Despite humanity's best efforts at making everything digital, we are still a long way from drinking a digital beer or cocktail.

Which is probably just as well.

So, you may wonder, why do we have ePubs?

Grab a seat, settle into a comfy chair and sup your favourite brew while I explain the absence of pale ale in an ePub.

First things first. What the hell is an ePub?

An ePub is simply an electronic book.

That's it.

It isn't a mysterious piece of software. It isn't a program that's going to rearrange your laptop, frighten your iPhone or cause your tablet to start communicating with satellites.

It's a book in a file.

Think of an MP3. That's a piece of music stored as a file. A JPEG is a photograph stored as a file. An ePub is a book stored as a file.

The clever bit is that an ePub isn't designed like a printed page. The words rearrange themselves to suit whatever you're reading on. Make the text larger and the book adjusts. Turn your phone sideways and it adjusts again.

That's why the same ePub can be perfectly comfortable to read on a phone, tablet, computer or eReader.

But Amazon never gives me an ePub

Ah.

Actually, when you buy an ebook from Amazon, Apple, Kobo or another major retailer, something very similar is happening behind the scenes.

The difference is that they've hidden most of it from you.

You press the button, mysterious digital machinery whirrs somewhere in the distance and your book appears on your device.

When you buy an ePub directly from The Fiction Bookstore, we're simply removing the mysterious machinery from the middle.

You get the book file yourself.

And then what?

You put it into whichever reading app or device you normally use.

Apple Books can read ePubs. Kobo can read ePubs. Barnes & Noble's NOOK supports ePubs. And although Kindle does things slightly differently, Amazon's Send to Kindle service will happily take your ePub and deliver the book to your Kindle library.

There are step-by-step instructions in our Reader Help section for each of them.

You don't need to understand how an ePub works any more than you need to understand how your television works before watching it.

You just need to know which button to press.

Is it safe?

An ePub purchased and downloaded from The Fiction Bookstore is simply the electronic edition of the book you've bought from us.

You're not installing a mysterious application or giving the book permission to take control of your device.

You're downloading a book.

And if you get stuck, there is a real human being at the other end of Reader Support who will help.

Possibly while drinking coffee.

So why bother?

Because buying an ePub directly gives you a little more freedom.

You're buying the book rather than tying your purchase entirely to one particular bookstore's ecosystem. You can keep the file, back it up and read it using compatible apps and devices.

It also means independent authors and publishers can sell books directly to their readers without requiring one of the enormous online retailers to stand between them.

Which is rather important to a small independent publisher like Brittle Media.

Last orders

So there you have it.

An ePub isn't frightening. It isn't complicated. And despite the unfortunate name, it doesn't contain beer.

It's just a book.

Download it, put it on your favourite device, find somewhere comfortable and start reading.

You'll have to provide your own pale ale.

Cheers.

The Fiction Bookstore
Stories you'll love. Direct from the author.