Read and edit ePUB files

Read an ePUB file

Cool Reader 3

Cool Reader is focused on ePUB reading and favors a clean view, with large icons and large fonts.

Notable features:

• Option to switch to night mode, in order to have a dark background, more pleasant for the eyes
• Animation on page change
• Audio playback of the document
• Clear and quickly accessible icon bar
• Pleasant interface and navigation between pages entirely possible with the mouse

Calibre

A true ePUB Swiss Army Knife, however, Calibre can become a heavyweight when it comes to quickly viewing an ePUB file.

Notable features:

• Editing file metadata
• Multilingual interfaceData library, with classification, searches, import from different sources...
• Advanced file conversion (different reprocessing possible) to MOBI, ePUB, PDF, RTF, TXT, ZIP...

Disadvantages

• Obligation to go through library mode, even when you just want to display an ePUB immediately
• Slowness when launching the viewing of an ePUB
• Ergonomics sometimes painful, as for example with the options that are displayed in cascade (one under the other).

FBReader

FBReader is a fast reader of ePUB files.

Notable features:

• Multilingual interface
• Page rotation
• Choice of colors (background, text, hyperlink, selected text)
• Viewing books in a virtual library

STDU Viewer

STDU Viewer displays in thumbnail form the list of documents in a directory (PDF, ePUB, images, etc.) and displays the page and the tree structure on the left when selecting.

Notable features:

• Can open of CBR, CBZ, ePUB, PDF...
• Proposes at start-up to reopen the last open file, to the last page browsed.
• Can change the brightness, contrast, and gamma of the page
• Multilingual interface (French, English, German, Polish)
• Can rotate the page, display several pages at once on the screen
• Text selection with copy and export possibilities
• Show bookmarks, page thumbnails. Possibility to choose the size and number of thumbnails
• Conversion CBR, CBZ, TIFF to PDF (paid version only)

Edit an ePUB file

Sigil

Sigil allows you to completely view and edit the technical content of an ePUB file: metadata, HTML files, images ... If you need to correct a text precisely, to search / replace, Sigil is the tool for you.

Notable features:

• Proposes to correct structure errors found in ePUB archive, delete unused resources
• Show HTML rendering and code simultaneously
• Metadata editor
• Browsing the entire ePUB archive, deleting and adding files possible
• Spellchecking
• Multilingual interface

Disadvantages

• The pages are edited with HTML tags. This display does not make it easier to focus on the content as it clutters the user's view, although a preview window is offered.

Magic

Presenting the same interface as Sigil because it is built on the same code base, Magic has many similar options, but offers a more convenient input mode, in WYSIWYG mode.

Notable features:

• Easy text editing: you can format the text like on a word processor, without being bothered by HTML tags (unlike Sigil software)
• Switch between HTML code and HTML edit mode (F2 key), possibility to inspect the HTML code from the preview window (like in a browser)
• HTML validation
• Multilingual interface

ePUBMetadataEditor

ePUB Metadata Editor provides an interface for configuring the metadata of an ePUB file.

However, you have to be careful: if this tool works well most of the time, I have noticed file corruption on versions 1.8.7 and lower. Incorrect writes can occur in the content.opf file, due to incorrect interpretation of the XML.