How To E-Book: Kindle Resources

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process of creating an e-book for Kindle! 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 snacky snacks. Brie and grapes and crackers today. And if wine is your thing, I hear it adds great things to the combination.




{Sorry for skipping out on you yesterday. I stayed up until 2am doing homework and the blog slipped my mind. :/ Yay, college.}

Kindle Resources

• Building Your Book for Kindle*
•  This is a free Kindle e-book, published by Kindle. It has, if not everything, then almost everything you need to know. Paragraph indents, table of contents, how to save your file, cover design tips, and answers to all your other niggling questions. Get it. Read it {it's not too long}. This is not an option.
• The Kindle Direct Publishing Support Forum 
• This is where you can go to get answers to the random questions that come up, as well as trouble-shooting. It's maintained by authors just like you, and many of them have been around the block a few times.
• Kindle Direct Publishing: Getting Started*
• Once you've read the e-book, come here and read everything. This is an overview of the entire process, from start to finish.

* Read these before you start! They're not optional. They're not something to skim. They're not already covered in this How To E-Book series. They're necessary. Take the time to read.

With that, the How To E-Book series is complete. I'm looking forward to the coming days, where I can talk about how it feels to have a book out, about authors, how this paperback would probably lose a race to a snail, my upcoming book release and signing, and how CreateSpace customer service rocks. But that will have to wait. 'Til next time!

Posts in the How-To E-Book Series
Kindle Resources {this post}
What Not To Do: Timing/Scheduling, Previewer, Pre-Ordering
Things You Didn't Think About: Pricing, Percentages, Descriptions, Sample Pages
Formatting Tips: Hard Returns, Paragraph Indentions, More Paragraph Spacing
Formatting Tips: Margins, Fonts, Justification, Paragraph Spacing, Tabs 
Formatting Tips: Heading Styles

How To E-Book: What Not To Do

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process of creating an e-book for Kindle! 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. Cold cocktail shrimps with tangy-spicy cocktail sauce. Yum. {If seafood isn't your thing, we have little pizza bites, too.}

What Not To Do

• Upload your final Kindle version before formatting your print version.
• Why not? Because in the course of your final formatting for print, you'll end up doing editing, especially if you order proofs {which you should}. Which means that you'll have to go back into your formatted Kindle version to change things. You think you can keep track of all these changes, but you can't.
• Don't panic: Uploading doesn't take more than ten minutes, and you can upload a thousand of times before you actually submit the thing. But those "less than ten minutes" add up when you keep changing minor things because of the print version editing.
  
• Ignore the downloadable previewer. Once you've uploaded your formatted Kindle version to Kindle, you're given the option to use the online previewer and/or the downloadable previewer.
• Why not? The online previewer does some weird formatting things that make it difficult to pinpoint the reason. But you want to make sure you take the time to use the downloadable previewer because it gives more accurate results for more devices and has more options.
• How To: Download the previewer and install it like you would any other program/follow the directions. Then download the new book file from the Kindle page. It will be .mobi. Then open it in {downloadable} Kindle Previewer.
• Decide to do it in a week.
• Why not? Because things this important shouldn't and can't be done in a week, not well. And well is what makes you money.
• Exceptions: You have your story in its most final of versions. You have a cover. You have a description. Then, okay, maybe you can think about doing this over a few days. But I don't recommend it, especially if you haven't written your description yet. You want to give that thing some time!
• Halfway related: YOU CANNOT DO A PRINT VERSION IN A WEEK. PLAN A MONTH IN ADDITION TO YOUR KINDLE VERSION. {Some of the work will overlap. It's not a couple weeks of Kindle and then a month of print. Print takes time because of the proof copy shuffle...and the formatting is more painstaking.}
•   Worry about pre-orders.
• Why not? There is no such thing. There is no Amazon page for your book before you click 'submit.' There is a page {less than 24 hours} after. And that page is live and sell-able.

I'm watching my list of How To E-Book grow shorter and shorter. Sad, but good. I have so many more ideas for blog posts, so we'll be busy as the semester progresses! {So weird...I think in semesters now.} Once the paperback is out, we can do a series for that, too!

Oh! Quick announcement! Book Release & Signing: October 5, 2013. More info to follow.

Posts in the How-To E-Book Series
What Not To Do: Timing/Scheduling, Previewer, Pre-Ordering {this post}
Things You Didn't Think About: Pricing, Percentages, Descriptions, Sample Pages
Formatting Tips: Hard Returns, Paragraph Indentions, More Paragraph Spacing
Formatting Tips: Margins, Fonts, Justification, Paragraph Spacing, Tabs
Formatting Tips: Heading Styles

How To E-Book: Things You Didn't Think About

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process of creating an e-book for Kindle! 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. I thought about having something fancy today, but then Aimee mentioned cheesy goodness in a comment, and I thought: Cheetos {don't judge me}. You know how they have bottomless ice tea at some restaurants? We have a never-ending bowl of Cheetos.

Things To Do {That You Didn't Think About}
You wrote your book. You formatted your book for Kindle. You're done, right?

Well, you could be. But I doubt you'd have many sales. Because there's a few things to do and think about that aren't actually part of the book writing process.

• How much of a percentage do you want from your e-book? 70% or 35%? There are benefits to the 35% choice, but none of them seemed worth it for fledgling authors. {But that's just me, though. You are responsible for your own money-making research and decisions.}
• What's your e-book's price? Kindle requires you to pick something within $2.99 and $9.99 {that may be specific to the 70% choice, I'm not sure}. Too little, and you lose value. Too much, and you lose customers. Good luck.
• The description. You need a blurb. {See this post for more on blurb creation.} Which is to say, you need to weave less than 150 words together to tell people what your book is about...and entice them to read it.
• But wait, you're not done! Got any reviews or accolades or contest winnings? You need to gather those together and put them in the same piece of text! {I recommend having at least one--but please, no more than 3 or 4--review. Get a friend to do it if you don't know anyone with "titles" that has read your book. It just feels better for a reader if someone else has read the story.}
• You may or may not want to take this opportunity to HTML format this piece of text {summary, accolades, etc...}. Find an online "html generator" {those are your Google search keywords, you're welcome} that will do it for you, if you can't. I can't say that the Kindle version will be formatted like this, but the CreateSpace version will, so you'll have to do it sometime.
• One more thing: if you plan on having an age limit disclaimer sort of thing, this is where that goes.
• Cover. Make sure it's legible in thumbnail size and comparable to other books in your genre.

What about sample pages/Look Inside? Do I have to plan those? No. Amazon does that on its own without your input.
What about an ISBN? This deserves its own post, and will probably get one, but the short answer is that for Kindle {this is Kindle-specific advice, not for Smashwords or anything else like that}, you don't necessarily need an ISBN and can get away without one.

Whew! That's a lot! I'm trying to keep these brief, for my own sake as well as yours, haha. Expect more on covers and the ISBN dilemma soon.

Oh, look, Cheetos!! {My fingers are orange...}

Posts in the How-To E-Book Series
Things You Didn't Think About: Pricing, Percentages, Descriptions, Sample Pages {this post}
Formatting Tips: Hard Returns, Paragraph Indentions, More Paragraph Spacing
Formatting Tips: Margins, Fonts, Justification, Paragraph Spacing, Tabs
Formatting Tips: Heading Styles

How To E-Book: More Formatting Tips

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process of creating an e-book for Kindle! 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. For your munching pleasure today, crackers topped with mozzarella topped with cherry tomatoes topped with a fresh basil leaf. Yummmm...

More Formatting Tips for Kindle E-Book

• HARD RETURNS. You know, how we try to be cool and start the chapter halfway down the page? That's what I'm talking about: don't do it. Don't even think about doing it. Kindle will never get it right; you'll see your chapter heading at the bottom of the screen, and that's no fun. Instead, put everything on top so that it looks like the picture {To clarify, there is no extra hard return between the chapter heading and the first sentence. That's just a result of font spacing and paragraph spacing.}
• FIRST PARAGRAPH NON-INDENTIONS. Now here was something I'd never considered until I started thinking about formatting a e-book/print version. Apparently, real books don't indent the first paragraph of very chapter {and scenes}. Who knew, right? This applies to print version, too.
• Quick How-To: Set your entire document to 0.5 tab at the beginning of each paragraph {that's what Kindle recommends}. Then manually delete the tabs at the beginning of each chapter/scene, and at the chapter heading.
• DOUBLE SPACING. No. This is a book, even if it is electronic. Let it look like one. Just keep the 0.14 paragraph spacing after paragraph. Keep your lines single-spaced otherwise.

  

  no hard returns between top of page and first line
  first-paragraph non-indention

Looking at that picture reminds me of something:

• Yes, I formatted my chapter headings a little bit. Color, lowercase, bold, font, justification, and font size. All the things I told you to avoid yesterday. So I add this statement: you can justify {as in, convince yourself that it's okay} more if it's in the heading style.
• NOTE: Just because I did all those lovely things to my chapter heading does not mean that it showed up that way in Kindle. Actually, more often than not, it doesn't show up that way. The iPhone app, especially, thinks that "heading" means it can be Times New Roman 16pt, no lowercase. Which is torture for my aesthetics, but I have more important things to worry about.

Cool! I think this is all of the little formatting tips for Kindle e-book formatting that I happened on--through more trial and error than I care to admit. Of course, if I think of more, I'll share them with you! Or, if there's something formatting-related that you wanted to see and didn't...tell me 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

How To E-Book: Formatting Tips

Now that the e-book of Those Who Trespass is out, I can give you a little insight into the process of creating an e-book for Kindle! 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. Today: chips and salsa. An absolute necessity to any Texan.

Formatting Tips for Kindle E-Book
When formatting for a Kindle e-book, the trick is not to format. You want your document in the barest form when you upload it. Headings, italics, paragraph spacing {0.14" after paragraph}, and that's it. The goal is default.

• HEADINGS. Yes, we talked about that yesterday.
• MARGINS. Just use whatever is default.
• FONT. Use whatever is default. It's possible that the Kindle Fire or app might pick up your font, but the more formatting...the more chance for error. My advice: leave it at default.
• JUSTIFICATION. Just...don't. Bad idea. It will never look right on all the Kindle devices. If you must, center your chapter titles {using the heading styles}, but, again, if Kindle can disappoint you...it will. If you can be happy with left-justified everything, do it.
• Don't left-justify or full-justify your text. That causes problems. Just leave it at whatever is--you guessed it--default. {Kindle picks up on the fact that something is default and converts it to its own default. When you deviate from that, Kindle gets confused.}
•  BOLD/ITALICS/UNDERLINE. I don't know about bold and underline. I can tell you that Kindle is pretty smart italics. Keep that. {But be smart when you make things italic. Try not to have any hard returns or spaces that are italic. Think of it as HTML, if you're familiar with that at all. You don't want to give Kindle an opportunity to turn a whole paragraph italic just for the fun of it.}
• PARAGRAPH SPACING. Yes. Change your settings so that you have 0.14" after each paragraph. That's it.
• TABS. Yes. Using your paragraph settings.

The common rule throughout this is that if you are going to format, don't do it haphazardly. You don't care about how it looks as much as you care about the code behind it. {You don't have to know HTML, but you need to think in HTML.}

Don't Do What I Did: The final version of my book ended up being formatted for the print version {because I kept making editing changes right up to print time}. Thus, I figured I could simply copy my text into another document, change the page sizes and margins, and have my Kindle version. NO. It doesn't work like that. There is so much code and formatting that goes into making a print version, that my document was a MESS in HTML.

How To Prevent & How To Escape: Copy your text from your print version document into a text editor like Notepad. Then copy that back into your word processing program. Pros: You lose all your formatting. Cons: You lose all your formatting. You have to start from scratch with your italics and tab indents and justifications and heading styles, but it's worth it to clear out all of that hidden, nasty code behind your words. Yes, you have to go back through and re-italicize some stuff. But if you go into it knowing what needs changing {I didn't when I started, though by the time I fixed this, I did}, it won't be too bad.

And that, my friends, is a snack of e-book formatting for Kindle. Still have questions? Ask me in the comments, and I shall answer!

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

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}