Format

ePub Format

Summary

Name

ePub Format

Identifiers

• MIME: application/epub+zip
• Library of Congress Format Description Identifier: fdd000310
• PUID: fmt/483

Format type

Text (Structured)

Description

The EPUB family of standards defines a distribution and interchange format for digital publications and documents. The EPUB format, short for "electronic publications", provides a means of representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced Web content — including HTML, CSS, SVG and other resources — for distribution in a single‐file container. The container file is based on the ZIP format and defined in the Open Container Format (OCF). EPUB is an openly documented standard. It has been developed and maintained under the auspices of a sequence of entities. The version of EPUB is identified in the version attribute of the root <package> element in the .opf file, which can be found when the contents of the .epub file is "unzipped", i.e., extracted from the ZIP archive into its component files. The official way to find the .opf file is through the mandatory META-INF/container.xml file. If the EPUB container has a single EPUB Package, this will often be, by convention rather than requirement, in a directory named "EPUB" or "OEBPS." The version attribute for packages complying with all EPUB 3.x specifications is "3.0" and for EPUB 2.x specifications is "2.0".

Note

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000310.shtml; The official ePub spec for version 3 is maintained by https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/epub-wg/; earlier versions (version 2) through https://idpf.org/epub/201.

File extensions

epub

Source

Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives

Relationships

Has priority over

• ZIP Format
• Hypertext Markup Language 2.0
• Hypertext Markup Language 3.2
• Hypertext Markup Language 4.0
• Hypertext Markup Language 4.01
• Extensible Hypertext Markup Language 1.0
• Extensible Hypertext Markup Language 1.1
• Hypertext Markup Language
• Hypertext Markup Language 5

Internal signatures

Container signatures

Changelog

• Updated in V120

  Release date

  25 February 2025

  ePub Format: New description, fdd library of congress identifier and notes added as part of PRONOM Research Week 2024. Submitted by Library of Congress.

• Updated in V75

  Release date

  17 July 2014

  ePub Format: Given additional priority over HTML puids. Improvement submitted by LIBIS.

• Updated in V70

  Release date

  28 August 2013

  ePub format: Added MIME type.

• Updated in V69

  Release date

  19 July 2013

  ePub format: Added binary signature for backward compatibility.

• Added in V66

  Release date

  18 December 2012

  ePub format: Container signature developed through PRONOM Research.

  ePub format: Outline Entry Added.