ePub? Don’t tell me that you aren’t aware of ePub! To be frank even I wasn’t till some time back ePub stands for electronic publication and is written in many ways like ePub, epub, EPub, and even EPUB! It is an open source format for eBooks that is acceptable by most of the eBook readers like that of BeBook, Sony Reader, IREX Reader, and iPhone etc.

EPub is actually a compressed file that contains XHTML files (which represents the structure and text of the document), CSS files (which provides formating and layout), and XML files (which is used to create the ePub metadata, table of contents, and the document manifest). As per usage this compressed file is unzipped in the required section so that you can use the widely accepted format to read eBooks in any eBook reader.

Where To Get eBooks In ePub Format?
Though most of the eBook providers like Sony Store, Shortcovers, O’Reilly provide eBooks in ePub format yet if you want to search for most of them as per your ease then you can use Google Books. Remember to opt for the ‘public domain only’ option and you will surely get some book that fits your needs. As these are free so you can enjoy reading most of them without any restrictions. FeedBooks and Project Gutenberg are some more famous sources that have eBooks available in ePub format.

You can even download the ePub eBooks directly from your desktop if you use the perfect desktop application being offered by Sony. You won’t even have to owe Sony Reader to use this application. It has been very well customized to use Google Books to download eBooks in the format you want and directly save them on your desktop.

How To Create My Own ePub eBooks?

The most convienient option to create your own ePub files is to use Microsoft Word. Now how on earth can we use MS Word to create an open source file format? Well, use MS Word and save your document as RTF file. Later on you can use Amazon’s Stanza so as to covert the document into an ePub eBook. You can also use Adobe’s Buzzword to create your own eBooks in ePub format. Calibre is another exciting free tool to convert any kind of file into a ePub format. It is available for every platform like linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Lastly, Sigil is the perfect tool to edit ePub files. It is a WYSIWYG tool worth trying and is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Do remember to check the ePubCheck tool so as to confirm that your ePub file has been created without any unexpected errors corrupting the file.

Lastly, you can check out our article on ePub eBooks inside FireFox.

For those who haven’t been using Google Docs Adobe Buzzword will have plenty of exciting features and for those who have already been regularly using Google Docs for PDF work, Adobe Buzzword will have new look and feel which will surely help them feel a lot more comfortable while working online. Adobe Buzzword in the newly created Acrobat.com is the perfect online tool for those who plan to create their own eBooks in format that are compatible with most of the eBook readers like Amazon’s Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader.

EPub file format is the only file format which is supported by most of the eBook readers and Adobe Buzzword is perfect enough to directly export documents in EPUB format. You can go ahead to export your EPub file and then directly import it in your ebook reader. Kinda easy huh? And you get to see a lot more than the simplicity of Google Docs! One can even use Adobe Buzzword to convert your Open Office or Word Doc to the very famous EPub format for wider compatibility.

The newly created PDF documents will produce the fonts and styling as you actually want without messing up like most of the other PDF creators do. You can access the online documents from any part of the world, have anyone edit them from their computers, and keep track of all the changes made to your document so that you can revert back to any of them if the need be.

Some other exciting feature of Adobe Buzzword are:

• You can add sticky notes or comments to your documents in different colors to make it look more descriptive and exciting.
• You can decide the type of access that the reader should have. Like someone can be co-author while others can be just readers.
• Show your real time status along with the document. More of a social networking type of feature.
• Easy image editing as per needs.
• Various possible lists like in your Microsoft Word.

Check out the new Adobe Buzzword before the buzz dies down.

Wowio has launched an awesome service of giving away copyrighted eBooks for free. They have somehow gathered the licenses to give away the eBooks to be downloaded ONLY in US.

You need to be registered for the service and you are permitted to download 3 books per day and at the max 30 books per month. Even though they do not have the best of the collection but it is growing and it will be interesting to see if they are able to open the service for the rest of the world.

When the sixth Potter book was released J.K. Rowling did not permit any of the books to be published in electronic form, not even during the peak of the e-book craze a few years ago. Neil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling’s literary agency, would only say that “this has not been an area that we have sought to license” and did not comment directly on whether pirated e-books, a common phenomena for Potter titles, were hurting sales.

“We monitor the Internet and take appropriate action,” Blair said.

And as the seventh, and most probably the last, Potter book is being sold there seems to be no sign of any legal electronic version coming out. So for those who love to read there books on there computers will have to depend on pirated books to enjoy Potter. Many unauthorized version of HP 7 were released on BitTorrent before the original release and soon after the release of the book officially many Potter fans were found to buy the book from book stores but ‘NOT’ read it. Instead, they went to the next scanning device and started running their OCR software on little Potter.

And in a recent breakthrough in Bangalore (India) police has seized hundreds of pirated covers of the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, a city police official said on Monday.

With all this in the run I am afraid if J.K.Rowling’s decision to not let official Potter eBooks to be sold will actually somehow help the Potter piracy. Still, once again the Potter fans should be rest assured that they will have to rely on pirated eBooks of Potter if they want to read the book in there computers. No legal eBook for you Harry!

Continuing into my third story of the day all somehow related to Harry Potter, this one is about Harry Potter and the pirated ebook. The latest book, the last may be, in the Potter series “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” is available for download in bittorrent.

Not one but many torrents of the novel contain of photographed pages of the book thus making it little hard to read. But something is always better than nothing. Once again I wont publish the link to avoid piracy problems but just to inform the fans its easy to search for it.

Go get it, pirated! Another piracy news eats up lots of dollars of someone who deserved it. Still I am sure J.K.Rowling’s bank account wont be affected that badly with this!