanza for all my work converting books to ePub.
Stanza does support ePub TOC, but it's in the "Go" menu. This brings up a larger issue with Stanza, ease of use. Stanza has all kinds of amazing features that are easy to use once you find and get used to them, but finding them can sometimes be tricky. (After this review was originally posted, I was corrected about several features that I said the application was lacking.)

iPhone/iPod Touch

If you have an iPhone (or an iPod touch with the latest software update), you can download Stanza reader for it.
The interface is very nice. Unlike the desktop version, library management is built in to the mobile version. You can display books by: Title, Author, Latest Read, or Latest Downloads. You can also create custom categories and put any loaded books into them. Page turning works by swiping your finger left or right (or tapping the edge of the screen). There is a small (1 to 2 second) delay when changing files inside a book(in most ePub books, different chapters are in different files inside the ePub container), but none when changing pages in the same chapter.
ePub support is both better, and worse than the desktop version. Book titles and cover images displayed at the correct size and format, but some of the books that opened fine on the desktop version gave an error when opening in the mobile version. (Upon further review, the files it had trouble opening had minor errors when ran through epubcheck) Also, the mobile version does properly display and use the ePub table of contents for navigation. One missing feature that would be nice would be bookmarks.
Stanza does load books onto the device, and you can read them off-line. If you want public domain books, it couldn't be simpler to load them. Go to "Online Catalog" then "Feedbooks" and start browsing. The book is downloaded when you click it's title. Loading titles from the Desktop version is equally simple, but nowhere near as intuitive. To load them: open your book in the desktop app, go to "Tools", then "Enable Sharing". Now go to your iPhone/iPod Touch, Click "Shared Books" click on your computer’s name, then click the title of the book to download it. This usually takes 1 to 3 seconds, depending on the size of the book.

Bookworm

Link: Bookworm
ePub Format Support: 8
TOC support: 10
Ease of use: 7
Over-all Rating: 7
Version: ???

Pros:

Cons:

Bookworm is an online ePub reader. You upload your own files, and are then able to access them from anywhere with an internet connection. Bookworm also does not share your library, so you can upload non-public domain files that you own without breaking the copyright.
(A version number/description isn't listed anywhere on the site, so I can't list the version reviewed.)

Uploading books:
When I first reviewed Bookworm, I had trouble uploading and reading some books that did not perfectly meet the ePub specification. Bookworm has since been updated to better handle non-perfect ePub files. It now opens almost everything without errors. Some books that epubcheck returns a list of errors on still won't open, but that's hardly Bookworm's fault.

Bookworm loads books one file at a time, so if each chapter is a separate file within the container, each chapter will be loaded one at a time and give a link to the next chapter. If the chapters are all within one file inside the container, they all get loaded at once. It should be noted that the "Remember what chapter I'm on" feature doesn't work correctly in this case.
Note: This has been fixed since I first reviewed Bookworm. It now properly splits out these books into their chapters, and remembers where you left off reading.
The ePub TOC is displayed in a column along the left hand side of the book for easy access at any time, and highlights the chapter that you're currently reading.
Bookworm has basic library management features, in that you can sort by title, author, or date added; though you can't search for a book. (I have been informed that search features are coming soon.)

I like the idea here, you can upload your books, and get to them anywhere you go without having to bring anything with you. Also, the implementation is very well done, the interface is nicer than some of the desktop readers I've reviewed.
Bookworm's greatest strength however, is also it's greatest weakness. If you don't have an internet connection, you can't get to your books. This is, however, the perfect tool for taking your own book collection anywhere that has an internet connection.
I'd also like to point out another advantage to Bookworm. Almost every one of the readers I review fixes at least one bug that drives me crazy with every new release, but you have to download and install the newest version first. Since Bookworm is a web application, you get the newest version every time you visit the site. (And I'll add that all of the show-stopping problems I found with Bookworm were fixed within a day or so of my posting this review; I'm impressed.)

Calibre

Link: Calibre
ePub Format Support: 8
TOC support: 10
Ease of use: 6
Over-all Rating: 7
Version: 0.4.109
Reviewed on: 12/2/2008

Pros:

Cons:

First I want to address the negatives, because I had to stretch to find them.
Calibre imports all the books into it's library management system, and as part of that copies the file to the location that you specify when you install the program. This is great if you're just starting, but I find it slightly annoying that it duplicates hundreds of files on my disk. But then, I'm pickier about my hard drive layout than most. This would however, be very handy when importing from a backup disk. Just put the disk in and tell it to import, and it does everything for you.
My other minor trifle is with the interface. There aren't any standard menus (at least in the OS X version) so you do everything with buttons. This isn't all bad, as everything has mouse-over help describing what the button or text field does. It's just a little different, and sometimes confusing. As an example, I was trying out the option to convert books to ePub, and they came out as LRF files. The converter icon brought up options for conversation, but didn't have anything about output formats. I eventually found it under the general settings icon, which isn't with the rest of the icons along the top of the program. Another minor gripe is that double-clicking a title in the library edits the title, instead of opening the book.
None of these are show-stoppers, or even annoying once you get past them. The only annoying bug I found was when I hit the next page button when reading a book, sometimes the screen filled with the same line of text. I'll install Calibre on a few more computers and see if the same thing happens or not.

Calibre is one of the most professional programs I've reviewed. By that, I mean that for the feature set I'd expect to pay for this program. It has all of the features I like from every other program I've reviewed, and almost none of the faults. I'll just highlight a few of my favorites.
Excellent ePub format support. Calibre not only opened everything I threw at it, it fully supports the ePub table of contents.
Internet access to books. Yes, there's an integrated server so you can access your collection from anywhere. And better yet, it lists them in a format that Stanza for the iPhone can recognize, so you can load books onto it if you can't or won't use the Stanza desktop program.

My favorite feature is that Calibre will convert books to the ePub format, making it the second program I've found that will (not counting a few web API's and Adobe InDesign. If I strike oil in my backyard, I'll buy a copy to review....)
The ePub output is both better and worse than Stanza Desktop. It's better in that it gives you options when converting, and the output looks MUCH better in a reader.
It's worse in that: a. It doesn't save the books cover in the ePub file (This might be a bug, considering the available cover options when converting.) and b. if you open the ePub container, some of the items are not in the recommended locations, and it saves the book as one big file, instead of splitting chapters into separate files.
This is really only a problem if you want to manually modify the file later on. Also, I prefer it when chapters are in separate files because a new chapter will always start on a new page when browsing the book, instead of starting halfway down one page. It's a purely aesthetic thing, and probably doesn't bother anyone but me...

Bottom line - The best ePub reader is:

For Windows: Digital Editions for it's management functions and excellent ePub format support.
OS X and/or iPhone/iPod Touch: Stanza is the winner, hands down.
Linux: Calibre

I want to give a special mention to Bookmark here. Over-all, it was narrowly beat out by the above programs by the smallest margin, but if you're anywhere with an internet connection (a friend's house, the library, or other public internet terminal) Bookworm will still let you get to your books.

In the future, I could easily see Mobipocket become my top choice with a few minor improvements.
dotReader could give Digital Editions a run for their money if they massively improve format support. Already they have a better looking interface and nearly equal (or better in some areas) features.
There are only a few choices for Linux (There are plug-ins for some Linux programs, but I can't review them until I resurrect my Linux computer - it blew up it's power supply.)
I want to make it clear that all of the programs I've found so far are very nicely done. If some of them would add TOC support and improve support for CSS I could wholeheartedly recommend any of them.

If you have comments or questions about these reviews, or if I missed something, or if you found another ePub reading Program you would like me to try, e-mail me at:
yoda47 (at) jedisaber (dot) com