How To E-Book: Heading Styles

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process! I wish I could do long, drawn-out posts, but those are a bit dull to read...and I don't exactly have the time to write them. So instead of meals, we're going to have snacks. :) Good, appetizer snacks. Spinach artichoke dip, mozzarella cheese wrapped with prosciutto {my new favorite}, summer sausage, basil on tomatoes on cheese on crackers, and other yummy things like that.

heading styles

Formatting Tips for Kindle E-Book
Familiarize yourself with headings in your program. In OpenOffice, you select your text and choose from the dropdown menu in the upper left corner. This actually has two uses.

1. Your table of contents--which you need for Kindle, even if you wouldn't have one in a physical book--relies on words in heading styles. You tell your table of contents to look for all phrases that are Heading 1, or, say, a Chapter Title Style that you create. It creates the table of contents based on the phrases that are dubbed to be a certain style. Not only that, but Kindle {especially the Kindle app} is aware of your styles. For example, the iPhone app shows chapter titles {remember, you marked them as mychaptertitlestyle or something} in different font/size from the rest of the text {though, not the font/size you formatted it to be}.
2. It's also good to know about heading styles if you decide to delve into a print version because, say, at first you want your chapter titles in bold black. Then, later, you decide you want them in underlined gray {you'll probably choose a black/white interior for printing, but that doesn't mean you can't make use of grayscale!}.
   
   
   Instead of going through the entire document and changing each one, you can change one and click the "More..." button, then decide to create a "New Style from Selection." Except you won't choose a new style, you'll choose the one you already had. Presto. Every piece of text styled bold black chapter heading is now underlined gray. That was easy.

Still confused about heading styles and e-book formatting? Want to know more? Just ask in the comments!

Posts in the How-To E-Book Series
Formatting Tips: Hard Returns, Paragraph Indentions, More Paragraph Spacing {this post}
Formatting Tips: Margins, Fonts, Justification, Paragraph Spacing, Tabs
Formatting Tips: Heading Styles {this post}