Formatting for Kindle

FORMATTING FOR KINDLE

Well, I don’t know how it works for Nook but I’ve discovered what it takes to get a book properly formatted for Kindle. I had to learn the hard way!

First of all, I had to figure out how to use Mobipocket a FREE download that comes with a creator and reader. It seems easy - unless you’re a computer dumbie like me.

It took me a bit to discover that, when you click on “blank document” to get started, it’s NOT asking for the document at first but a folder where it’s supposed to go. I had to go through my computer to discover it created THREE files:

    My eBooks
    My Kindle Content
    My Publications

Once I figured that out, it began to make more sense. The next thing I learned was that once I had downloaded the Kindle application for PC (another FREE download) it GAVE me a Kindle version of the English Oxford Dictionary!

Anyhow, once I found where the Mobipocket creator put the ebook I wanted to published, I was able to read the entire thing!

And, howdy, did I find errors!!!!!

The fun was trying to find where and what they were.

I quickly learned a number of things:

    If you had colors other than automatic or black in your mss that you deleted - but didn’t delete everything, you’ll get a whole lot of material in that color.

    If you did not end italics or underlining properly, it will cause entire following pages to show those scripts.

A major problem is that MW Works Word Processor will only show where colors were not completely removed. That means going to your “View” icon on the Tool Bar and clicking on the ¶ All Characters icon. Once you’ve done that, you can review your document to find all the little things you left on your document that shouldn’t be there.

And some aren’t that easy to find!!!

    You might’ve left a space before the ¶ or return and that might cause problems with the next paragraph indentation.

    Or the ¶ might show up that means everything following will be red!

But, where do you find things like where your italics or underlining left off that caused entire pages to show up in italics? For that, I had to save the MSWord document as a rich text or Wordpad file. Once you’ve done that, it will show you where the cursor changes from / to  |. You have to make sure you’ve completely ended your italics and that takes a bit of figuring out. And remember, Wordpad doesn’t have the View option. So, after you’ve reviewed your WordPad document, you copy it to a new MWWord template and you should have a clean copy.

The only way to know will be to go back to Mobipocket, upload your book, and re-read it.

I may be wrong but, I wonder how many bad reviews of ebooks comes from the fact that those of us who publish them do not go to the extra effort to ensure our product is professional?

Now, I just wish to heck I could figure out how to download a complete copy of my ebook on Nook?