Quick Question Regarding Kindle Formatting...

by Banned 17 replies
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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...
#main internet marketing discussion forum #formatting #kindle #question #quick
  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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    • Banned
      Thank you, ladies =) I just might pay for the formatting.

      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.
  • 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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    • 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.
  • 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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    • 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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  • 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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    • Both the Smashwords style guide and book marketing guide are available for free in the Kindle Marketplace, too.
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  • Yeah I found someone on fiverr and she did an excellent job on formatting for Kindle.
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    Quick Question Regarding Kindle Formatting...

    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...