Fonts in ebooks

Fonts in Fixed Layout ebooks

For fixed layout ebooks, there are no restrictions on the fonts used for text that is on the FLO_BASE layer or used in placed PDFs.

Fonts used on regular InDesign layers or on the CircularFLO live text layer must be either OpenType or TrueType. The older PostScript font format is not supported in EPUB and so cannot be used for live text.

InDesign document fonts and fonts from Adobe Fonts / Typekit are supported.

Fonts in Reflowable ebooks

For reflowable ebooks, fonts from Adobe Fonts are supported. Adobe Fonts are required to preserve the fonts on live text in Amazon reflowable ebooks when exporting from Circular Software.

Any document fonts or older PostScript fonts will be substituted.

Although the fonts will be included with the ebook, the reader and reading software will be able to change the font as well as other apsects of the font such as size and colour. This is a feature of reflowable ebooks format.  

Font obfuscation

Font obfuscation is a method to ‘mangle’ or alter the font file so that it is only useful for that particular eBook. As soon as an obfuscated font is taken out of the EPUB, it no longer works.

This is enough to comply the Adobe font licensing requirements. This is a direct quote from Adobe about this:

Can Adobe fonts be embedded in ebooks?

Yes. The fonts are licensed for embedding in any ebook format which protects the font data such as EPUB, iBooks, Kindle (mobi)…

Font obfuscation is applied by InDesign and supported by CircularFLO.

When creating reflowable Amazon files with CircularFLO, fonts are protected against misuse by the DRM (Digital Rights Management) techniques that Amazon apply.

When using font obfuscation, avoid the use of 'Document fonts' inside the InDesign document folder and instead use Adobe Fonts or local fonts that are active and available for CircularFLO.