Finally the long awaited ePUB format books are starting to show up on Penguin Publisher’s site! Here’s a search for the word ‘epub’ that turns up 682 results as of October 15th, 2008. Not all of them are available for download yet but a number of them are accessible right now.

All I can say is AWESOME!

The ePUB format is an open ebook standard open to all publishers. Several software e-reader software packages already exist that read ePUB books including Stanza (http://www.lexcycle.com) for Mac, Windows and iPhone/iPod touch and Adobe’s Digital Editions (http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions). The one hardware reader that I’m aware of right now is the Sony Reader PRS-505 and PRS-700 or newer models.

I have the PRS-505 and have been waiting for a publisher to release titles in the open format for a couple months now. I’m very pleased that there are so many titles available now. Several other sites have free, out-of-copyright texts such as http://www.feedbooks.com, http://www.web-books.com and http://www.munseys.com. Sony’s own site sells thousands of books in their own proprietary format however, I’m glad there’s now source of high quality modern published works in an open format! Did I already say ‘awesome‘?