eBooks: Which is better? PDF or ePub / Mobi?

Whether you are an author or working at a company where you have to publish documents, eventually you will be confronted with the question of whether to make a PDF (Portable Document Format) or an ePub/Mobi version (used by e-readers and Kindles).

Both formats have advantages and disadvantages depending upon what your end goals are.  With PDFs you have more control over the look and feel of the end result, while ePubs provide greater compatibility among a variety of mobile devices.

Note: Through the rest of this article I will be referring to the ePub format, but you can easily convert an ePub to the Kindle Mobi format using a program like Calibre.

Let us take a quick look at some of the Pros and Cons of these two formats:

When Converting a PDF to ePub, Always Use Caution

When creating an ePub or Mobi electronic book it is always best to start with the source material.  Unfortunately there are times when you are given a project and the only thing you have to work with is a PDF.  As tempting as it is to click that 'convert' button to make it an ePub, you should use caution.

Like many things in life, just because it is easy does not mean it is the best way to do something.  The automatic conversion process from PDF to an ePub format can cause a variety of issues, mainly stemming from bad code that can cause your document to be rendered in ways you may not have anticipated.

And no matter what, to get your ePub to look nice and clean, be it on an old smartphone with a small screen or a shiny new iPad, you will have to do some editing in the code to clean things up.