Open eBook


Open eBook, or formally, the Open eBook Publication Structure, is a legacy e-book format which has been superseded by the EPUB format. It was "based primarily on technology developed by SoftBook Press" and on XML. OEB was released with a free version belonging to public domain and a full
version to be used with or without DRM by the publishing industry.
Open eBook is a ZIP file plus a Manifest file. Inside the package a defined subset of XHTML may be used, along with CSS and Dublin Core metadata. The default file extension is.opf.

Specification release history

  • September 2007 – Open Publication Structure 2.0, EPUB. Released, supersedes the OEBPS 1.2
  • August 2002 – OEBPS 1.2 Recommended Specification Released
  • June 2001 – OEBPS 1.0.1 replaces OEBPS 1.0
  • September 1999 – ''Open eBook Publication Structure 1.0 released''

Reader software

Reader devices