Your 50-Step Checklist for Publishing your Kindle eBook
Read a few of these sites for other hints on publishing your eBook:
How to make books available for the Kindle platform:
Simplified Formatting Guide: Google kindle simplified formatting guide for their simplified guide.
YOUR NEXT STEP:
You’ve finished typing your manuscript and now you face publishing it as an eBook on Kindle. How do you go about it?
If you’ve published your book as a print on demand through Amazon’s CreateSpace, they offer to use your document and cover to publish it on Kindle for you. Take them up on this offer, but check the file they send to you very carefully. I found a few mistakes in my copy and junked it before starting on my own to publish the eBook version of Small Steps to Bigger Book Sales.
The Kindle instructions for publishing your eBook with them are very clear, and easy to follow.
My 50-steps checklist will help you work your way through Kindle’s instructions. Glance at the 5-steps before you start, because it will give you an overall idea of what lies ahead.
Here are the steps:
- Create account - First, create your account with Amazon / Kindle. Go to the Kindle site in paragraph 3 to get there.
- Click here for the general Kindle site. You can also sign in by clicking at the top where it says new customer.
- Or you can click here for the Kindle sign in site.
- Click here for the Kindle publishing terms. Read these. You need to know them before you publish on Kindle eBooks.
- Prepare your novel for publishing by doing the things set out below. It things go wrong, just take a deep breath and start again. The first steps are to load your book in Microsoft Word and start formatting it so that you can publish it.
- Spacing and font size for your novel – I suggest you use single spacing Times Roman type size 11 or 12. Kindle readers can choose their own font and size, so don’t worry about your choice.
- Indents - Do not indent paragraphs. Kindle automatically indents all paragraphs.
- Paragraph spacing - Do not press enter to have a space separating paragraphs. Kindle automatically puts a space between paragraphs. Creating an extra paragraph yourself results in big spaces on various devices.
- Saving your novel - Save your file in .doc not .docx. You might have to use Word 1997-2003 to save it as doc, as Word 2007 and higher use docx.
- Other style items – You can use indents, bold characters, italics and headings. However, bullet points, special fonts, headers and footers must not be used.
- Page Breaks: Enter a page break at the end of every chapter to prevent the text from running together. To insert a page break in MS Word, click "Insert" at the top menu bar and select "Page Break."
- Image Placement and color: Images should be inserted in JPEG (or .jpeg) format with center alignment (don't copy and paste from another source). Select "Insert" > "Picture" > then locate the file on your computer and select the file. Use color pics if you have them.
- Images size - Images should not exceed 127 KB. The Roxio Photosuite 5 program or the Photoshop program allows you to resize images to as to reduce them below 127KB. If you don’t have them, google free image size reduction program and test them to see if they work for you.
- Cover page - Prepare a cover page and save it as a jpeg file. Size to use is 926 by 1200 pixels. The cover page is uploaded separately into Kindle for publishing (see below). Make a note of where you saved your cover image because you will need it later on.
- Justification - Kindle readers can justify the text of your eBook as they wish, so use left justification.
- Headers and Footers - Do not use Headers or Footers as Kindle does not use them.
- Page Breaks for chapters - All new chapters should start with an "Insert" and "Page Break" in Word.
- Book structure - The structure of your eBook is usually this: Cover image, Cover page, Copyright page, Dedication page, Preface (if any), Prologue (if any), Table of Contents, then chapters, with the Author Details and author photo (if any) on the last page.
- Table of contents – Tougher to do, so avoid them unless you really need one. Most fiction novels do not need one. Use one that simply sets out the contents without linkages to each chapter. If you do want a TOC with hyperlinks to each chapter, then google for advice on how to handle such a TOC in Word.
- Saving for publication – When you are ready to upload your eBook, save your Word file using Web Page, Filtered (*HTM & *HTML) format. You can find this format by saving using the Save As command from the top left corner of the Word program, and then clicking on the type on the bottom of the page – you are given a menu which includes this Web Page, Filtered (*HTM & *HTML) format. Answer Yes to any questions asked and then save it. Make a note of where you have saved your file.
- The next step is to convert that file of your book into something that the Kindle program can work with; see the next paragraph for how to do this by downloading the very handy free MobiPocket Creator program. This program will help make your epublishing on Kindle hassle free!
- MobiPocket Creator – This is the best program to use to Build your book so that you can upload it to Kindle. The MobiPocket Creator is a free application that will convert your Web Page, Filtered (*HTM & *HTML) file into an eBbook. It can be downloaded by googling mobipocket book creator.
- The following steps use MobiPocket Creator to build your book.
- Open Mobipocket Creator and click on Import from Existing File – click on HTML document (your eBook was converted into HTML when you saved it as set out above).
- Browse to the HTML file of your eBook (from the place you saved it and noted as per 20 above), and click it and then press "Import".
- This will open the book editing function. Click on "Cover Image."
- Click "Add a Cover Image" and browse your files to locate your eBook cover you prepared as a jpeg file.
- Select your book cover and click "Update" to save your cover.
- Then select "Build" from the Mobipocket Creator Menu.
- On the "Build" page, click "Build".
- Once Build is complete (it can take a few minutes), this message will appear: Build Finished.
- Next, click the circle next to "Open folder containing eBook" and select "OK." You can skip this step if you want to.
- The file will be in PRC (or .prc) format and open in your My Documents\My Publications folder. Your book will be located here for future reference. Make a note of this location for future use. Mine goes to C:\Users\Owner\My Documents\My Publications.
- This PRC file is what you will upload into the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). You do not upload doc files or any other kinds of files – the PRC file created by Mobipocket Creator is the best way to go in my opinion.
- Preview your eBook - But first you can check how your eBook looks in Kindle and iPhone etc by using a Kindle previewer provided for downloading to your computer.
- Google Kindle Previewer download and then select the Softpedia version.
- When you have loaded the Kindle Previewer, run it, click on "File" and then click on "Open Book". Click on the right PRC file!!!!! Look at how your eBook appears in all the Devices (click on all of them and go page by page through your book). Make a note of what is not right about the layout etc. You are now pretty close to being published!
- Revision - Revise your original DOC version to remove what is wrong as shown in the Kindle Previewer. Then go through all the above steps to reload the revised eBook by creating HTMP files and using MobiPocket Creator to create a PRC file and previewing it again in the Kindle Previewer. Do the revising of your .doc version until you are happy with how it displays in the Kindle Previewer.
- The next few steps show how to upload your eBook on Kindle eBooks. You should by now almost smell the scent of victory! These steps are pretty easy to take as the Kindle form has clear instructions.
- How to upload to Kindle - Log into your Kindle account and upload your eBook. You do this by opening your Amazon/DTP account, by logging into it using your email and Amazon Password, then you click on "My Bookshelf". Then click the "Add New Item" button.
- Type in your eBook title.
- Type in the series title (if you have a series of books to publish).
- Add a description of your eBook (written like the blurbs on the backs of novels) – google for some hints on how to do this.
- Enter a category your eBook will be listed under (makes it easier for people to find it because readers search by categories).
- Enter your prepared Keywords. Google Kindle keywords for an explanation and some hints. Keywords help readers find books on Amazon / Kindle of the kind they are looking for.
- Click the "Save Entries" button to make sure Kindle retains your information.
- Then click on "Upload & Preview Book".
- Select "Browse" to open [only the PRC file NOT the HTM or HTML file] a dialog box to locate the file you want to upload – this is the PRC file on your computer that the MobiPocket Creator made for you. ONLY USE THE PRC FILE – DO NOT USE ANY DOC FILE OR ANY IMAGES WILL NOT BE UPLOADED ETC.
- The Kindle site then converts your book – this can take a while.
- Click on the "Preview" button to see how your eBook looks. It should look fine when you go through it page by page. If it doesn't, fix what doesn't look OK in your DOC file and go through all the above steps again until you are happy. Chances are pretty good that your eBook will look fine in Kindle's preview!
- Click on "Enter Price" and enter your price.
- Click on "Save Entries" and then on the "Publish" button.
- Congratulations! You should now be a published eBook author on the Kindle eBook site.
SOME GOOD SITES ABOUT PUBLISHING ON KINDLE:
Read a few of these sites for other hints on publishing your eBook:
How to make books available for the Kindle platform:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Step-by-Step-Guide-for-Publishing-on-Kindle
Simplified Formatting Guide: Google kindle simplified formatting guide for their simplified guide.
YOUR NEXT STEP:
You are now a published eBook writer. Your next step is to make sure you find readers who want to buy your eBook.
How to go about this?
Click here for my blog post on my simple guide to using social media to promote your books – Small Steps to Bigger Book Sales.
If you enter your name and email address into the sign in form in the right column of my author blog, you will subscribe to my emails and newsletter (no obligation and no cost to you); you can unsubscribe at any time. You will then receive a series of emails with free bonuses for you, dealing with self publishing. One such bonus is an Excel template of a complete book marketing plan, based on the 20 tasks in my book. You can use this as your own plan, simply by filling in the blanks.
My author blog is at: https://glennashton.blogspot.comand my Small Steps Kindle eBook (only $4) and POD version ($15) can be bought at my Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/author/glennashton
And may the writing gods grant you massive sales of your books!
