Chief Technical Officer
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Paizo is pleased to announce that our first Pathfinder Tales novel, Prince of Wolves, is now available in the ePub format, here at paizo.com, and also in Apple's iBookstore.
Purchasing the download at paizo.com gives you access to both the PDF and the ePub; you don't have to choose between the two. Apple's iBookstore carries only the ePub edition.
We intend to make future Pathfinder Tales novels available in both PDF and ePub formats simultaneously, beginning with Winter Witch this November.
Paizo ePub FAQ:
Q: What is an ePub? What can I use to view it?
A: ePub is a digital book format that can be read on many portable and desktop devices, including Apple's iBooks app for iPad and iPhone; Mobipocket for Blackberry, Windows, and Windows Mobile; Sony Readers; and Barnes & Noble's Nook. For a more thorough explanation, including additional software and hardware options, please see Wikipedia's ePUB page.
Q: Which Pathfinder products are going to be available as ePubs?
A: The ePub format is ideal for electronic books that are mostly text, but it lacks support for precise layout of images and special textual formatting. Because of this, only the Pathfinder Tales line is available in ePub form at this time; for now, the best way to view our other Pathfinder products electronically is in PDF form.
Q: What about Planet Stories?
A: We don't own the electronic publishing rights to any of the Planet Stories publications at this time, so they're available exclusively in print.
Q: Pathfinder Tales are now available in Apple's iBookstore. Is there any difference between buying from Apple and buying from paizo.com?
A: The iBookstore only carries ePub right now; at paizo.com, Pathfinder Tales are available in PDF form as well as ePub. Also, the iBookstore editions use Apple's FairPlay DRM, while the paizo.com editions use watermarks. The content is otherwise identical.
Q: What about Kindle or other formats?
A: At this time, we're only publishing ePub and PDF editions. Kindle supports viewing PDFs directly, and conversion utlities exist to help you use ePubs or PDFs with many other devices. We may provide other digital formats in the future.
Contributor
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Paizo is pleased to announce that our first Pathfinder Tales novel, Prince of Wolves, is now available in the ePub format, here at paizo.com, and also in Apple's iBookstore.
Excelsior!
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Chief Technical Officer
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For those of us woefully technologically challenged, could someone explain how exactly to turn the collection of folders and files that get unzipped from My Downloads into an epub file for iBooks?
Well, what *should* happen is that the .zip file you download from us should be unzipped to a single .epub file, which you then load into iTunes and sync to your device. (You might need to explicitly enable syncing books first.)
However, an epub file is secretly a sort of zip file in disguise, and some unzippers will keep unzipping layers of zip files. And it appears that if you have an older Apple OS, it doesn't know that it shouldn't unzip epub files. Couple that with the fact that it's default behavior is to keep unzipping layers, and that Safari is set by default to unzip stuff as soon as you download it, and that means that, by default, downloading a zipped epub with Safari on Mac OS will result in... well, the mess you're seeing.
Sadly, you can't even just zip the parts back up and rename the file to .epub, because there *is* actually a difference between a zip and an epub, and the rezipped file wouldn't actually work.
What you *can* do, though, is temporarily adjust the preferences on the unzipper so that it doesn't drill down into the epub.
If you're using Mac OS, the method for doing that isn't terribly obvious. Instead of sticking the unzipping utility somewhere you might actually find it (such as your Utilities folder), they've stashed it in a place that you generally should never have to go: your System folder. Go to System > Library > CoreServices, and double-click the Archive Utility to launch it. Once it's open, go to the Preferences, and uncheck the box "Keep expanding if possible". Then, download the file again, and this time, after it unzips the zip file, it will leave the epub file alone. You can then open the epub file with iTunes, and sync it to your iWhatever.
Ross will be adjusting our file server so that it won't zip epub files, and hopefully that'll prevent everyone else with an older Mac OS version from having to do this.
For those of us woefully technologically challenged, could someone explain how exactly to turn the collection of folders and files that get unzipped from My Downloads into an epub file for iBooks?
Thats a good question. I can't figure it out either.
SWEET.
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And it appears that if you have an older Apple OS, it doesn't know that it shouldn't unzip epub files. Couple that with the fact that it's default behavior is to keep unzipping layers, and that Safari is set by default to unzip stuff as soon as you download it, and that means that, by default, downloading a zipped epub with Safari on Mac OS will result in... well, the mess you're seeing.
I'm running OS 10.6.4, and downloading with Firefox. Which I only mention because it seems that, for whatever reason, some god of schadenfreude loves to give me these inexplicable issues with some of the stuff I download from here, which defies anything anyone at Paizo can recreate.
Mucking with the Archive Utility got it to work perfectly. Thanks, Vic.
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Chief Technical Officer
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If you're using Mac OS, the method for doing that isn't terribly obvious. Instead of sticking the unzipping utility somewhere you might actually find it (such as your Utilities folder), they've stashed it in a place that you generally should never have to go: your System folder. Go to System > Library > CoreServices, and double-click the Archive Utility to launch it. Once it's open, go to the Preferences, and uncheck the box "Keep expanding if possible". Then, download the file again, and this time, after it unzips the zip file, it will leave the epub file alone. You can then open the epub file with iTunes, and sync it to your iWhatever.
I should also add that if you have OS X 10.4, you want to look instead in System > Library > CoreServices for an application called BOMArchiveHelper.
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Chief Technical Officer
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For those of us woefully technologically challenged, could someone explain how exactly to turn the collection of folders and files that get unzipped from My Downloads into an epub file for iBooks?It appears I am having the same problem with winzip with windows XP. any suggestions Vic?
I've successfully avoiding dealing deeply with Windows XP long enough to forget the specifics of how to help you. But the basic solution is that you want to tell your computer not to unzip files with the .epub extension. Depending on your configuration, that might be something you do in your browser's preferences, or in your general file handling prefs... Maybe somebody else can step in and advise?
I've successfully avoiding dealing deeply with Windows XP long enough to forget the specifics of how to help you. But the basic solution is that you want to tell your computer not to unzip files with the .epub extension. Depending on your configuration, that might be something you do in your browser's preferences, or in your general file handling prefs... Maybe somebody else can step in and advise?For those of us woefully technologically challenged, could someone explain how exactly to turn the collection of folders and files that get unzipped from My Downloads into an epub file for iBooks?It appears I am having the same problem with winzip with windows XP. any suggestions Vic?
Simply rename the .zip file extension to .epub and then copy the new file onto your reader. I just did this then (I was having the same issue) and I can happily say that I am now reading Winter Witch on my iPad. :D
1. In an open Folder, click on the Alt key. This will bring up a new bar below the address bar.
2. Go to Tools in the new bar and then select Folder Options.
3. Click on the View tab and then go down until you find a line that says Hide extensions for known file types. Untick the box next to this and hit OK.
4. Now the Winter Witch zipped folder will have the .zip/i] file extention after it. Simply delete the word zip after the dot and replace it with the word[i]epub. You can now copy this new file into your reader and it will work (at least it should, as it did with my iPad).
5. Follow steps 1-3 again but this time re-tick the box to make the extensions disappear (it's a good idea if you're not sure what you're doing because you don't want to rename over the file extension as it can sometimes ruin your files).
6. Enjoy your new ePub Pathfinder Novel! :D
We've made a small tweak to the way our server delivers epub files. The result should be that Internet Explorer and Windows should stop renaming it to a .zip file without asking.
How do you convert to Kindle...PLEASE HELP?
How do you convert to Kindle...PLEASE HELP?
Instructions to do this would be handy!
Edit: looks like you need to grab a program called calibre to convert epub to mobi, then you can copy the file to the appropriate folder on your kindle/tablet. Off to experiment more.