How to Correctly Format an eBook for Amazon KDP with Microsoft Word - The Basics
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Learn the basics of formatting your book using Microsoft word.
The first thing that need to understand when formatting your book for amazon's kindle with Microsoft word is the following:
** a page on word does not equal a page on kindle **
That means not adding any headers, footers or borders in your MS Word file, since these elements are specific to the MS Word page.
Also note that there's no use in choosing unusual fonts, since those will not convert to the kindle file.
Conversely, do use bolds, italics, underlines etc. these will convert with no issues. If this applies to your kindle eBook, use tables and high resolution images as well.
Use page breaks wherever applicable, these will convert to your kindle book and will put on all kindle devices. A useful feature of Micrsoft Word when you're working with this is non-print character viewing.
Last area that is covered is creating a clickable, interactive table of contents. An interactive table of contents is a great way to make your kindle book easier to navigate.
After you're done, remember that you always can (and should) check the launch previewer before publishing your kindle ebook to Amazon.
Amazon's formatting guide:
kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/top...
Hey, if this video is/was helpful, I invite you to check out an entirely free Amazon publishing course (2h40m in length) that I recently put together for you: th-cam.com/play/PLdlIxntez5z972sFAdVfeyROr-Vt87QBu.html
Thank you so much! I published my kids e-book ib February 2015. And I'm about to give the cover an upgrade. I just want to make sure it's perfect.
Book Marketing 101 by Tomass Sarts your so sweet and i love your content. Thank you for making this process so easy! Your womderful!
@@jayynicole1619 Thank you! Glad you're enjoying it :)
Greatly appreciated!!! I am sending well wishes of health, peace, and prosperity in all areas of life.
Sorry to be so offtopic but does anyone know of a method to get back into an Instagram account?
I stupidly forgot the login password. I would love any help you can offer me
Hey self-publishers, here are some time stamps for you:
1:05 - What you see on MS Word does not equal what you see on Kindle
2:02 - What NOT do to
4:48 - Formatting That You Should Use
6:10 - The Recommended Book Structure
7:13 - Page Breaks
9:01 - How to Create a Clickable Table of Contents
Thank you, I am getting ready to create my first eBook. This video is a great help :)
Awesome, glad it was a help! :)
Thank you for answering the questions that arose in my mind as I was watching your video.
I'm happy that it did :)
Excellent. Thanks for the beginner tips! I’m just starting on this journey. So I appreciate how basic and introductory this video is :-)
Thanks. Very useful at my stage in the game.
Hey thanks for this video Thomas, I really appreciate your being concise. This video helped alot.
Happy to help out! :)
Thank you, this video really helped:)
THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS REALLY HELPED, BLESS YOU/FAMILY!
Thanks Gale! Glad it was helpful :)
Thanks Many Many And a Lot of Thanks... Really Helped me to get started,..
Hi Adrish, we're very glad to hear it was helpful!
Adrish Naskar 8
Very useful. Thanks!
Great video very useful for a first time writer like me, thanks
THANK YOU!
Thanks Janice!
Thank you so much. Peace, and Blessings to you and your loved ones for perfect health, and perfect peace.
Thank you! :-)))
Thank you for this video.
Hello! Great video! Question for or anyone reading this, what would you recommend I do if i already used the Enter Key, lol can i go back and use page breaks instead? also when i upload my book to KDP i have a lot of sentences out of place and a lot of words cut off, how can i avoid this ?
Thank you! Major help
Good points bud, thank you for this.
Thanks for the excellent video!
hi very informative video. have you ever had trouble with spacing where you haven't any in word and its been fine in kindle creater preview but once published its got spaces like between words l ike th is. then big space like that.
This is after Ive already finished my book on MS word right? When I go to upload to KDP I would need to make page breaks? I have someone do this for me but I want to do it myself next time. When you talk about making spaces......wont the spaces already be there in my book before I upload it?
This is really helpful thank you
Thanks man I am looking for this on whole internet ...
Glad to help you out, man! :)
Where can I find free e-book?
Great video, what font size should you make the table of contents for a non fiction book, 11, 12? and leave it word standard cambria or change it georgia?
Thanks a bunch
Hi Jack!
It's up to you what you think looks and feels better. The table of contents will work fine with any standard font and size. I like to lean towards larger rather than smaller text because I think it's easier to click it in the kindle devices. Good luck! :)
This video is really helpful! Thank you! My question is what about adding illustrations? Like a small illustration in the middle of text? Will that mess up the Kindle version too?
Glad it was useful, Val! If your image is literally in the middle of a paragraph that could potentially create a mess but if it's between 2 paragraphs that should be totally fine 👍
great suggestions; thanks.
Brilliant thank you 🙏
if you want to create ebooks then this software is the best CreateAmazingEbooks6.blogspot.com i personally tried it and it works very well for me
Thank you 😊 👍
Thank you so much...
GOD Bless you...
Thanks again
I used section breaks and page breaks for the printed publication. Do I need to change all the section breaks to page breaks? There are blank pages as well so there was always an odd page start. So I need to remove all those as well, correct? Non fiction.
Wow, thank you so much!! I was making every mistake! 🙈
Glad this was useful, Joan! :)
Thanks very much, I learned a great deal. Does it matter if the document is double spaced or should it be single spaced?
No, doesn't matter - do however you like :-)
@@BookBeam Thanks for the advice.
Very Good. Let me try my hand.
Kirtinath Jha let you try your english
@@afellowsoulofash8382 lol ikr
Thanks for the video! What is the recommended page margin for Kindle formatting?
Hi Hans! I am pretty sure the margins do not convert to the device kindle format so it doesn't really matter. I'd suggest downloading and playing around with Kindle Create, it will help you to make sure your formatting is as you want it as you go along: www.amazon.com/Kindle-Create/b?ie=UTF8&node=18292298011
Thanks👍
Good video. Helpful. Thank you.
I'm happy to hear that, thanks for watching!
Thank you.
Thank s for the info, trying to do a short silky poem Ebook startup. For enter after each line or poem verse it wasn't clear as far as the page breaks? Page break after each verse if I want a space? Thank you!
For poem verses hitting a double 'enter' will be OK, what I was getting at is don't hit 'enter' a hundred times to start a new chapter on a new page.
Thanks.
You're most welcome, Glen! :)
Hi,
So if I used publisher to copy / paste text over illustrations, would that screw up once converted to kindle ebook? It would be for a kids picture book so looking at kids book creator, there's no option to overlay text apart from pop up boxes. What would you suggest as the easiest option of the copy paste doesn't work? Cheers
If you'd be using MS Word to overlay text over illustrations, yes, more than likely the conversion process would mess that up. Some alternatives to this may be to either add the text below the images in italics or to use a text editing software like GIMP (free) or Adobe Photoshop (paid) to add text onto the images themselves.
hi very informative video. have you ever had trouble with spacing where you haven't any in word and its been fine in kindle creater preview but once published its got spaces like between words l ike th is. then big space like that. thanks
Hey! No, don't think I have experienced that. Perhaps try turning on "non-printing characters" and see if there's something strange going on. If not, then I'd suggest updating your Microsoft Word program and/or saving the document in another format - like doc if you're saving it as docx.
hi thanks for your help. Yeah fine on non printing characters & word works. After researching I noticed was a common occurrence. Amazon themselves said to save as .mobi we left it and got someone to format it as didn't realise have to format pics too. We put out in book form first so think ebook should be ok now when we do that.
This is a helpful video. What I am struggling with is how to include chapter numbers on a line above my chapter names. When I attempt to do that, upon conversion the number shows up on a separate page from the rest of the chapter. Nothing I do seems to be able to fix that. Do you have any suggestions?
I would suggest that you use the "display non printing characters" button. This will show you all of what's going on in the background, and this should help you to sort this issue out.
I HAVE A 25 PAGE EBOOK OF POETRY in A4 AS NEXT NEW PAGES, AND THE TABLE OF CONTENT IS CLICKABLE, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF I DONE SOMETHING WRONG SUCH AS ADDED MY BOOK COVER TO THE MANUSCRIPT ITSELF AND NO BACK COVER, PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT ARE MY ERROR HERE
Great video, witch page size is the best för word to create the e-book?
Page size is irrelevant for ebooks.
I had every problem that you mentioned in this video haha
Hi
Where is style feature to add table of content?? Its not visible in your video
How do I insert illustrations for children's book?
I could really use your help! I followed all of the instructions in your video regarding the formatting. I uploaded my script in KDP in .docx format and none of the formatting is there in the published version. It looks like hundreds of pages of one paragraph. There's no paragraph spaces or indentations. Should I convert the .docx to pdf and upload it that way? Also, I did use size 18 Garamond font. Could that be the culprit? Thank you so much in advance!
Hard to say what exactly is the problem (probably your version of MS Word) but a possible solution could be to import your .docx file into Kindle Create and go from there. We have tutorials on this on our channel, feel free to look them up!
Book Marketing 101 by Tomass Sarts Thank you so much! So I figured out the problem. The book must be viewed in the kindle app, not the kindle cloud web-based version.
What about overall font size and line spacing? can i do like size 12, double spaced?
Yes, that'll work. No need to worry about that too much since kindles allow users to adjust typefaces, styles etc anyway.
This video was published in 2017. Do these tips still hold true today?
Question> Do I need to insert a line break (Ctrl Enter) if I want to start a new line? And the paragraphs (enter) if I want to have an empty line between 2 textblocs? Is this the use for correct conversion in kindle?
Hi! Yes, line breaks will convert to kindle without issues.
For that reason though, it's advised to not use line breaks to put text on a new page, but a use a page break instead. Good luck!
@@BookBeam Thank u, very kind of u to answer me.
@@BookBeam Hi, sorry last question. I just used a line break (Ctrl Enter) and justified. With justified there are large spaces in my short sentence. How to avoid this showing up in kindle? Thank u
I used enter a handful of times bcuz page break didn't cooperate and only enter moved the text...sigh
I tried to get your check off list but it wont let me get past question 4 to move forward tried it a few times
That's strange, thanks for letting me know though. Feel free to reach out to hello@bookbeam.io and we'll send it over to you.
Thanks for your help, but I still don't understand how and why I'm supposed to use non print character viewing. Where and how would I use this? Yes, I am a novice, but I'm sincerely trying, so any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated! THanks again!
Sure thing - non-print character viewing basically means that you see all the spaces, line breaks, page breaks and so on that are in your word document. These spaces “become" characters.
Why this is useful is because you can see all the non-print characters (spaces) and make formatting changes based on that. When your book will be converted from MS word format to Kindle, all these spaces go into your kindle book.
Hope this helps to clarify things.
If this technical mumbo jumbo sounds like too much hassle, an alternative route would be to use Kindle Create, recently put out a video on it 🙂
@@BookBeam Thank you for your help!
So you add the microsoft word file up to amazon then? No converting it to pdf?
That's what I was wondering...
Yes, you do need to convert it to pdf, by just going to 'save as' and select PDF in the dropdown list. So you don't need any external software for it.
What should the page setup be? A4? What should be left and right margins?
Hi Tom, none of these elements matter, I would just recommend that you leave them as they are in the standard settings. The reason for that during conversion, KDP will only carry over the text and it's formatting, page formatting doesn't get converted. The e-reader devices automatically adapt the text to the screen size.
Thank you. The contents page was driving me nuts.
Cool
Thanks for this video. ... Is the free report still available ?
Yes, we've just made a new and improved version - you can find it here: spappwp.site/book-marketing-checklist/
My book looks like shit in kindle previewer. On google docs everything is there. The page break illustrations, the chapter illustrations...There's no hanging words on my paragraphs. (I'm really obsessive over hanging words. A final sentence has to be longer than half the page or I become really irritated with it.)
On kindle all I see are hanging words and it pisses me off. I almost don't want to publish with kindle anymore. It's depressing how much of a disaster my writing will look to the reader.
PsychedelicRabbit Principles And Theories In Modern Management www.amazon.in/dp/B07NKGBKD3/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_9sozCbX4JRCEP It’d be great if you could check this out!
Useful if you already know what he's saying.
What is "sort of the styles feature"? You lost me there. Otherwise okay but a big omission.
It really sucks about the fonts. Part of writing a book is artistry. What about the look of your book inside, how it lends a certain flair to your writing, and how it distinguishes your writing style from other authors? This completely sucks the swag out of your book.
That's true, I feel where you're coming from. MS Word is more like an easy, do-it-yourself low cost option.
You can work with someone to make a custom html formatted .mobi kindle file for you, where you will have custom fonts, formatting etc included as you want it for your masterpiece ;)
Not a problem with KDP paperbacks...he's just talking about eBooks.
If font is the thing that distinguishes your writing from every other author’s then you should consider focusing more on the writing.
I appreciate this is not meant to be entertaining, but I got less than half way and I'm off to look for an alternative video.
Waffles
Ice cream
Everybody and their dog is formatting eee-books...
I'm trying to format a book in Word for print...
Heavy sledding...
Can you translate this video in tamil
Beloved? 😅😅😅
Not descriptive of your feelings towards Word? 😄🙂
@@BookBeam Ha, ha, not quite: slight affection/hate, perhaps. But great video. Thank you. Very helpful for beginners and will direct many who are trying to get heads round this to your vid.
@@burntgod7165 When I said beloved, there was a tinge of sarcasm in there.. haha
So I know what you mean 🙂
@@BookBeam I'm sure there was 😉
Dude, good info, but you could have walked us through it in less than half the time you actually took.
Thanks for the feedback, Liam. Video presentation skills are still a work-in-progress :)
Write a script and follow it, you stumble too much in your presentation and it is confusing to follow the adlibs.
Misleading title... nothing to do with "How To..." in any way.
This was sooooo long and very confusing. I learned nothing. I’m more confused then ever.
And.... how to create a youtube video: know what you want to say before you start then you won't be gibbering away, repeating yourself and er like repeating yourself
It's a free video, buddy ;)
Book Marketing 101 by Tomass Sarts Try making your video with out sound, and then record over it, then edit it a little.
Maybe even draft out what you want to say.
A tip for future videos
You tend to repeat everything over and over, I can’t t afford to waste my time. Sorry but I am off.
Try scripting your video in the future. Good information, but you were very frustrating to listen to.
I agree, thanks for the feedback. Upcoming videos are sure to have better delivery and audio quality.