Quick Question Regarding Kindle Formatting...

by Devin X Banned
17 replies
Hey Warriors,

I will be trying my hand at Kindle Publishing soon but noticed that Amazon's guidelines only focus on Windows users on Word. I operate through iMAC (the only way to go, of course lol) and they don't even adress other Mac users. My word processor is Pages and I'm wondering if any of you have written books on a Mac using Pages...or do I need to get Word:Mac instead? Worse comes to worse, I'll just write it and shell out the money for formatting and such, but I figured I'd ask. Thanks, and much love from your favorite Dudeman...
#formatting #kindle #question #quick
  • Profile picture of the author JennySweets
    Originally Posted by TheRealDudeman View Post

    Hey Warriors,

    I will be trying my hand at Kindle Publishing soon but noticed that Amazon's guidelines only focus on Windows users on Word. I operate through iMAC (the only way to go, of course lol) and they don't even adress other Mac users. My word processor is Pages and I'm wondering if any of you have written books on a Mac using Pages...or do I need to get Word:Mac instead? Worse comes to worse, I'll just write it and shell out the money for formatting and such, but I figured I'd ask. Thanks, and much love from your favorite Dudeman...
    Despite their detailed information, and their Preview tool, and various formatting tools available for us PC users -

    I still made a garbage pile mess of my Kindle formatting.

    I'm no dummy either but I wasted a lot of time not getting it right. In the end, it's cheaper and less frustrating to send it to someone who knows what they are doing. Cheaper in the sense that time is money anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author marketingva
    Hi Dudeman,

    I've had great luck getting my e-books converted to the right format using someone from Fiverr. I did this only for Smashwords because I have Word but the person did a great job and for $5 you can't go wrong.

    Bonnie
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    Magic Wand Author Services helps writers polish their manuscripts and connect to readers.
    http://www.mwauthorservices.com

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  • Profile picture of the author donhx
    The kind of computer you have doesn't make any difference. If you are using Word you can convert it using virtually any tool available, including those online.
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    Quality content to beat the competition. Personalized Author Services
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  • Profile picture of the author Stefan Pylarinos
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    • Profile picture of the author Devin X
      Banned
      Originally Posted by JennySweets View Post

      Despite their detailed information, and their Preview tool, and various formatting tools available for us PC users -

      I still made a garbage pile mess of my Kindle formatting.

      I'm no dummy either but I wasted a lot of time not getting it right. In the end, it's cheaper and less frustrating to send it to someone who knows what they are doing. Cheaper in the sense that time is money anyway.
      Originally Posted by marketingva View Post

      Hi Dudeman,

      I've had great luck getting my e-books converted to the right format using someone from Fiverr. I did this only for Smashwords because I have Word but the person did a great job and for $5 you can't go wrong.
      Thank you, ladies =) I just might pay for the formatting.

      Originally Posted by Stefan Pylarinos View Post

      I have a Mac and use Pages and I've published over 100 books. Pages has a lot of advantages, since you can export your book easily as an .epub format.
      Thanks, Stefan. Yeah Pages is a great app, I was just unsure and a little frustrated that Amazon only addressed PC users about formatting...and according to Ms. Sweets, it isn't that great anyway.

      Once again, thank you all for your help.
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  • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
    If you can export easily as epub, just convert it to mobi with Calibre, it's a free download and very easy to use. I heard that using the kindle previewer allows mac users to convert to mobi too but am a Windows head, so can't verify that
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    • Profile picture of the author christianS
      Just another heads up from a Pages user.

      When you upload the document to KDP it gets converted to the Kindle format, right? The KDP upload tool accepts a variety of formats, one of them Word (.doc).

      So you can export a Word doc from Pages and upload that. It works, but sometimes the formatting is funky (but this can also happen if your file comes directly from Microsoft Word and I think it depends a good deal on how complicated your original document was (complicated tables, graphics, etc, doesn't convert well).

      I've found that if I export a .doc from Pages and open that document in Google drive, clean any formatting mistakes, and then save that file as a new .doc, it converts pretty well in KDP.

      Clunky. And my least favorite part in the process.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bkelly301
    Have you read the Smashwords style guide which explains exactly how to properly format an eBook? I'm not sure if they go into detail about how to format for Macs, but it shows you exactly what a properly formatted eBook should look like. You can use that guide to format the book yourself in your Mac program. Once the book is formatted down to the "bare bones" look as per the Smashwords style guide, you can then use free program called "Calibre" to convert to any other format.

    Don't forget to make a functional TOC as well!
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      The problems many people have with formatting, Word or otherwise, is that they try to do things which are not supported.

      For example, because the wide assortment of Kindles and reader apps means that you have a wide assortment of page widths, from people squinting at their phones to people reading on large monitors, things like tables don't work well. Kindle readers also allow the user to change the text size, so the format you so carefully crafted in 12 pt. text gets blown up when the reader changes it to 14 pt.

      I've had the best luck creating my books in either Word (but Pages should work just fine) or Open Office Writer, and exporting as html (filtered html for Word).

      For plain text, upload the clean html file. If you have images, upload a folder with the html file and the images.

      Dudeman, just follow Amazon's process, substituting Pages terminology for Word.
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      • Profile picture of the author Bkelly301
        Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

        The problems many people have with formatting, Word or otherwise, is that they try to do things which are not supported.

        For example, because the wide assortment of Kindles and reader apps means that you have a wide assortment of page widths....
        Exactly! That's why you should follow the "style guide" from Smashwords. That teaches you how to format your eBook down to the most "bare bones" format as possible. No special "auto formatting" or special symbols or page breaks which won't always show up when converted to another format. It's just simple text with minimal spacing, and a functional TOC that ALL eBook readers recognize.

        If you just write a book in Word (or pages for that matter), and you don't format it properly, Kindle will still allow you to submit the document. However, a poorly formatted word document will not work well when opened from other readers. Extra unnecessary spaces will appear all over the place, symbols that don't translate well when opened with other programs will appear as unreadable jargon, etc. However, Amazon will still allow you to submit a poorly formatted document. This will likely result in several angry readers and bad reviews.

        My advice, format via the Smashwords style guide, submit your eBook to Smashwords to see if it passes their test (they will not accept an eBook if it's not formatted properly). After doing that, THEN submit your nicely formatted (and tested via Smashwords) eBook to the kindle store of Amazon.

        This extra step will avoid many angry customers who buy a poorly formatted book. It only takes about an hour or two to format a 100-page eBook. It's well worth it!
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        • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
          Originally Posted by Bkelly301 View Post

          Exactly! That's why you should follow the "style guide" from Smashwords. That teaches you how to format your eBook down to the most "bare bones" format as possible. No special "auto formatting" or special symbols or page breaks which won't always show up when converted to another format. It's just simple text with minimal spacing, and a functional TOC that ALL eBook readers recognize.

          If you just write a book in Word (or pages for that matter), and you don't format it properly, Kindle will still allow you to submit the document. However, a poorly formatted word document will not work well when opened from other readers. Extra unnecessary spaces will appear all over the place, symbols that don't translate well when opened with other programs will appear as unreadable jargon, etc. However, Amazon will still allow you to submit a poorly formatted document. This will likely result in several angry readers and bad reviews.

          My advice, format via the Smashwords style guide, submit your eBook to Smashwords to see if it passes their test (they will not accept an eBook if it's not formatted properly). After doing that, THEN submit your nicely formatted (and tested via Smashwords) eBook to the kindle store of Amazon.

          This extra step will avoid many angry customers who buy a poorly formatted book. It only takes about an hour or two to format a 100-page eBook. It's well worth it!
          Actually, while the thought is good, the process is not so simple. The Smashwords guide is horribly difficult to understand - that is why I suspect they offer their formatting service for $60 (last time I published with them).
          Basically when using Word just make sure to use Styles instead of formatting directly on the page, and don't submit to Smashwords just to check it's ok - unless you want to actually publish on Smashwords - in which case, you do understand that you can't use KDP Giveaway promos on Kindle?
          To check your file is valid just go here: EPUB Validator (beta)
          It's free, quick and easy.

          Format in Word using Styles (page breaks are fine if they precede chapter titles) and add two bookmarks - "TOC" (make sure it's in all caps) at the start of your Table of Contanets and "Start" where the reader expects to begin reading, then export as a filtered web page and it is absolutely ready to rock.


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      • Profile picture of the author Devin X
        Banned
        Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

        Dudeman, just follow Amazon's process, substituting Pages terminology for Word.
        Thanks, John. I figured as much so I'm glad you confirmed my line of reasoning.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bkelly301
    Yes I do understand that if you upload your books to Smashwords then you can not use the KDP select service at Amazon.

    But about using the Smashwords style guide... It is completely free to download the .pdf that explains exactly how to properly format your eBook. I didn't find it very hard to format my books by following through the guide step-by-step. Then, once you go through the process once, you can simply reuse that file and do a "save as" if you want to write subsequent books.

    I know that the style guide is geared towards MS Word users, but simply by reading through the guide, you can get an idea of what a bare bones, properly formatted eBook should look like.

    I was very surprised as to how easy it was to upload my horribly formatted books to Amazon. I learned several months later how to properly format my books, and so I resubmitted them to Amazon.

    IMO, even if you don't want to submit to Smashwords, there's no harm in using their free style guide to teach you how to format an eBook.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Both the Smashwords style guide and book marketing guide are available for free in the Kindle Marketplace, too.
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      • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
        Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

        Both the Smashwords style guide and book marketing guide are available for free in the Kindle Marketplace, too.
        Yep, I am not arguing with the availability or accuracy of it... but considering how easy it is to format for them, it sure makes a mess of explaining it. There's proof enough of that on forums the length and breadth of the world over - not to mention people making up to $30 a pop on Fiverr for Smashwords formatting.


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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Calm down, Dave.

          I offered a free and easy source of the information. It's up to any particular user to decide if it's worthwhile for them.

          Personally, I boiled it down to what was in my first post here. If others want to turn checkers into chess, that's up to them...
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          • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
            Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

            Calm down, Dave.

            I offered a free and easy source of the information. It's up to any particular user to decide if it's worthwhile for them.

            Personally, I boiled it down to what was in my first post here. If others want to turn checkers into chess, that's up to them...
            John, you misread me - I am not being... "un-calm".. I am just getting into the debate. No anger here, just a lively debate.
            Dave



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  • Profile picture of the author troy23
    Yeah I found someone on fiverr and she did an excellent job on formatting for Kindle.
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