I attended a webinar a while back that made it sound like publishing an eBook on Kindle is as simple as saving your Word file in .doc format. I bought the training, fully expecting to know how to publish an eBook on Kindle within hours. After I uploaded my book, I found myself a bit disappointed with the results.
There is more to publishing a book to Kindle than having a Word file. You need to know how to format Word as well as a bit of basic HTML. I will cover HTML in a separate article.
Learn Style Formatting Tricks
Here are some steps you can take as you are creating your file that will help with an attractive display. These are the most important tips to consider.
1. Never use tabs to indent paragraphs. Change the settings for Normal by changing the default paragraph settings. A 0.25 inch paragraph first-line indent is a good choice for Kindle.
2. Indent paragraphs only if you set paragraph spacing to 0. If you have space between the paragraphs, then set the paragraph flush left.
3. Control spacing between paragraphs, chapter headings and inner chapter headings by formatting, not by adding extra hard returns. Your enter key creates a hard return. The paragraph formatting dialog allows you to add space before and/or after paragraphs. I usually use 6 pts before and 6 pts after for the ‘normal’ style. This results in an effective spacing of one line between paragraphs. The default is usually 10 pts after.
4. Set all illustrations inline with text, preferably centered. The viewer is too small to effectively wrap text around most pictures anyway, so they will look best if centered.
5. Eliminate all page numbers. They are unnecessary. You have no control over what size text the viewer will choose.
6. Convert any footnotes into end notes. Or place footnotes inline right after the paragraph.
7. Eliminate any header or footer text.It may show up in unexpected places in the document.
8. Set the paragraph line height to single. If you want a little more space between lines, set the line height at 1.19. This will handle line spacing as a decimal instead of as an exact height. Because most formatting in Word is based on Normal, this line height will apply to all text, not just your normal text.
9. Replace all ‘smart formatting’ (quotes, apostrophes, en and em dashes) with their keyboard equivalents. Kindle doesn’t know what to do with Word’s non-keyboard characters.
