Okay, now you have your niche, you’ve written your book and you know who its aimed at. The next question is how you go about turning it into an actual Kindle book. The good news is that this process is quite simple – though there are some things you need to keep in mind. You need to ensure that your book is going to conform to industry standards, that it is going to look good on Kindle and that it’s going to behave the way that your audience expects it to.
Kindle Format 8
Specifically, you should aim to stick to Amazon’s ‘Formatting Guide’. If you do this, then your book is going to be designed in a manner that Amazon refers to as ‘Kindle Format 8’.
KindleeBook Manuscript Formatting Guide
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200645680
So the first thing you need to do is take your content and then dump it into a Word document (ideally, your content will already be in Microsoft Word). There are other ways to make a Kindle book but this is by far the simplest and the quickest. If you don’t already have Word, then it’s great investment and one that’s certain to be worth your while. Sign up for Office 365 and you’ll also get Excel and all the other tools you associate with Office. Additionally, you’ll be able to run the software on smartphones, which could come in handy if you like writing on the bus.
Now make a note of these following points, as they’re kind of crucial:
File Format
The file format you’re going to create your book in is DOC or DOCX. As we’ll see later on, Amazon can automatically convert this for you.
However, if you want to add in guide pages etc. (see below) then you eventually want to save your file as ‘Web Page, Filtered’ or ‘Web Page’. This should create a HTML format and it will allow Kindle to understand all of the different reference elements etc. This is easy to do in Word – you simply select that option instead of ‘.DOC’ when ‘saving as’. Just make sure that you’re completely happy with the final layout and product before you go ahead.
Fonts
Word will apply paragraphs, indentations etc. by default and you can use these as you wish along with bold etc. Be careful though: if you apply a special font then it might not be supported by Kindle. Avoid downloading unique OTF files – tempting though it might be!
Images
Images must be JPEG format and they should be inserted in the center of your page. You must insert them, not copy and paste them from another source. So that means selecting Insert > Picture.
Pages
To start a new page, you can use a page break. This will normally go at the end of each chapter for instance. Note that different screen sizes make things like images a little unpredictable, so don’t get too attached to a specific layout!
Adding a Table of Contents
A very useful feature to add for your book is an active table of contents. This will enable your readers to see everything that’s in the book but also to jump to the relevant page simply by clicking that item on the menu.
And the great thing is that Word makes this incredibly easy. All you need to do is to use ‘Heading 1’ (found on the Home tab) whenever you write a chapter heading and ‘Heading 2’ or ‘Heading 3’ for your subheadings. At the end, you can then click the ‘References’ tab and then choose the Menu style you like.
This will now not only generate your contents but it will also be active so that people can jump anywhere in your book. Make sure that you update the table of contents every time that you update your book. Even if you’re just changing the size of the font, you need to be sure that you keep the table up to date.
Bookmarks
Go to ‘Insert > Bookmark’ in order to add reference points in your book. Kindle will understand bookmarks called ‘Start’ and bookmarks called ‘TOC’ and that will let your readers jump to that point from anywhere in the book. These are known as guide pages.
Extra Pages
There are certain additional pages that you might choose to add to your book and that are fairly common to find in books you’ll download from the Kindle store.
These include:
- A title page – A centered title with your sub-title and your name (or the author’s name if you are not they)
- A copyright page – Include any copyright or legal notices here. Note that you automatically own copyright to anything that you create yourself. If you are commissioning the work, then you need to ensure that it is specifically stated that you will own the full copyright to the text once it is completed.
- Dedication – This is up to you but can be a nice touch that adds professionalism.
- Preface – This usually goes just after your dedication.
- Prologue – A little introduction that is normally inserted just after the preface.
- Bibliographies
- Appendices
- Notes
- Glossaries
You can also choose to include adverts for your other books in the back pages. This is a particularly effective way to gain more sales for those titles and allows success in one area to lead into success in others.
Kindle Previewer
A very handy tool for those creating ebooks is the Kindle Previewer which you can find here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765261
This will allow you to install a tool on your PC or Mac that will let you preview how your book is going to look and function.
Kindle Textbook Creator
Note that creating a textbook might require some more advanced formatting features. In that case, you can use the Kindle Textbook Creator:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002998671
This is another free tool and also comes with an in-built previewer. It’s currently in beta however.
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