How to Convert Your Book from Word into an eBook on Kindle

Image courtesy of Danny Murphy

By Danny Murphy

When it comes to publishing books that sell, it's sometimes the little things that matter most. Formatting is one of those small things that make a big difference in how authors come across to readers - especially self-published authors. Formatting can show readers that you’re orderly and detail-oriented, or it can show that you’re sloppy and don’t care much about your presentation. Formatting is as important in eBooks as it is in any other kind of literature.

I currently have nine eBooks available on Kindle at Amazon, including Humor 101: How to Tell Jokes for Power, Prestige, Profit, and Personal Fulfillment. Converting Word files to Kindle books was quite frustrating at first. I’ve learned many things along the way.

If you’ve never converted Word files to books on Kindle and you’re considering it, the following tips might save you some time and help you to get your eBooks looking pretty good.

1. Write the book. When it’s finished, put all your chapters together in a single Word document.
2. Have your book professionally edited.  The last thing you want to do is go to press with a lot of typos and grammatical errors.  While auto-editing is good, it’s far from perfect.  Hiring a pro to proofread your book could set you back a few dollars, but it will make your book much more marketable. (For more information on having your book proofread, go to http://goodbooks.online/proofread.html )
3. Once you have clean copy, then it’s time to start formatting your book.  Format the font. I select everything and then format the font at 12 points Arial.
4. Format the paragraphs. I set the line spacing at 1.5 and put 6 points of space before each paragraph.
5. Insert a page break at the end of each chapter.
6. Chapter Titles. Chapter numbers are generally irrelevant to readers of eBooks. Along with the chapter numbers, I put a short chapter title. A table of contents can be created from the chapter titles and browsers of books at Amazon will be able to see that table of contents. Also, after a reader has the book, chapter titles may help him or her to get to the desired point in the book more easily.For fiction, I use short chapter titles that won’t give much of the plot away. This is what I did with The Narcissus Code. For non-fiction, humorous and clever chapter titles can show readers what the book covers before they buy. One would hope that would help to sell the book.  I did that with Humor 101: How To Tell Jokes.
7. Heading styles will enable you to easily create a Table of Contents (TOC) with links to the beginnings of the chapters. Chapter Titles should be formatted for Heading 1. If you want, you can format headings for chapter sections as Heading 2. You can even go to a third level and beyond if you think that will be helpful to your readers.
8. Create your TOC. Click on References and go to TOC to the left near the top. Page numbers are irrelevant in eBooks so set the TOC to work with links. 
   You can set your TOC to show however many levels you want there. For example, your book may have Chapter Titles and three levels of subheadings. However, those don’t all have to be included in your TOC. You can set your TOC to include Chapter Titles and the first level of subheadings. It’s up to you. Figure out what will work best for your readers and proceed accordingly.
   At the top of the TOC, insert a bookmark called TOC. When readers use the “Go to” drop down menu, TOC is one of the selection options. If the bookmark has been placed properly, clicking on that link will take them to your TOC. Otherwise, there’s no telling where readers will end up.
9. Save the document as a Word doc. Then save it again as a “web page, filtered.” That is html format, which is what you will need to upload it to Amazon.
10. Upload the book.
11. Create a cover. Amazon has templates for this and decent photos and backgrounds to go with them. However, if you are expecting to sell copies to more people than just your friends and family, outsourcing the cover art is well worth it. Covers for eBooks have to make a visual impact as thumbnails, since that’s what people will see on Amazon. (To see some sample covers by GBO’s in-house designer, Dan Lamparelli, go to  http://goodbooks.online/coverart.html.)
12. Categories. You can list your books in two categories and I think it’s a good idea to put some thought into this. You want your title to be in categories where Amazon browsers in search of books like yours might stumble upon them. Ideally, you want to have your book listed as one of ten or so in a category that millions of viewers per day look at. Unfortunately, there are no categories like that. I think there’s a benefit to being in categories with relatively few titles. With less competition, there’s more of a chance of getting near the top. Humor 101 was in the top ten for public speaking for a long time and that helped sales.
13. Keywords. You can select up to seven keywords. Of course, you want to pick keywords carefully so that they will lead people searching for those keywords to your title.
14. Digital Rights Management (DRM). Before you publish, you can select the DRM option. According to Amazon: “DRM (Digital Rights Management) is intended to inhibit unauthorized distribution of the Kindle file of your book. Some authors want to encourage readers to share their work, and choose not to have DRM applied to their book. If you choose DRM, customers will still be able to lend the book to another user for a short period, and can also purchase the book as a gift for another user from the Kindle store. Important: Once you publish your book, you cannot change its DRM setting.”

    I have been plagiarized, and I think anything that makes it more difficult to plagiarize is a good thing. I don’t see any downside due to DRM.
    

15. Preview the book. Make sure everything works. Check the “Go to” links and the chapter links. Make sure the page breaks you’ve inserted at the end of your chapters haven’t resulted in any blank pages.
16. If you don’t like the way something looks, fix it in Word, save it as a Word doc, and then save it again as a “webpage, filtered.” Of course, you could make changes in the webpage version. However, to make sure that my original Word doc is synched with the html version, I do everything in Word and then save it both ways. Upload the book and preview it again. If you’re satisfied with everything, publish the eBook.
17. Buy the book and load it on your own device. It will probably look a bit different than it did in preview. Check everything just like you did in the preview. Make fixes as necessary and go through the last few steps again.
18. Start planning the shindig you’re going to have when you collect your royalties. You’re on your way.

If you want to consider outsourcing the proofreading, formatting and publishing process, go to http://goodbooks.online/proofread.html.

This blogpost is part of the GoodBooks.Online series entitled, "Bestseller or Bust."  

Danny Murphy is head writer, blogger and proofreader at GoodBooks.Online. He also has his own blog at www.dannymurphyauthor.com