Here is another great bit of news for people who write ebooks, or actually, any sort of book that they might wish to publish for ereaders.
Google have just quietly added a truly useful new trick to their Google Docs app. You can now save your Google Doc as an ePub file, which is the file format used by all ereaders except the Kindle, Well at least for now, it is on the desk top versions of Google Docs, such as you have on a Chrome Book for example, or if you use Chrome as your web browser. I gather that shortly it will be available for all Android users.
It is amazingly simple to use, simply have your document open, click on File menu > Download as > EPUB Publication (.epub), and the job is done.
Having done this, you will be able to put your document (Major Literary Work) directly onto pretty well any ereader – except of course the dreaded Amazon Kindle,, which typically of large companies, uses its own ebook format in an attempt to force Kindle owners to buy all their ebooks from Amazon.
Those writers who still wish their ebooks to be available to Kindle readers will still need to use a program such as Calibre in order to convert their book to the Kindle format, but this is easy enough.
The great advantage of this for writers is that they can save their work as an ePub document, but still work away on it in Google Docs in exactly the same way that they would have worked on it in Word or some similar, but also be able to keep it in ePub format as they work. thus being able at all times to simply bung it onto their ereader to see how it looks on one of those devices, as opposed to how it looks on their computer screen.
And of course, being an ereader format, as opposed to PDF, it is easy to change the font size, font, spacing and so on, so it is easy to get your masterpiece looking exactly how you want it to look. And all of this good stuff is free too with Google Docs – Try to do this on Microsoft Word, or Open Office…. No way!
So if you still not have tried working in Google Docs, it might be worth your while to have a look at it. I use it a lot, and find it extremely easy and intuitive to use, and now with this ePub facility being added to it, it is even better.
I wonder if they will introduce the possibility to save ones documents as .Mobi files (the Kindle format) soon?
OZTHOUGHTS 