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How to Embed an eBook on a Website

bibiOne of the niftier features of the Kindle Store is the way that it lets you embed a sample of an ebook in a webpage. Now there’s an option for indie authors to do the same with just about any Epub file, albeit in a slightly more complicated and less convenient way.

A Japanese developer by the name of Satoru Matsushima has released a self-contained Epub viewer which can be installed on most websites. It’s called BiB/i, and all that is required is for you to upload the code for the viewer as well as the ebook you want to embed, and them post the embed code.

The embed code looks like what you would see with the manual (non-automatic) Youtube embedded videos, so some technical skill is required.

I haven’t installed it myself on this blog, but as you can see below it does work:

Mein eBook

You can find other demos here.

The code works well, and you can even use BiB/i to open an ebook sitting on your computer. Simply open the ebook embedded above, switch to full screen, and then drag another EPub file into your web browser.

This won’t work so well for large ebooks (for those it is recommended that you unzip the ebook file before uploading it) but I did just test it myself. I was able to open a couple different Epub files. They were slow to load at first but I could read them.

I’ve just heard of BiB/i, so I can’t tell you if it is in widespread use yet, but I do know of at least one alternative (besides uploading a sample to Scribd and embedding that). There’s Epub2Twitter, which lets you embed ebooks in a Tweet, and ReadK.it, which enables authors and publishers to create self-contained ebooks which can open themselves in a web browser (as well as regular ebook apps).

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Tipp für Selfpublisher: eBooks in die eigene Homepage einbinden mit BiB/i | eBook-Fieber.de November 14, 2014 um 8:08 am

[…] The Digital Reader und […]


Quinton November 14, 2014 um 11:44 am

You can also do this with OverDrive eBooks. You can grab the embed code from samples on www.overdrive.com.

You can’t upload your own stuff, but I use embed codes from OverDrive all the time for my blog (www.quintonlawman.com).


Vegan God June 19, 2016 um 11:11 pm

Bibi is FANTASTIC!!!! I tested it with C.S. Lewis' incredible book about a journey from Hell to Heaven entitled The Great Divorce. Here is the link and it took me about 2 minutes to get this running. http://vegangod.org/books/bib/i/?book=GreatDivorce


Dean August 13, 2016 um 10:22 am

Hi, i’m using wordpress, how i can make this work? Where should i upload the Bi/i ?

Nate Hoffelder August 13, 2016 um 11:27 am

You’ll need to check with the source for the technical info:
http://bibi.epub.link/


Pittendrigh August 18, 2018 um 6:32 pm

Robopages display epub3 (but not epub2) online. Copy the epub.zip to
the webserver. Unzip anywhere in the DOCUMENT_ROOT. Edit a config file as per instructions. https://sourceforge.net/projects/robopages/

I use it for displaying how-to-build boats instructions


How to Embed an eBook on a Website (2020 Edition) | The Digital Reader July 3, 2020 um 11:25 am

[…] was browsing through my blog’s archives this morning when I came across an old post from 2014 on embedding ebooks in a web page.  I was surprised to discover that I haven’t touched on […]


How to Embed an eBook on a Website (2020 Edition) September 19, 2020 um 5:18 pm

[…] was browsing through my blog’s archives this morning when I came across an old post from 2014 on embedding ebooks in a web page.  I was surprised to discover that I haven’t touched on […]


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