Amozon Kindle Publish HELP!!

by Rudz69
20 replies
I have just published a book on amazon kindle, problem is it looks like amazon has completely re-formatted my book?? nothing is structured the way it was in the original pdf?
I sent amazon a ticket to try and resolve, but just curious if any of you might now what may be the reason?
#amozon #kindle #publish
  • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
    PDFs are terrible to convert into other formats. That's because they have their own compression mechanism that makes it great at creating small documents even when you have a lot of pictures in there, but because of that it's a tough job converting one into other formats.

    Also, you can't just upload your document in a doc or pdf and get it automatically converted. It will always look awful and it be a bad experience for the buyers.

    You need to format your document first (preferably the original Word document).

    Here are a few tips:

    ** Remove header & footer. There are no pages on Kindle devices, so it makes no sense having them. Most converters do it anyway automatically.

    ** Rebuild your table of contents with links to the chapters, rather than pages. Again, no pages on Kindle. Make the chapters H1, subchapters H2, and generate a ToC.

    ** If you have pictures that you stretched in Word, you probably should replace them with the images that have the right dimension, otherwise when the document is converted they will look out of place.

    You have to get your document (preferably Word in Calibre). Edit metadata, author name, cover. Convert into epub (that's the amazon format).

    It will still not look right, so you need to edit it with Sigil. You will have to fix page breaks and images alignment.

    As far as I know, there's no software that will create a perfect reformatted ebook with one button push.

    -Gabriel
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    • Profile picture of the author WriterWahm
      Originally Posted by gabibeowulf View Post

      As far as I know, there's no software that will create a perfect reformatted ebook with one button push.

      -Gabriel
      There is. It's called Kinstant Formatter.
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  • Profile picture of the author Krisz Rokk
    Gabriel, you're right.
    PDF and Word looks terrible. I've seen buyers give bad reviews for poor formatting - which is understandable.
    I always upload formatted .mobi files to Kindle. It's worth putting in the extra time & effort. The E-books look nice and 'clean', and customers love it
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  • Profile picture of the author bhartzer
    Keep in mind that one of the best things that I did (related to formatting) was to make sure the the cover page was formatted properly and had a really good graphic on it. Something that catches people's eye when they're scrolling through a list of ebooks. The cover/title page can really help "sell" your book.
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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    Be aware that Kindle is a smaller page size when doing the formatting.

    It is a tricky game getting the Kindle ebook to format in the way you would like for it to be formatted.

    As Sharon recommended, Kinstant Formatter is a good option.

    I am still using, Calibre myself.
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    • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
      Is Kinstant Formatter better than Calibre at converting Word to Epub? I use Calibre too, but the conversion is not always perfect and requires extra editing.


      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      Be aware that Kindle is a smaller page size when doing the formatting.

      It is a tricky game getting the Kindle ebook to format in the way you would like for it to be formatted.

      As Sharon recommended, Kinstant Formatter is a good option.

      I am still using, Calibre myself.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        So far, I've created my docs in Word using basic formatting. H1 for chapter titles, H2 for subheads, Normal for text, etc.

        Insert a TOC linking to the chapters (and subheads, if you like).

        Convert the doc to filtered html. Upload the filtered html file to Kindle.

        Works great for a text-only book.
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        • Profile picture of the author KenJ
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          So far, I've created my docs in Word using basic formatting. H1 for chapter titles, H2 for subheads, Normal for text, etc.

          Insert a TOC linking to the chapters (and subheads, if you like).

          Convert the doc to filtered html. Upload the filtered html file to Kindle.

          Works great for a text-only book.
          This is definitely the way to go. I have the formatters mentioned plus a few others and they do not work in all cases. No they don't!

          Save a word document as filtered html and you will be fine for text based books. If you do not own Word, buy it.

          KenJ
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        • Profile picture of the author Sandra Martinez
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          So far, I've created my docs in Word using basic formatting. H1 for chapter titles, H2 for subheads, Normal for text, etc.

          Insert a TOC linking to the chapters (and subheads, if you like).

          Convert the doc to filtered html. Upload the filtered html file to Kindle.

          Works great for a text-only book.
          Yep! What John said works.

          Just in case, when you are saving, check under tools -> web options -> codification, that you have one Amazon likes. Usually the default is ok if you are in US. If you are someplace else, make sure it is not unicode. Last time I checked, it did not like it.

          For more complex books, you can create the mobi file. It is not as hard as it seems. Amazon gives you the tools.
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          • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
            Originally Posted by KenJ View Post

            This is definitely the way to go. I have the formatters mentioned plus a few others and they do not work in all cases. No they don't!

            Save a word document as filtered html and you will be fine for text based books. If you do not own Word, buy it.

            KenJ
            I've also used Open Office Writer to create the html files. OO puts out clean code, without all the hooks MS puts in for compatibility, work group use, etc.

            I stick to Word because it's the word processor I have the most time BIC with.
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            • Profile picture of the author dmister
              I am doing the word document and converting it to filtered html and it works great. However, how do you put images in your kindle book - I tried and it didn`t work and it was the right size JPEG.

              How do you put images in your kindle files? It would vastly improve my book.
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              • Profile picture of the author Sandra Martinez
                Originally Posted by dmister View Post

                I am doing the word document and converting it to filtered html and it works great. However, how do you put images in your kindle book - I tried and it didn`t work and it was the right size JPEG.

                How do you put images in your kindle files? It would vastly improve my book.
                If you are using word, import them. Make sure they are small-ish. Center them and use inline position so you will not have floating images in the web version.

                Then save as filtered webpage, it will create an images folder.

                I haven´t tried it (always went all the way and created the mobi file so far), but some say you can make a zip file with the html file and the images folder, and kindle will take it just fine.
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              • Profile picture of the author Raydal
                Originally Posted by dmister View Post

                I am doing the word document and converting it to filtered html and it works great. However, how do you put images in your kindle book - I tried and it didn`t work and it was the right size JPEG.

                How do you put images in your kindle files? It would vastly improve my book.
                I guess there are multiple ways of doing this, but I use the free software
                tool Mobipocket Creator and import the filtered HTML file from
                Word then have the software compile the ebook. (Use h1 tags
                for table of contents)

                If you are using pictures then open the HTML file in your BROWSER
                and then save each image (right-click, save as) in the publication
                folder and then you can compile the ebook. Make sure that
                the Word document is closed while running the compiler.

                If you get any error messages then they are clear enough to know
                what you did wrong.

                -Ray Edwards
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    • Profile picture of the author Freedom Media
      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      Be aware that Kindle is a smaller page size when doing the formatting.

      It is a tricky game getting the Kindle ebook to format in the way you would like for it to be formatted.

      As Sharon recommended, Kinstant Formatter is a good option.

      I am still using, Calibre myself.
      This is the question I was digging around to answer...It seems Kindle pages are about 1/2 the word count of regular Word pages?
      For example, I have a Word doc that is 64 pgs. and 8,510 words.
      Does that mean in Kindle it would be somewhere around 128 pgs?
      Or, am I way off here?
      Thanks in advance!
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
    PDF is one of the worst ways to format a Kindle book. You can use Microsoft Word and get perfect formatting with it every single time.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobro
    I use Microsoft Word and my results are super. HTML and PDFs can both be use. However, my results with both of them are less than optimal as we say. Try to test out your book with a Kindle Reader to see what your readers will see. Old Kindle was in black and white, but there is now a color version. All the best to you.
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  • Profile picture of the author jcadrin
    Always upload in HTML format. This will prevent this from happening the majority of the time. Always preview before uploading.
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    • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
      I use an instant formatting tool also. Saves a lot of heartache.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rudz69
    I just outsourced it and the guy formatted it perfectly using a '.mobi' extension + hyperlinks from the intro to the chapters for $30
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