So by now you’ve heard lots of talk about the iPad, how it is going to revolutionize everything – again. Me, I am thinking how we can work this into our marketing strategy. Not specifically for iPad but mobile readers in general. Many loyal readers here know I’ve been reading material on an electronic device since 1999. In fact, I still do. Finished reading a great book last night on the trusty old Palm.

I love it and have often wondered why more information publishers don’t offer mobile formats. And to be honest, I have been rather guilty of it myself. Maybe it was the demand and PDF’s are so easy to make. Maybe it was the conflicting multiple reading formats on different devices too. But now there is ePub. It is an open format that is the official standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).

But what matters most to us marketers is, ePub is a widely supported format. For example, it can be read on the Kindle, iPad, Nook and Sony Reader. PDF’s can be too and I do not have any of those readers (yet) to be able to say how they read. But on the older devices, PDF’s are terrible to read whereas the ebook formats you can auto-scroll nicely. Besides, the iBooks app uses the ePub format.

So let’s say you already have an eBook and want to offer an ePub option, getting it done is very simple. You can use a free software like calibre. And it is not difficult either. You can use the existing PDF and simply use calibre to convert it. The whole process takes no more than 2 minutes (depending on the size of your book of course).

Best of all, calibre is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I am going to give ePub format it a whirl. I’ve converted the 180 Tools Free Tools You Can Use To Build Your Business report into ePub and offering it as a download option for those who sign up to our newsletter.