We know the self-publishing trend has skyrocketed in recent years and many of our members are considering it (if they haven't done so already). For those who would love more information, we're offering a series of blog posting from guru Lyn Horner, who's had resounding success in self-publishing on Amazon. Today is her first article on Formatting, step-by-step. Come back every month for the next installment.
Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us, Lyn!
Howdy, y’all! The gang here at As We Were Saying have asked
me to post a series of blogs about self-publishing on Amazon. First of all, I recommend
you read through the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) support pages to find out
what they require. NOTE: You can use your Amazon account ID and password to log
onto the Support Home page. If you don’t have an account, you’ll need to set
one up.
The Support Home page
Kindle Forums offers links to Publisher Support, Ask The Community, and Voice of the
Author/Publisher. Be sure to check out the KDP Select link at the top of the
page.
I also suggest you read Building
Your Book for Kindle. This is a 31-page printable pdf file put out by
Amazon and it’s FREE! Click here for the PDF.
It’s available for Mac users as well as for PC.
Okay, let’s get going. The first thing you need to know is how
to format your book for the KDP platform. KDP supports several different formats. Go here for the
complete list. Since I use MS Word, I will refer to that application.
Formatting Steps:
1. Make
two backups of your book file, one on your computer and one on an external
drive. I use a small, handy-to-carry thumb drive. Keep it in a safe place. Having
these copies can be a life saver in case something goes wrong.
2. Open
one copy of your book file in MS Word. If you store your book as separate
documents for each chapter as I do, you need to combine them into one big file.
I work chapter by chapter, making the necessary format changes in each one
before pasting it to the end of my combined document. If you prefer to combine
all chapters first, that’s up to you. Experiment and see what works best for
you.
3. Remove
page numbers. Kindle books are reflowable (viewable with different font sizes);
page numbers are unnecessary and would cause problems. Headers with the book
title, chap. number and your last name, such as you would include on hard copy
submissions to editors, are also unnecessary. Take them out.
4. Important: Never use your tab key to indent
paragraphs. The KDP conversion process automatically indents each paragraph.
If you use tabs to indent paragraphs, you will end up with uneven indents in your
uploaded book. To remove tabs, type one tab at the top of your document, select
and copy it to your clipboard. Open Find/Replace under the Edit menu. Paste the
tab you copied into the Find box. (Word won’t let you type a tab in there.)
Leave the Replace box empty; click Replace All. This will remove all tabs from
your document. Again, you can do this chapter by chapter, or you can combine
all chapters first and then remove the tabs. You will need to replace the tabs
you removed, using the following method.
Open the Format
dropdown menu, click paragraph, then click the Indents and Spacing tab. Next, go
to the Indentation area and set your first line indent width under “Special”. Set the indent width at 0.5″ (this is standard). Click the okay button. WORD
will now automatically indent each new paragraph for you. This does not cause
problems with the Kindle conversion. I use this method and my indents look
perfect on the Kindle Previewer. (I’ll explain the Previewer in a later post.)
In future, set up the indent width at the beginning of each chapter.
5. Your
font style must change sizes easily on a variety of readers. Times New Roman 12
pt. seems to work best. That’s what I always use for my books.
6. Get
rid of all the double spacing we’ve always been told to use for editors and
agents. This means double line spacing and double spaces after each sentence
(also unnecessary for editor submissions nowadays.)
7. Remove
underlining if you use it to indicate italics. I tried to use the Find and
Replace feature under the Edit menu, as B. V. Larson suggests, but could not make
it work. So I searched each chapter as I worked and removed the underlining,
replacing it with italics. Obviously this takes some time.
8. When
combining chapters, add a page break at the end of each chapter. If you don’t,
your chapter will all run together in the uploaded book. That doesn’t look
good.
9. Indicate
scene breaks within a chapter, and POV changes if you wish, with one blank line
followed by a line with three or four asterisk (* * * *) signs centered, with a
space between each. Then add another blank line. If you prefer, you can use
hash marks or some other small symbol.
10. If
you use slang or foreign words in your book, they may be underlined in red. I
once read that such lines could show up on converted text. I’m not sure this is
true, but to be safe, when I finish a chapter, I select the whole document,
then go to the Spelling & Grammar feature under the Tools Menu and turn off
the spell checking option. All the squiggly red lines disappear.
11. You
don’t need to add copyright data at the beginning of your book. You will be
asked to enter your publishing rights during the upload process.
12. Save
your combined text file as a regular Word document first to be safe (in case
you need to go in and make changes later.) Then choose “Save As” and save the
file again, choosing “Web Page, Filtered” as your file type. You have now
converted it to an .HTM file. No, I did not forget the “L”! HTM is the way it
appears, why I have no clue. My computer geek son says it means the same thing. Some apps just leave off the “L”.
That’s all for now. Next time, I’ll talk about Kindlegen & the Kindle Previewer. ʼTil then,
happy writing!
Come back the end of September for the next self-publishing installment from Lyn Horner!
Breaking news: Lyn Horner's DASHING DRUID is a winner in the Romance Through The Ages contest, sponsored by the Hearts Through History RWA Chapter. Congrats, Lyn!! Find the announcement here: http://texasdruids.com/posts/.
Breaking news: Lyn Horner's DASHING DRUID is a winner in the Romance Through The Ages contest, sponsored by the Hearts Through History RWA Chapter. Congrats, Lyn!! Find the announcement here: http://texasdruids.com/posts/.