Kindle-Formatting-Step-by-Step.pdf

Kindle Formatting System Step‐by‐Step

Purpose

The purpose of this lesson is to provide you with an exact system to properly format your Kindle

books for publishing. There is a lot of poor and incomplete information on this topic and you can

easily spend countless hours trying to figure it out on your own. For some reason, Amazon has

made properly formatting Kindle books quite complicated.

Use the system below to format your Kindle books properly so that your readers won’t be

displeased with your books before they even get a chance to read them.

What You Will Need

Below is a list of the different programs you will need to properly format Kindle books. While

there are various substitutions, these are my recommendations.

1. Microsoft Word (Open Office is an alternative, but is not ideal)

2. Ebook editor (both tools are FREE):

a. MobiPocket Creator (if using a PC) – download here:

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscreator.asp

b. eCub (if using a Mac) – download here: http://www.juliansmart.com/ecub

3. Kindle Previewer (optional, but recommended; also FREE) – download here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000765261

When you are ready to format a Kindle book, go ahead and download those items above.

Part 1: Preparing and Formatting Your Book in Microsoft Word

In this first part of the three‐part Kindle formatting process, you are making changes to your

book while it is still in Microsoft Word format. All content changes and image insertions should

be done before you start this process.

Here is how you properly format your Microsoft Word document to prepare it for the ebook

editor:

Step 1: Save your Word file into .doc format (NOT .docx)

The file extension .docx (the new version of Microsoft Word’s default file extension) does not

work very well for Kindle formatting right now. So, save your file as .doc.

Step 2: Insert a Page Break After Each Page

After each page – including the title page, copyright page, table of contents page, and after each

chapter – add a page break to separate the content.

Step 3: Create Your Informational Pages

• Title Page (NOT your book cover image) – includes: book title, subtitle, author, website

link (optional), and publisher (optional)

• Copyright Page – use basic copyright notice

• Table of Contents Page – we will insert the actual table in another step, just create the

page now

• About the Author Page (optional)

• Resources (links to your other Kindle books or Amazon products) – add one of these

pages at the beginning AND at the end of your book

Step 4: Apply Headings to Your Chapter Titles

In Word, you are going to apply headings to your chapter titles so that those items appear in the

automatic table of contents you’ll be creating in the next step.

How you add headings varies a bit between versions of Word, but Word 2011 (Mac version), you

highlight the chapter title, open the tools window, and select “Heading 1”.

Step 5: Create Your Automatically Updated Table of Contents

In this step, you are going to use Word’s automatic table of contents feature to create a table of

contents with just a few clicks (without having to manually type the entries in yourself).

While how you access this will vary depending on what version of Word you are using, you

should be able to click on the “Insert” menu and then find “Table of Contents” or “Indexes and

Tables” to insert your table of contents.

There are a few important things you need to make sure you do when you create your table of

contents:

1. Uncheck the box that says “show page numbers” – you do NOT want to show page

numbers in your Kindle book as Kindle reading devices are a wide variety of sizes and no

page numbers will match up with what your reader actually sees

2. If given the option, check the box that says “use hyperlinks” – you DO WANT your table

of contents to have clickable links to your chapters (this helps readers quickly navigate

to content they want to read in your book)

Making your table of contents clickable (active hyperlinks) to the headings (chapters) in your

book is pretty easy in most versions of Word. However, if using Word 2011 for Mac (and

possibly some other versions), you might need to do this step manually. Here’s how to do it:

1. In your table of contents, double click or highlight ONE of the entries

2. Select “Insert” > “Hyperlink”

3. In the middle three tabs, select “Document” (to choose a link from within the

document)

4. Click the “Locate” button

5. Expand the “headings” and select the appropriate item you want to link to (e.g., the

chapter)

Step 6: Insert Your Bookmarks

Insert your bookmarks so that Amazon readers can quickly jump through your content from

Amazon.com and in Kindle devices.

The two main bookmarks you are going to want to insert are “TOC” (Table of Contents and

“Start” (to mark the opening page of your book – this can be your cover page, introduction page,

or even resources page). Here’s how to insert your bookmarks:

1. Click your cursor at the beginning of the first entry of the table of contents

2. Click “Insert” > “Bookmark”

3. Type ‘TOC’ (without the quotes) and click “Add”

4. Click your cursor at the beginning of where you want readers to start

5. Click “Insert” > “Bookmark”

6. Type ‘Start’ (without the quotes) and click “Add”

Step 7: Setting Up Your Page Size and Margins

To make sure there isn’t a bunch of extra white space when readers are reading your Kindle

book on their devices, you are going to want to resize your page according to the information

below and get rid of your margins. Here’s how to do it:

1. Click “File” > “Page Setup” and click on the link (varies by version of Word) to edit

“Paper” specifications

2. Change your page size to 5.39” for width and 7.91” for height

3. Set your margins to 0” on all sides (no margins). Keep gutter position left.

This is what your file will look like after you apply these changes:

Step 8: Final Formatting Changes

First, there are a few common formatting tools we use all the time that don’t work well on

Kindle, specifically: bullets, headers & footers, and tables . If you have any of these in your

documents, remove them or replace them (e.g., bullets can be changed to asterisks or hyphens).

Second, images should be centered on the page .

Step 9: Saving Your File as a Filtered HTML (Webpage) File

Saving your file as filtered HTML is required to proceed to the next step (using the ebook editor).

Here’s how to do it:

1. Click “File” > “Save As” (or “Save As Web Page”)

2. Select “web page (.htm)” or something that says “filtered” with the extension .htm or

.html

With your .htm or .html file saved, you are now ready to move onto the next part of the Kindle

formatting process – using the ebook editor.

Part 2: Creating a Kindle‐Friendly File Using an Ebook Editor

By this point, you should already have your ebook editor installed. You can use MobiPocket

Creator if you are using a PC to create a .prc file OR you can use eCub if you are using a Mac to

create a .epub file – either will work for Kindle. Your goal in this step is to successfully create a

.prc or .epub file using one of the ebook editing software programs.

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