Digital ebook Guides: An Overview

About ebooks and digital PDF chapters

For the full terms and conditions that apply to your purchases from the Lonely Planet Shop, please click here.

What are ebooks?

Ebooks are digital versions of our print guidebooks - they are perfect for inspiration, planning your trip and making decision when on the road. Lonely Planet may offer a PDF (all devices), an epub file (for Apple, Nook, Kobo) or a .mobi file (for Kindle devices).

PDF ebooks and chapters (all devices)
These are the exact pages from our books saved in an electronic Adobe PDF file, and they are viewable with any PDF reader. PDF readers are standard software, and we recommend the free Adobe Reader software and app. Download the latest Adobe Reader for free from Adobe’s official website. For Apple devices we also recommend iBooks – get it here.

ePub ebooks (for Apple, Nook, Kobo)
These are electronic versions of our books that are optimized for viewing on an ebook reader, a tablet or a smartphone. While Lonely Planet ePubs include additional features that this technology enables, they have the same content and similar styling as our books. You might like to compare the ePub and PDF files, and decide what works for you best. Click here for more information about ePub functionality.

.mobi ebooks (for Kindle devices)
These files are recommended for use on Kindle devices. If you want to get more technical, they contain digital eBooks that have been saved in the Mobipocket binary ebook format.

What's available in ebook format?

Ebooks may be available for Regional guides, Multi-country guides, Shoestring guides, Country guides, Best Of guides, Discover guides, City guides, Pocket guides, Hiking & Trekking guides, Parks guides, selected phrasebooks and pictorials and travel reference books.

If you click a guidebook that does not give an option to buy an ebook or chapters, this means we do not currently sell this book in digital format. We are working to have them available for purchase soon!

What devices can I use them on?

Use them for research on your computer, or take them on the road using your laptop, e-reader, smartphone (iPhone or Android) or tablet – this includes iPads, Galaxy, Nook, Kobo, Kindle, Sony eReader and more. If you’re not sure, check the specifications on your gadget before purchasing.

In all cases, we recommend that you have the latest software installed for the best experience possible.

Can I buy a whole book as a single file?

Yes you can. Destination guides currently available in digital format may be offered in PDF, ePub and Mobi format for use on your PC, Mac or handheld device. Available formats will be listed on individual product pages, so check this before you make your purchase.

Where do I find them on the Lonely Planet shop?

You can just search for the guidebook you are interested in using the navigation or search functions and, where available, the ebooks and digital chapters will be listed with the print edition information on the page with the individual information for each title.

How to download your files

Once your payment is successfully processed, you will see an order confirmation screen which includes links to download your purchases straight away. All ebooks must be downloaded within 60 days of purchase.

We recommend you download your ebooks at the time or purchase and save them locally on your desktop or device. We supply five downloads of each ebook for two main reasons: 1. because sometimes downloads fail, and you might need a couple of attempts; and 2. you might want to download directly to each of your devices.

You will also receive an order confirmation email with a link to your download page. Can't find your email? Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and similar POP email accounts often have an automatic spam filter that hides emails sent from any retail website (not specifically ours). Please check your Spam or Junk folder or even deleted items, as you might find your confirmation emails here.

All ebooks must be downloaded within 60 days of purchase. We know technical errors, computer crashes and download limits can make life hard, so we have given you five downloads to each of your purchased chapters just in case something goes wrong. Also keep in mind our terms of use if you are considering sharing your remaining downloads with your mates - as they buyer, these are intended for your personal use. Please note that some ebooks may be up to 100+MB in size, so if you don't have a fast internet connection you might like to fix yourself a cup of tea...

ePub and Mobi ebooks

In order to offer our customers a more complete range of digital formats for our guides, we have introduced ePub and Mobi ebooks - this suite is exclusive to the Lonely Planet shop. Where available, these will be delivered as part of the ebook suite when you make your purchase. Not sure if the guide you want is available in epub and Mobi version? Check the available formats on the product information page.

Can I edit the information in the ebooks?

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is used to ensure that our copyright laws are respected and that authors and publishers are fairly compensated. For our PDF ebooks, this means our digital guides are all protected, so this means you can't edit, insert or copy text, or merge the individual PDFs, but you can zoom in, highlight text and print the files. Please note that some ebooks created prior to Dec 2014 do not allow highlighting due to Adobe software restrictions.

You may also find that using some devices or software applications will try to convert our files from PDF to another file type. DRM does not allow this conversion.

You'll find more flexibility with regard to copying text from our ePub files, but you won't be able to edit the files themselves.

Is the information in the ebooks different to the print editions?

Our PDF ebooks present the content exactly as it appears in our print editions. Where our chapters are concerned, it's not uncommon that we reorganise the page sequence in order to create more useful chapter 'products' for you. For example, we may take a section like Day Trips and pair it with the Planning section - the pages aren't consecutive in the books, but together they create a standalone chapter that's better value for money.

Similarly, our ePub and Mobi files contain all the information from the print editions - only the formatting that is optimized to give you the best reading experience possible.

Are there any restrictions or limits to downloading my ebook?

Yes and no! We recommend that you download all your ebooks at the time of purchase or within 60 days thereafter - this way you can sure you have a saved copy that you can always refer to. We can't resend download links for out-of-print editions, or replace your misplaced purchase with a copy of the subsequent edition - so again, download your eBooks soon after purchase and in any event, within 60 days.

We know technical errors, computer crashes and download limits can make life hard so we have given you five downloads to each of your purchased ebooks. All we ask is that you don’t share it around and that you use it for non-commercial purposes.

Can I send my ebooks to a few of my mates?

No. Aside from the fact that it is not in keeping with Lonely Planet’s ethos, it’s also illegal.

Our ebooks are protected by the same copyright as our books, making the content of them protected by law. Sending the files to family, friends and strangers is against the law, as is posting a link to your blog, Facebook or other social networking page. As we've said, you can download each purchased ebook five times so you can have it on your personal computer or handheld device or your built in microchip (one day it may happen), so you're doing pretty well already, so please don't send it to your Dad, your Gran and your sister-in-law's best mate.

If you love that we offer this kind of thing and enjoy saving a bit of money (and room in your backpack), please support us and don't abuse the system. Lonely Planet owns all rights to its digital content and no part of these products may be copied stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except as permitted here), without the written permission from Lonely Planet.

Terms and Conditions for use

You must download each Lonely Planet ebook purchased within 60 days of your purchase to minimise issues down the track. You can only use your Lonely Planet ebook for personal, non-commercial purposes. You may not share any Lonely Planet ebooks purchased by you by forwarding or sending it to someone else, or use it for any commercial purpose.

Lonely Planet owns or licenses all intellectual property rights to and in the Lonely Planet ebooks and chapters, including the content in the Lonely Planet ebooks and Lonely Planet’s trademarks. You may not use Lonely Planet’s intellectual property or trademarks in any way or for any purpose without Lonely Planet’s prior written permission.

Lonely Planet tries to make sure the information in its products is accurate and up to date. However, Lonely Planet can’t make any guarantees. So, if you are relying on information in a Lonely Planet digital chapter, remember you do so at your own risk.

For the full terms and conditions that apply to your purchases from the Lonely Planet Shop, please click here.

Printing out your chapters? Here are a few tips

Sometimes rather than using your device, you may choose to print out just the chapter you need. The settings on our PDF files will allow you to print chapters out at a good and legible resolution. (Make sure your printer paper settings are set to A4 paper, not letter or legal etc).

It’s up to you, but printing ‘booklet style’ is a great way to print out your digital chapters. Our PDF files are set up to print this way but it does depend on the printer you are using so make sure you check before you print. Printers in your remote beach hut may be a little behind those in your five-star hotel!

Backwards words and symbols? It might be that your printer does not recognize our fonts. An easy fix is before printing go into your printer preferences and selecting “print as an image”. If you have any trouble finding this setting, Please contact your printer manufacturer for some assistance.

Printer stopping half way through the chapter? You may not know this, but each printer has a memory capacity. Often some of our files can cause a memory drain due to the high detail involved in printing the maps on our pages, or it may be that the file is just too large for your printer to print the whole file at once. You can use your printer settings to select the pages that you would like to print. Try printing the document starting from the page after that section, that way the printer won't get stuck there. If you want to print the color section, you could try printing one page at a time using this same method. You can also try saving the PDF to your desktop, and printing from this version, rather than an open downloaded one.

Return to the shop

Discover the answers you're looking for

What can we help you with?

Articles in this section