A Kindle Formatting Poll

13 years ago

Forget about the Kindle man, write a PDF so people can download it on their iPads, iPhones and most important of all... Their Computers! YEE!

But ya know, PDF format will probably work the exact same way on the Kindle. I would imagine in Amazon was smart, they would build the Kindle to read PDFs, otherwise, that would just be stupid in my opinion.

Anyways dude, rock on and def think about making your eBook available to a wider audience...

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CDarklock

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

PDF format will probably work the exact same way on the Kindle.

PDFs don't convert properly on the Kindle. Word docs come over looking a lot more like the original document.

So the funny thing is, if you do your ebook in Word, you can convert that to PDF and Kindle and it will still look pretty much like you wanted.

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MatthewNeer

13 years ago

Originally Posted by CDarklock

PDFs don't convert properly on the Kindle. Word docs come over looking a lot more like the original document.

So the funny thing is, if you do your ebook in Word, you can convert that to PDF and Kindle and it will still look pretty much like you wanted.

Hmm, that's weird man. I had no idea...

I honestly don't see how people still buy the Kindle when all these other tablets are coming out in full color now to compete with the iPad. Some of which are close to same price point as Kindle, dunno why peeps would choose the lesser of the two, feel me?

You ever optimized for Kindle, and if so, is there some major benefit to doing so that I dunno about?

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CDarklock 13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

I honestly don't see how people still buy the Kindle when all these other tablets are coming out in full color now

Digital ink display. Higher resolution and better readability than tablets. Also weighs a lot less.
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- Steve Garratt 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by CDarklock
  
  Digital ink display. Higher resolution and better readability than tablets. Also weighs a lot less.
  
  And the battery lasts almost a month.
  
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  Jay Cummins 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by howdo-i
  
  And the battery lasts almost a month.
  
  Turn the wireless off when not using it, and the battery will last almost 2 months.
  
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Don Schenk

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

Hmm, that's weird man. I had no idea...

I honestly don't see how people still buy the Kindle when all these other tablets are coming out in full color now to compete with the iPad. Some of which are close to same price point as Kindle, dunno why peeps would choose the lesser of the two, feel me?

You ever optimized for Kindle, and if so, is there some major benefit to doing so that I dunno about?

The backlit, full-color models, Like the Nook, have a very short battery life - 8 to 10 hours. Kindle will run for a week if the WiFi is turned off. Also, the Kindle weighs half as much as the others.

Why format for Kindle? Because Kindle has most of the ereader market, but we should also format for ePub for Sony and Nook and Kobo, and .pdf for computer users.

:-Don

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Paul Myers 13 years ago

Matthew,

Those other devices allow you to order from the Kindle store without having the Kindle hardware. There are free apps for PCs, Macs, Android devices, and iThings.

That said, none of them feel as much like reading a real book as the Kindle. Not even the iPad.

Paul
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kurtistb

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

I honestly don't see how people still buy the Kindle when all these other tablets are coming out in full color now to compete with the iPad. Some of which are close to same price point as Kindle, dunno why peeps would choose the lesser of the two, feel me?

Kindle is a one trick pony but its a very good trick. I bought one for the sole purpose of being able to read while at the beach. Before the purchase I never saw the allure of buying a dedicated e-reader but a black Friday sale made me give it a shot. I only paid like 80 bucks for a 3g kindle.

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seasoned

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

Hmm, that's weird man. I had no idea...

I honestly don't see how people still buy the Kindle when all these other tablets are coming out in full color now to compete with the iPad. Some of which are close to same price point as Kindle, dunno why peeps would choose the lesser of the two, feel me?

You ever optimized for Kindle, and if so, is there some major benefit to doing so that I dunno about?

Matthew, you are assuming a *****LOT*****!

1. PDF IS an akronym of "Portable Document Format", but that is REALLY stupid and NAIVE! FIRST, a LOT of companies don't understand it, so they use GRAPHICS instead of fonts! Why don't you put ink in the gas tank of your car? It is pretty much the same thing! Fonts can scale and be read by various routines FAR better than graphics! SECOND, there is really NO accounting for aspect ratio, and size only goes so far. So PDFs may work FINE on every desktop, etc... but come up wanting on phones and small tablets.

2. The KINDLE basically has THREE things going for it that many pads don't! FIRST, it can download stuff from amazon MADE for it! SECOND, some people like the contrast and black on white screen of the kindle. THIRD, it uses a display that, while slow and lacking color, is VERY low power, so you could supposedly read a book for WEEKS on one charge!

So there IS a legitimate reason to not support PDF 100%, and a legitimate reason that some feel the kindle is better. BTW I suspect that most pads aren't that great power wise. I was surprised to hear that apples is like 10 hours. That might be one reason why it doesn't natively support USB or external memory.

Steve

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HelpingYouBeAnExpert

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

Hmm, that's weird man. I had no idea...

I honestly don't see how people still buy the Kindle when all these other tablets are coming out in full color now to compete with the iPad. Some of which are close to same price point as Kindle, dunno why peeps would choose the lesser of the two, feel me?

You ever optimized for Kindle, and if so, is there some major benefit to doing so that I dunno about?

I just came back from the beach, and the beauty of the Kindle is that it's not color! I love reading it and it's a million times better then an Ipad I know people will disagree but it's hard on the iyes and in hot sun on the beach a black and white kindle that works a week on a the same battery is amazing, at least for me I know most people don't agree.

just my 2 cents

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ccd

13 years ago

I'm currently in the process of formatting my ebook for Kindle. When I made the first attempt at converting the Word file to Kindle, the result was a REAL MESS! It's going to take WAY more than 45 minutes (the book is 130 pages).

However, this is my first effort at converting to Kindle format. Once you know how to format the Word doc properly from the start (things like not using bullets and not pasting images), then I think it would be a fairly quick and painless process.

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kevinw1

13 years ago

Originally Posted by ccd

However, this is my first effort at converting to Kindle format. Once you know how to format the Word doc properly from the start (things like not using bullets and not pasting images), then I think it would be a fairly quick and painless process.

Standard Word bulleted lists convert fine. Images work if you use Insert File, not copy and paste.

Thanks
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gfMedia 13 years ago

Based on this poll: My best guess estimate is that it takes 9 mins 41 secs to format a Word doc so it's ready to upload to Kindle.

Based on other Warrior responses that I've seen: My best guess estimate is that it takes 10 to 20 mins to create a book cover using a graphics program like PhotoShop, Paint or Gimp.

Total time to get a Kindle book ready to upload: 20 to 30 mins.

Great, thanks to all who took this poll. This information is very valuable to me.
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chemo38

13 years ago

Originally Posted by MatthewNeer

Forget about the Kindle man, write a PDF so people can download it on their iPads, iPhones and most important of all... Their Computers! YEE!

But ya know, PDF format will probably work the exact same way on the Kindle. I would imagine in Amazon was smart, they would build the Kindle to read PDFs, otherwise, that would just be stupid in my opinion.

Anyways dude, rock on and def think about making your eBook available to a wider audience...

Kindle can do all of that...you don't need a Kindle reader to read a Kindle book. Kindle books can be downloaded to Macs, Windows, and all the smart phones.

chemo38

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chemo38 13 years ago

I paid a guy on Fiverr to do it for me. Came out great! I was happy with the job and saved me the aggravation of doing it myself. Outsource the frustrating stuff and spend the time wisely.

chemo38
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MatthewNeer

13 years ago

Originally Posted by chemo38

Kindle can do all of that...you don't need a Kindle reader to read a Kindle book. Kindle books can be downloaded to Macs, Windows, and all the smart phones.

chemo38

That is a KEY fact right there man.

With that in mind, and Amazons distribution, there is mos def massive potential.

I still don't like the Kindle though, LOL. Maybe I'm just a Mac freak but the iPad is just so sexy. Plus I would feel like I was cheating on my iPad if I slept with a Kindle...

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ebooks4u 13 years ago

I love my Kindle, it reads like a "real" book and I have hundreds of titles on it. Great for reading on vacation, and on the beach in the bright sunlight; try that with a tablet

You can convert any .txt, .pdf, .html or Word .doc file into a Kindle .mobi formatted Ebook with the MobiPocket Creator, it's free. Need a tutorial on how to do it? Here' one -and also free:
Free tutorial on how to create a Kindle formatted Ebook
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Charles Harper

13 years ago

Matt:

I think it is less about the device and more about Amazon's reach in terms of distribution.

CT

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MatthewNeer 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Charles Harper

Matt:

I think it is less about the device and more about Amazon's reach in terms of distribution.

CT

Interesting. I would love to hear more about some of the stats on that...

Anyone got the goods?
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Paul Gram

13 years ago

Doing it right from scratch, maybe an extra 1-2 minutes. Converting existing books to the Kindle, maybe an extra 20 minutes. Bottom line is that it always looks as good as a NYT bestseller.

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TyCohen

13 years ago

Most of the people who buy Kindles are avid readers. They like having the ability to access almost any book at anytime, as well as having an entire "library" at their disposal.

On average if you uploading content in an MS Word format it should take you no more than 10 minutes to do so, unless you are including things like copyright page, etc, which could tack on a few more minutes

Ty

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Hajath

13 years ago

Interesting Poll... I always recommend .mobi or .azw format to upload it in kindle publishing for best view.

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Kecia

13 years ago

I chose 7-15 minutes, and I also use the Word document to submit my books to the Kindle. The Word file is easy to format, and the varying degree of time is usually based on how the book is formatted as it is written. I offer this as a service on Fiverr, so sometimes I have to do a little more work based on how poorly the original document was created in the first place. Overall, I would say that it takes no more than 15 minutes in most cases.

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travlinguy

13 years ago

Interesting question. I thing the formatting question depends a lot on the length of the text. I literally have 30 books I want to format for Kindle. I took a 50-page book last week and went through it so I could experience the process of getting a book on Kindle.

I originally had it in Word with a bunch of tables. Tables don't come through in Kindle and they suggest you do screen shots of each of your tables and include them as images. Having to do that slowed the process down a bit. I read somewhere that you can also submit stuff that was created with Open Office Writer but I haven't seen that officially on Kindle's site.

If the book had been properly formatted in Word (no tables) to start with it might have taken me about 10 minutes to get it done. One thing I found was viewing the finished work on the Amazon "preview" page showed that the book appeared to be improperly centered and that the text on the right side wasn't visible.

I looked high and low for comments on this in various forums and in the Kindle Q & A section but found nothing. And since I don't own a Kindle reader I couldn't double check for myself. Though I have since downloaded the PC version of Kindle. The book was approved so I have to assume it passed muster at review time and that the text is properly formatted.

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seasoned

13 years ago

Originally Posted by travlinguy

Interesting question. I thing the formatting question depends a lot on the length of the text. I literally have 30 books I want to format for Kindle. I took a 50-page book last week and went through it so I could experience the process of getting a book on Kindle.

I originally had it in Word with a bunch of tables. Tables don't come through in Kindle and they suggest you do screen shots of each of your tables and include them as images. Having to do that slowed the process down a bit. I read somewhere that you can also submit stuff that was created with Open Office Writer but I haven't seen that officially on Kindle's site.

If the book had been properly formatted in Word (no tables) to start with it might have taken me about 10 minutes to get it done. One thing I found was viewing the finished work on the Amazon "preview" page showed that the book appeared to be improperly centered and that the text on the right side wasn't visible.

I looked high and low for comments on this in various forums and in the Kindle Q & A section but found nothing. And since I don't own a Kindle reader I couldn't double check for myself. Though I have since downloaded the PC version of Kindle. The book was approved so I have to assume it passed muster at review time and that the text is properly formatted.

MOST such routines "officially" list open document writer as microsoft office, since OOW can output to MOW documents. Kindle might have a larger left hand margin, like many books. The table problem is common, but a NUISANCE!!!!! Do they accept NATIVE word tables? SOME embed excel tables in Word and I could understand THAT being a problem.

Steve

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Tsnyder

13 years ago

I swear several people in another thread said
you don't have to format it at all. Just upload
your word doc and they format it for you... no?

Tsnyder

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travlinguy 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Tsnyder

I swear several people in another thread said
you don't have to format it at all. Just upload
your word doc and they format it for you... no?

Tsnyder

Kinda true but you first need to save it as a Web document rather than a simple Word doc. Subtle distinction that makes a big difference.
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kevinw1

13 years ago

You can upload a native Word .doc document to the Kindle and it will work provided you have used dead plain formatting (starting with a blank doc and adding plain text, then using only H1, H2 etc). Including graphics works. Tables work, if they are not too wide for the device. Table of Contents created using Word bookmarks works fine.

I have 7 Kindle books uploaded using this method, and including those features, so I know from experience that they work.

Uploading a PDF usually results in formatting chaos. No one who downloads the free sample of your eBook will buy it if it's unreadable.

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Raydal

13 years ago

My first book took much longer than anticipated because
I had problems with the images but after I realize that
you should have all the files in the publishing folder for
MobiPocket then the next book was a piece of cake.

-Ray Edwards

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A Kindle Formatting Poll

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