There are a number of reasons why some people prefer reading e-books in the .epub format, thanks to Digital Rights Management.

It’s common knowledge that the only books that you can find in an unprotected format are old ones since very few e-tailers offer unprotected .epub books.

However, if you do wish to read books in this digital format, then you can do so in your browser itself.

One way to do is to use Google Play Books which has been designed to read its own protected content. However, you can also read .epub books using this Google service as well.

For starters, you’ll need a Google account – a Gmail or YouTube account will do. Go to the Google Play books site and upload books that you already have on your PC. Once the upload is complete, you will find it in the My Books section.

There’s only one problem though: You can’t take these books with you anywhere but will need an internet connection in order to read them. Although, it will be fair to say that these books will be synced across a number of devices.

If you do use Firefox, another option includes installing the EPUBReader add-on. Once this is done, then all you have to do is drag an .epub reader and the book will be loaded immediately without any fuss whatsoever.

Best part: you can use this add-on to look for and download books from a number of sites such as Feedbooks.com and Archive.org as well as Gutenberg. Not only that: you can read them offline.

That said, there aren’t any good add-ons for Chrome and Internet Explorer worth recommending.