MichaelSullivan
Maester
is there software that allows the average joe to format to a ePub file type? In this day in age I would find it hard to believe that such software is exclusive just to publishers. But nothing would surprise me really.
Calibre (free) makes very nice .epubs - it can "start" with files of all types of formats, I personally start with .html. And its pretty simple as it is a just a "flat file format" (can be edited in notepad) with hypertext codes
<p> </p> - around paragraphs
<i> </i> - around italics
<b> </b> - around bold
You can get a bit fancier by adding graphics and hyperlinks but the above will get you 98% of the way there.