Kindle Formatting

1. Overview
A file uploaded to Kindle must be correctly formatted to take into account the way
Amazon have written their code to convert your file into a Kindle book. Just
uploading a word or pdf file and hoping the Kindle book will look all shiny and
formatted will not work. It may look good on your computer or in the printed book,
but on Kindle theres a high chance it will look a complete mess.
Many customers will preview a Kindle book before buying ( & Amazon will often use
the Kindle preview for your paperback) and so this mess will be on clear view to
everyone and therefore it is worth correctly formatting your book: although be
warned it may take a couple of days to work through your novel correctly formatting
it.
This guide is intended for authors with small publishers who do not have the capital
to pay for an outside agency to format their books for Kindle.
The guide works with word 2010 it should work with older formats of word
although the navigation around word may be different from shown and the save as
html filtered option may not give as good results.

2. What to send to the publisher to upload

There a number of options. In our view its best to format correctly a word file and
save it normally for your records. Then also click the File tab and save as and
select html filtered ( also known as webpage filtered) from the save as type
selection. This webfiltered document is what you need to send to your publisher for
them to upload to Amazon. Your publisher will have a chance to check all is well

before publishing by looking at a preview available to them in their publisher page

3. Formatting your Word File

Kindle will not recognise a lot of words formatting, like tabs. So you MUST format
your word file as follows

Make sure your paragraphs are in normal style, not headings, title,
subtitles etc : these will cause odd things like your font to appear in bold on
Kindle or a sudden change in font sizes. To check highlight the paragraph and
check none of the following show as selected( apart from the normal one )

If you are unsure or one of the above is highlighted, then do

Highlight text
Right mouse click
Select styles
Select normal style

Use Paragraph Styles for your indents

Highlight the text
Right mouse click
Select Paragraph
Enter the first line indentation you require. Here for example it is 1.27

Do not use the TAB function

To check we recommend you click the pilcrow

from the top menu on the home tab which then shows all formatting
marks.
This makes it easier to see where you have lines that are indented by using
styles as detailed above or if you have been hitting Tab or a mixture of the
two.
In the example below the pilcrow has been selected to show the formatting:
the arrow before Lights off shows that that line has been tabbed ( and will
therefore not indent in Kindle ), whilst the one below has been styled and
would be fine in Kindle...

For where you require no indent like the start of a chapter: you must still
enter a first line indent in styles otherwise Kindle will auto-indent for you.
Enter 0.01 in the indent box: this stops Kindle auto-indenting and is so small
it looks like there is no indent.
(Right: First line has a 0.01 indent and appears fine.)

Use Page Break to end a chapter

Do not keep hitting the enter key until you get to a new page. Kindle will
ignore this and your chapters will not all start nicely at the top of the Kindle
screen. Use the pilcrow to check where spaces have been made using the
enter key instead of Page Breaks. This example shows how not to do it

Instead place the cursor where you want the page break and click the Page
Break in the insert tab

Do not put page numbers in the file or in a contents page

People can change the font size they read your book in therefore page
numbers are meaningless.

Put a table of content (toc) in the file which people can navigate through
your book with and go straight to chapters
Place the cursor where you want the table to be.

Select References from the tab menu

Select Table of Contents.

Select the style you want and it will insert it into your file.
Right mouse click over the table and choose edit field
Select table of contents on the right in the advanced settings and then
deselect the show page numbers box

Next you have to tell word where your chapters start.

To do this highlight the text that says chapter 1 in your book
Right mouse click and select styles and select heading 1
Repeat this for each chapter heading ( keep selecting heading 1 the 1 refers
to the style not the chapter number.)
Then go back to your table, right mouse click on it and select Update Field.

This should then give you a clickable toc.

Put a Go to start this allows a user to jump straight to the text if they want
to rather than reading the smallprint and dedications etc etc.
Place the cursor where you want the start: for example just before the P of
Prologue. Then
Choose the insert tab, select Bookmark.

Then type start and select Add.

Put another bookmark at the start of the Table of Contents. This tells the
Kindle where your contents page is. Do it as above but with toc instead of
start

 Do not insert a cover image into the file. This is done when your publisher
uploads your file.
Do not hit return to add a space between two paragraphs. Kindle may do
random things when it finds white space. This guide assumes that you dont
put line breaks between paragraphs unless there is a change of scene.
So
Highlight the paragraph that you want a space above. So in the example
below Charlie rubbed his eyes I want this to be a new scene and therefore
zero indent and a line space between it and Have you ever killed a cow? I
can take

So highlight Charlie rubbed his eyes.

Right mouse click
Select Paragraph
Enter the space you require above this paragraph in the spacing: Before
section. In the example below its 12 pt.

26/04/2012: The View From Here

http://tvfhmag.com
editor@viewfromheremagazine.com
London Office