Kindle Formatting

Last weekend I had a crash course in how to format a manuscript for the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is an electronic reading device available from Amazon.com. I don't own a Kindle, but I do know that it is the most popular electronic reading device out there. With this in mind, I went to the Amazon web site to see how hard it would be to make my girlfriend's novel available in that format.

Just like most things on Amazon, I found the digital text platform information quickly and was able to get signed up for a content provider account quite easily. After that, the process was similar to what I had used on lulu.com to publish the paperback version. Once I got to the manuscript upload step, that's where things got a little tricky (mainly because I only had enough time to read about basic formatting tips). I first attempted to upload the pdf version and that did not look good at all.

They do simulate what the material will look like on a Kindle after you upload your content, which is very helpful. Next, I tried uploading the manuscript as an html document. This was accomplished by saving as html from Microsoft Word. This looked much better and I was able to make the necessary formatting adjustments working with the html version in word. Drop caps had to be replaced with large bold font and a few page breaks were needed to keep the chapter and title pages on separate pages on the Kindle. The Kindle allows a reader to change their font size on the fly, so it isn't important to make the length of every page in a chapter match your printed version.

The Kindle version of "In a Sense of Love" is now available for $6.56 at Amazon.com.