Formatting Kindle Books?

[Rebecca800]

What's the best software to format a Kindle book? I publish my PDFs straight to Kindle and they look ok in preview mode, but being a neat freak I know they can look better. Any tips?

[Oceans]

I use this place:

Free ePub Converter - PDF To ePub - Convert Books to ePub Format

Great for simple text pdfs

[JoePike]

Sorry, but I don't think Kindle uses the ePub format...Amazon currently uses the MOBI (Mobipocket) format. EPub is used for the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony line, and other e-readers, but not yet for the Kindle. Rumor is the Kindle will accept the ePub format soon though.

Here's a couple links on formatting an e-book for publication with Amazon for the Kindle:

How to Format Your Book for the Kindle

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help

[MiBeloved]

For kindle the best format is .html. You asked about software but your question is not clear since you did not say which format you were needing.

In other words, if you want your book to flow in kindle and to be adjustable to various font styles without page numbers going haywire, you would put your file into .htmp.
The means that the file is one long web page actually.
Otherwise you can use a .pdf file but then when font sizes change, the page numbers will be irrelevant and will look odd on the device.

The program which is idea for kindle is mobiCreator which takes an html and the relevant images and the cover images and makes the kindle file which it lists as a kindle content file type.

For my books, I submitted .pdf files for print edition and then I took my original .docx files removed all the formatting and then create an .html file from scratch.

To create that .html file I used Microsoft Expression Web but you can also use Notepad, Notepad++ and Adobe Dreamweaver. But they are other programs which are called .html editor software.

Incidentally Word 2007 or any other version of Word can create an .html file by converting any .doc or .docx file into .html just by doing a save as.

I did not do that because usually there are added codes in the .html file and it does not pass the validation of the W3C. But that is not important if the MobiCreator accepts the file and converts it into kindle format.

[Oceans]

Originally Posted by JoePike

Sorry, but I don't think Kindle uses the ePub format...Amazon currently uses the MOBI (Mobipocket) format. EPub is used for the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony line, and other e-readers, but not yet for the Kindle. Rumor is the Kindle will accept the ePub format soon though.

Here's a couple links on formatting an e-book for publication with Amazon for the Kindle:

How to Format Your Book for the Kindle

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help

You can save in .mobi (kindle format)- it's in the girls speech bubble. I've done it several times already and it comes out great. You can upload 5 books at a time, download them in a zip folder or seperatly.

Very quick as well

[Rebecca800]

Thanks very much all of you

I'm sure there are many, many different ways to do this which is why I was feeling overwhelmed but using your tips I have found a simple solution that works for me:

1) Copy the entire book text into Word
2) Arrange using simple formatting and page breaks
3) Convert Word doc to MOBI file using ePub (great resource btw)
4) Load and preview on my Kindle
5) Upload finished result to Amazon

Did the whole process in less than an hour. Thank again for your help!

[Jacob Cassidy]

Originally Posted by Rebecca800

Thanks very much all of you

I'm sure there are many, many different ways to do this which is why I was feeling overwhelmed but using your tips I have found a simple solution that works for me:

1) Copy the entire book text into Word
2) Arrange using simple formatting and page breaks
3) Convert Word doc to MOBI file using ePub (great resource btw)
4) Load and preview on my Kindle
5) Upload finished result to Amazon

Did the whole process in less than an hour. Thank again for your help!

Do the PDFs look much better doing that than simply emailing the file to your free.kindle account to be converted automatically?

I find the free automatic conversion works great with the exception of some images and text size differences in some of them.

[Rebecca800]

Originally Posted by Jacob Cassidy

Do the PDFs look much better doing that than simply emailing the file to your free.kindle account to be converted automatically?

I find the free automatic conversion works great with the exception of some images and text size differences in some of them.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean... emailing the file to my free.kindle account...?

Previously I uploaded the file to my Kindle account and then it automatically converted it which did do a decent job but there were some little things out of whack. So the method above gives me 100% control over the final look which I much prefer.

I am about to publish my 3rd Kindle book very soon

[danthony]

What Kindle book is it? Just curious as I may pick it up later on.

[Rebecca800]

The two already on Kindle are The Art of Lucid Dreaming and Lucid Fiction.

My new book due for release shortly is The Guided Meditation Handbook: Meditation Advice for Lucid Dreamers. Keep an eye out!

All books are also on my website as traditional PDF ebooks but I really like having the extra exposure Kindle provides. Also, reading with Kindle is awesome

Cheers
Rebecca