Kindle Formatting Guide Contents Introduction... 2 How about doing your own formatting?... 2 About the Kindle Format... 2 What file formats can you submit to Kindle?... 2 Stage 1 Format Your Headings... 4 What if Heading 2 or Heading 3 are missing from the Styles Ribbon?... 5 Adding these Heading Styles to your ebook... 7 Stage 2 Formatting Line Spacing... 8 Stage 3 Adding Table of Contents... 9 Making Changes to the Table of Contents?... 11 Check your Formatting With Kindle... 13 Last Word... 14 1
Introduction The easiest method to format your Word document (or similar) into a Kindle ready format is to outsource this task through Fiverr. If you d prefer to do this then just go to Fiverr and do a search for Kindle Formatting, there s some really good Fiverr Gigs that ll so this for $5 (well, $5.50 now with Fiverr s admin charge!). How about doing your own formatting? This is actually fairly straight forward but really depends on how well you know your Word Processing software. For this guide, I m using Microsoft Word 2010 (other versions of Word will be similar) as an example. If you are using a different Word Processor then you will need to consult the documentation for that software but the principles will still remain the same. About the Kindle Format Amazon Kindle uses its own file format which is.azw3 This file format supports HTML5 features and this is really at the heart of our formatting efforts, especially with properly formatted Headings throughout your ebook. What file formats can you submit to Kindle? Kindle accepts the following file formats for conversion through Kindle Direct Publishing (via your Bookshelf): Word (DOC or DOCX) HTML (ZIP, HTM or HTML) MOBI (MOBI) Epub (EPUB) Rich Text Format (RTF) Plain Text (TXT) Adobe PDF (PDF) Kindle Package Format (KPF) I ll be using a.doc file (Microsoft Word) for my example, there is reports that.docx has some weird formatting problems and it s highly advisable to only.doc! If you ve already saved your work under.docx then you can convert it to the preferred file extension by simply: 1. Clicking File and Save As 2. Change your Save as Type to.doc 2
Figure 1 Change File Type 1 3. Then change your Save as Type to.doc and click Save Figure 2 Change File Type 2 Note: You might get a window pop up telling you about possible Compatibility Issues! Just accept this and have a look through your document again. I ve never had any big issues with this but it s worth checking. I then format my.doc file in 3 stages: 3
Stage 1 Format Your Headings You need to makes sure that you use the Heading Styles section (or Ribbon!) in your Word Processor. Here they are in Microsoft Word 2010 (make sure you re on the Home tab): Figure 3 Heading Styles Before you start using these Heading Styles, you need to set them up! Format your Heading Styles: 1. For my ebooks I only format Heading 2 and Heading 3. If you want a bigger heading (at the beginning of your book for example) I suggest you manually change the size of that text. 2. So to format Heading 2 right click on that heading and select Modify Figure 4 Modify Heading Step 1 3. Then change the details in the Formatting box. I m happy with the Font Type and Font Size but have changed the colour of the font to a nice blue. Seems to work well with the ebooks! 4. Make sure you have deselected the Bold, Italic and Underscore options (B, I, U), unless you want them of course? 5. Then Click OK. 4
Figure 5 Modify Heading Step 2 Do the same for Heading 3 but use a slightly smaller font size (I normally click on the font size and manually put in 13. What if Heading 2 or Heading 3 are missing from the Styles Ribbon? I ve just noticed that my Heading 3 has disappeared from my Styles Ribbon (see Figure 3). To get it back (and add any other heading that you may want) you have to: 1. Navigate to the Options for the Ribbon (Figure 6 shows this with Microsoft Word 2010). 2. Click on Options. 3. Click on the drop down arrow for Heading 3. (Drop down appears when you hover over heading 3!) 4. Select Add to Quick Style Gallery 5. Heading 3 should now be back in your Styles Ribbon. 5
Figure 6 Missing Heading Styles Step 1 6
Figure 7 Missing Heading Styles Step 2 Adding these Heading Styles to your ebook You ve actually done the hard work now! In your ebook all you need to do is: 1. Highlight the heading that you need to apply a heading style too. 2. Click on the heading style that you want. Figure 8 Adding Heading Styles 7
Stage 2 Formatting Line Spacing If you don t change the line spacing within your ebook, when it s converted by Kindle it ll look a mess with everything appearing too close to each other. To change the line spacing: 1. Press Ctrl and A together on your keyboard to select the whole document. 2. Click on the Line and Paragraph Spacing option. Figure 9 Kindle Friendly Line Spacing Step 1 3. Then select 2.0 (double!) line spacing. Figure 10 Kindle Friendly Line Spacing Step 2 The line spacing should look perfect now when it s converted into the Kindle format. 8
Stage 3 Adding Table of Contents Stage 3 is assuming that you ve gone through your whole ebook and properly formatted your main chapter headings (Heading 2) and any sub heading within those chapters (Heading 3). Don t do this step until you are satisfied this has been done! To add a Table of Contents that will look good in Kindle (again Microsoft Word): 1. Place your cursor where you want your Table of Contents to be displayed (right at the beginning would be my choice, don t forget that your Book Cover is uploaded separately into Kindle and will then be before your Contents page). 2. Click on the References tab. 3. Click on Table of Contents. 4. Then click on Insert Table of Contents 5. Click on Options Figure 11 Table of Contents Step 1 9
6. Figure 12 Table of Contents Step 2 7. Delete TOC Level 1 (this gets rid of the Heading 1 which we are not using) 8. Click OK to accept the Table of Contents Options 9. Click OK to accept the Table of Contents main page 10. Your Table of Contents will now be displayed in your ebook. 10
Figure 13 Table of Contents Step 3 Making Changes to the Table of Contents? Again, it s quite straight forward to update your TOC if you add chapters, change titles etc. To refresh your Table of Contents: 1. Right click on your Table of Contents 2. Select Update Field 3. Select Update Entire Table 4. Click OK Figure 14 Insert Table of Contents Step 1 Figure 15 Insert Table of Contents Step 2 11
Your Table of Contents will then be updated and providing you ve formatted the headings properly, these contents will be a true reflection of what s in your book and will format well in Kindle. 12
Stage 4 Adding Page Breaks I ve found that if you want to guarantee a clean break between chapters then you need to add a Page Break when a chapter finishes. You can do this by: 1. Placing your cursor at the end of a chapter 2. Clicking on the Insert tab 3. Then Clicking on Page Break 4. Your next chapter will now start on a new page! Note: Figure 16 Adding a Page Break If you start adding page breaks after you have written your chapters you should go through your document and check for blank pages! This sometimes happens when the Return key has been used (depending on what Word Processing software you ve been using) to get to the next page instead of using a page break. Just go to that blank page and hit the Delete key a few times until that page disappears! 13
Stage 5 Check your Formatting With Kindle You can use the Online Kindle Previewer which I mentioned in the main ebook but there is also another trick which you might find quite handy? If you already have a Kindle device (or Kindle on Ipad etc.) then you will have a Kindle email account associated with that device. It ll look something like: yourkindlename@kindle.com You can find this email address by looking through your Kindle program settings on your device or by going to the Manage Your Kindle page through your Amazon account. Once you have this email address: 1. Email your Word document (.DOC) or similar to your Kindle email address 2. You ll get a reply back from Kindle saying they ve received it! 3. Within a few minutes your document would have been converted and sent to your Kindle device associated with that email address. You can then review your ebook in this Kindle format, if it looks good, great! If not, make whatever changes you need to, email it to yourself again and do another review. Last Word I hope you ve found this Kindle formatting guide useful. I ve used all of these steps above and they ve continued to give me very good results when Kindle converts my document. Thanks for reading. To your success Jon Crimes 14