ManyBooks.net has nearly 28,000 free e-books available for download. Each book is available in 23 different formats.
I wondered what software they used to create so many formats and how popular each format is. The site answers both these questions. This page lists the software used and this page lists the popularity statistics.
PDF is not as dominant as I would have expected. It is the most popular format, but it only accounts for 20% of downloads. Here’s a bar chart of the downloads per format. Click on the graph for a larger version.
See also Wikipedia’s comparison of e-book formats.
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Aaron Evans 07.20.10 at 11:54
If they were available in plain text (or some other open format such as HTML or DOCX) the other formats (including PDF) would all dwindle to less than 10% combined.
Aaron Evans 07.20.10 at 11:56
I mean all ebooks, not just the ones at manybooks.net. The proprietary reader formats are all doomed.
Bill the Lizard 07.24.10 at 11:03
Thank you for posting this! I just picked up an ebook reader after moving nearly 2000 paper books into a new place. Now I shouldn’t have any trouble filling it with great books.