bhendbks@yahoo.com
February 17th, 2011, 01:32 AM
Er...that should be Lecture #4 FORMATTING for Kindle as we have to do that first. We'll Load to Kindle in Lecture #5 on Friday. Just wanted to sort that out as I got my wires crossed. Happens when there's a lecture every day sometimes. The Oops Curse steps in.
BACK IN PRINT
Lecture #4: Formatting for KINDLE!
If you haven’t done any formatting of your manuscript yet, you’ll need to go back and pick up what I said our very first week.
With just a couple differences:
1) no headings or footers, no page numbers,
2) the paper size will be 8 ½ x11,
and 3) don’t put more than a single space between scene breaks or chapter endings and the next chapter’s heading, or between the chapter headings and the first line of the new chapter’s text.
Discovering that bit about the paper size drove me crazy for weeks. I expected Kindle to have something formatted to the size of the screen and there was nothing in anything on the website or anything on any of the help menus, nothing on any of the blogs commenting on getting something up and running on Kindle that mentioned paper size. Actually, the more blog entries and unhelpful website FAQ I consulted, the more confused I got.
So I tried to load a 6x9. Didn’t work. But when I reformatted to 8 ½ by 11, it did.
Here’s what I want you to do in regards to preparing the text of the book for Kindle.
1) If you already have a manuscript formatted for Lulu, open that file. Now, save it as a new document (put Kindle in the document name) BUT BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A WORD .DOC file.
2) With this “new” version open, go in and erase/delete the heading or footer. All it takes is opening it up and backspacing or highlighting then hitting the “delete” key to accomplish this. To delete the page number, click on it twice, once to “highlight” it and the second time to delete it (you might also have to click on the delete key or backspace key – I tend to do the backspace key). Why? Well, I know that some e-books do have page numbers included, and it does appear to come up like a page. What I’m going on is this…once the Kindle system has reformatted your manuscript, I’m not sure how they adapt to headings and page numbers because all the e-books I’d seen when I first attempted this were lacking them. You can give it a try. I’m merely explaining how I got things up and running on Kindle…and, yes, there was swearing involved occasionally, both mental and under my breath.
3) Set your cursor at the beginning of the manuscript then open FILE, Page Setup. Change the paper size to 8 ½ x 11 and “whole document” for it to convert to the next page size. DO NOT CHANGE THE “First Line” indent of .02. DO CHANGE the margins back to 1” all around. Do take it off “mirror margins”, resetting that to Normal. Click OK.
4) Now, take out any ISBN or Library of Congress Cataloging number you might have on the copyright page. Those apply only to the trade paperback, not to the e-book. E-books at this time don’t necessarily need an ISBN. That will probably change in the future as the market is growing in leaps taken with Nine League Boots, but governmental rules haven’t caught up yet. If Kindle wants to add one for their bookkeeping purposes, let them as long as they don’t charge you for it. That may happen in the future too, who knows? Best to be prepared.
5) If you did any extremely large or offset finessing on your title page before, this needs to be tamed. Yes, you can have your title and name in larger print than the rest of the text (and it’s okay to leave the Chapter headings as they are). I’d say nothing larger than 24 pt or 28 pt perhaps if it’s a long title, larger is okay if it’s a one word or short title. Now put your name in slightly smaller point. Center these. Don’t put a space between the two lines though. The Kindle system set my teeth to grinding over those spaces for a long time, because it increased the space some times and other times it didn’t. It’s how it is reading your keyed in format. Once I realized that the space was reading as 12pt instead of 11pt for some reason, or the size font I’d used on the Chapter headings, I managed to fix most all of these spots. Some still occurred. I’m clueless as to why. But you’ve been forewarned.
6) You’ll need to go through and close up the gap between chapters unless you want each chapter to begin on a new “page”. Some e-books are set up this way, some aren’t. I took my extra spacing out so there wouldn’t be a gap of space to make the reader wonder what happened to the rest of the story. With a book we can see the next page – on an e-reader, we can’t. I like my e-books to flow from one chapter to the other in one continuous document. If you feel the same, go to the end of each chapter, set your cursor on the first blank line beneath that final paragraph or line of text and start deleting (either by clicking the delete button or by highlighting the space between that last line of Chapter One and the heading for Chapter Two. Keep only a single line empty between the last of Chapter One and the Chapter Two heading. Chances are Kindle’s system will make it two blank lines. If you have more than one space between scene or POV breaks, go back and delete all but one empty line between them. In fact, do these things from start to finish, throughout the entire book.
7) Save the whole thing in its new format. Remember, I suggested that you put Kindle in the file name. This will help you find it for loading. It will also keep it separate from what you’ll need for loading to Barnes and Noble’s Nook system, which is different. At this point though, you’ve finished with the text part for Kindle.
That’s not all you need for Kindle though. You need a cover, and while we have one, it’s going to need a slight bit of redo to load it.
Hopefully you have the print out of the cover handy because Kindle will only take a handful of pixels so it will need to be saved at 72 dpi now. Still a .jpg file. That’s the only change to it and you only need to do the front cover.
Now, you may find this hard to believe, but you’re completely done with the prep work. However, because it will take some time to do this, I’m saving the actual loading to Kindle for tomorrow.
Until then, I’ll keep looking in to see if anyone has any questions. Happy reformatting once again. <grin>
Beth
BACK IN PRINT
Lecture #4: Formatting for KINDLE!
If you haven’t done any formatting of your manuscript yet, you’ll need to go back and pick up what I said our very first week.
With just a couple differences:
1) no headings or footers, no page numbers,
2) the paper size will be 8 ½ x11,
and 3) don’t put more than a single space between scene breaks or chapter endings and the next chapter’s heading, or between the chapter headings and the first line of the new chapter’s text.
Discovering that bit about the paper size drove me crazy for weeks. I expected Kindle to have something formatted to the size of the screen and there was nothing in anything on the website or anything on any of the help menus, nothing on any of the blogs commenting on getting something up and running on Kindle that mentioned paper size. Actually, the more blog entries and unhelpful website FAQ I consulted, the more confused I got.
So I tried to load a 6x9. Didn’t work. But when I reformatted to 8 ½ by 11, it did.
Here’s what I want you to do in regards to preparing the text of the book for Kindle.
1) If you already have a manuscript formatted for Lulu, open that file. Now, save it as a new document (put Kindle in the document name) BUT BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A WORD .DOC file.
2) With this “new” version open, go in and erase/delete the heading or footer. All it takes is opening it up and backspacing or highlighting then hitting the “delete” key to accomplish this. To delete the page number, click on it twice, once to “highlight” it and the second time to delete it (you might also have to click on the delete key or backspace key – I tend to do the backspace key). Why? Well, I know that some e-books do have page numbers included, and it does appear to come up like a page. What I’m going on is this…once the Kindle system has reformatted your manuscript, I’m not sure how they adapt to headings and page numbers because all the e-books I’d seen when I first attempted this were lacking them. You can give it a try. I’m merely explaining how I got things up and running on Kindle…and, yes, there was swearing involved occasionally, both mental and under my breath.
3) Set your cursor at the beginning of the manuscript then open FILE, Page Setup. Change the paper size to 8 ½ x 11 and “whole document” for it to convert to the next page size. DO NOT CHANGE THE “First Line” indent of .02. DO CHANGE the margins back to 1” all around. Do take it off “mirror margins”, resetting that to Normal. Click OK.
4) Now, take out any ISBN or Library of Congress Cataloging number you might have on the copyright page. Those apply only to the trade paperback, not to the e-book. E-books at this time don’t necessarily need an ISBN. That will probably change in the future as the market is growing in leaps taken with Nine League Boots, but governmental rules haven’t caught up yet. If Kindle wants to add one for their bookkeeping purposes, let them as long as they don’t charge you for it. That may happen in the future too, who knows? Best to be prepared.
5) If you did any extremely large or offset finessing on your title page before, this needs to be tamed. Yes, you can have your title and name in larger print than the rest of the text (and it’s okay to leave the Chapter headings as they are). I’d say nothing larger than 24 pt or 28 pt perhaps if it’s a long title, larger is okay if it’s a one word or short title. Now put your name in slightly smaller point. Center these. Don’t put a space between the two lines though. The Kindle system set my teeth to grinding over those spaces for a long time, because it increased the space some times and other times it didn’t. It’s how it is reading your keyed in format. Once I realized that the space was reading as 12pt instead of 11pt for some reason, or the size font I’d used on the Chapter headings, I managed to fix most all of these spots. Some still occurred. I’m clueless as to why. But you’ve been forewarned.
6) You’ll need to go through and close up the gap between chapters unless you want each chapter to begin on a new “page”. Some e-books are set up this way, some aren’t. I took my extra spacing out so there wouldn’t be a gap of space to make the reader wonder what happened to the rest of the story. With a book we can see the next page – on an e-reader, we can’t. I like my e-books to flow from one chapter to the other in one continuous document. If you feel the same, go to the end of each chapter, set your cursor on the first blank line beneath that final paragraph or line of text and start deleting (either by clicking the delete button or by highlighting the space between that last line of Chapter One and the heading for Chapter Two. Keep only a single line empty between the last of Chapter One and the Chapter Two heading. Chances are Kindle’s system will make it two blank lines. If you have more than one space between scene or POV breaks, go back and delete all but one empty line between them. In fact, do these things from start to finish, throughout the entire book.
7) Save the whole thing in its new format. Remember, I suggested that you put Kindle in the file name. This will help you find it for loading. It will also keep it separate from what you’ll need for loading to Barnes and Noble’s Nook system, which is different. At this point though, you’ve finished with the text part for Kindle.
That’s not all you need for Kindle though. You need a cover, and while we have one, it’s going to need a slight bit of redo to load it.
Hopefully you have the print out of the cover handy because Kindle will only take a handful of pixels so it will need to be saved at 72 dpi now. Still a .jpg file. That’s the only change to it and you only need to do the front cover.
Now, you may find this hard to believe, but you’re completely done with the prep work. However, because it will take some time to do this, I’m saving the actual loading to Kindle for tomorrow.
Until then, I’ll keep looking in to see if anyone has any questions. Happy reformatting once again. <grin>
Beth