Please Format Your Ebook Correctly!

One of my pet peeves when reading a book on my Kindle is finding that the chapter hyperlinks do not exist or work properly. Worse, I often find that books don’t have a working link to their Table of Contents and have blank pages where none are needed. Then there are the truly regrettable offerings that have poor paragraph spacing, odd font changes, or incorrect typographical characters.

Formatting an ebook is not hard. Yes it takes time. Yes it can be frustrating when, as an author, you realize that you have to learn yet another skill-set in order to self-publish your work. News flash: self-publishing means doing, by yourself, all the work of a publisher. Traditional publishers pay editors, copy-editors, marketing professionals, cover artists, and ebook formatters out of that huge chunk they take from your royalties. You can either pay people to do all of those tasks for you, or learn how to do them all yourself. Actually, scratch that. DON’T edit your own work, or proofread it, or do your own cover art (unless you are also a gifted artist). Ebook formatting, however, you CAN do by yourself.

I did it, and here’s how:

Go to this link (don’t worry it opens in another window) and read Guido Henkel’s excellent nine part series on how to format an ebook. Yes, I said nine parts. Take an hour of your day and read what he wrote, in its entirety. Then, read it again and take notes. This is not hard material. If you can put together adjectives, nouns, and verbs and take a reader of those words to another time or place, then you can string together an html search string.

Mr. Henkel uses a program called TextMate to edit his html document. He also mentions a program called Jedit. I tried Jedit and it made my head hurt. I have the great honor to be friends with a brilliant computer nerd. I asked her what I should use for html editing, and then cried (through text messaging) until she agreed to help me through the process. (You can find Mrs. Maples information on the “Links” page of my webpage. If all of this gets too overwhelming, send her an email. She might take pity on you, for a price.) On her recommendation, I now use an html editor called Html-Kit.

Now that you’ve read through Henkel’s nine part saga, flipped out, calmed down, downloaded a text editor, griped about all the damn trouble you’re going through, and calmed the frack down—again--, follow Henkel’s instructions starting in Part VI.

Yes this process will take time. I had expert help and it still took me the better part of two days to correctly format a .mobi and .epub version of my book. Please, though, don’t wimp out, give up, and just throw up a word document onto Kindle Direct Publishing. You are doing yourself and your potential readers a huge disservice.

If you get stuck, send me a note through my “Request Information” form, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Friends don’t let friends publish broken ebooks.

How to use KindleGen

I'm waiting for another editor to claw apart the manuscript of Dremiks. While I wait, I've been working on the formatting for the print and e-book editions. Perhaps it won't surprise you, but it certainly shocked the hell out of me, that CreateSpace formatting is far easier to navigate than Kindle Direct Publishing.

Full disclosure: I didn’t figure out any of this on my own. In fact, I’m writing this post partly to thank my wonderful “nerd-brain-trust”. Without these guys and gals, I would be bald and whimpering in a corner. The other reason I’m writing this is because my own help-desk solution – Google it until you find the answer – was sadly inadequate. If you arrived here after your own Google search – congratulations, help is (hopefully) on the way. (Sadly, if you are using a Mac, I cannot help you. Good luck!)

1. There are new versions of KindleGen and Kindle Previewer available. Download them here:
http://www.amazon.com/kindleformat/KindleGen
http://www.amazon.com/kindleformat/KindlePreviewer

2. Once you have downloaded KindleGen, you need to unzip the files. My version of Windows (Windows 7 Home Edition) decided to put these files in a folder with a ridiculously long name. Do yourself a favor, change the name of that folder to Kindlegen. You’ll thank me later.

3. Here’s a newsflash: that “ReadMe” file in the Kindlegen folder you just unzipped and renamed? You should actually read that. I know, bizzarro world. If you don’t read it, you’ll do what thousands (presumably) of authors have done before: you’ll try to double-click the “Kindlegen” file. SPOILER ALERT: That doesn’t work. At all. Stop clicking it.

4. Now that you have the files downloaded, unzipped, renamed, (...this is beginning to sound like a bodice-ripping novel for computers) find the file you want to convert to Kindle-ready formatting. This format is called Mobi, just in case you care. You really need to have this file in html or htm format. If the file is a Word file, click on “Save As” and choose “WebPage, Filtered”. SAVE THE FILE INTO YOUR KINDLEGEN FILE FOLDER

5. Repetition is key here: make life easier, save the html version of your document into the Kindlegen folder.

6. Go to your Start Menu. Click “All Programs”. Click “Accessories”. Click “Command Prompt”. If you started using computers before 1993 you’ll recognize the trusty old command prompt that used to control our lives. If you don’t recognize it, don’t be afraid, it won’t bite. However, be warned that you should not make any sudden movements, and that certain trusty commands like “Ctrl-V” for paste aren’t going to work.

7. NOW it is very important that you remember EXACTLY where you put that KindleGen folder and what you renamed it. Ye Olde Command Prompt does not have auto-correct for your silly file names. If you named the folder “KindlwGeh”, then you’re going to have to tell the computer to look in “KindlwGeh” for what you need. (If this is the case, please go back and re-name the folder to something less embarrassing) My Windows download put the KindleGen folder in My Documents. Easy enough.

8. To run the program type the following:
C:\users\cassandra\documents\kindlegen\kindlegen.exe C:\users\cassandra\documents\kindlegen\Dremiks.htm

9. NOTE: replace “Cassandra” with your username on your computer and replace “Dremiks.htm” with the name of the file you wish to convert. MAKE SURE there is a SPACE between \kindlegen.exe and c:\users... The space is important.

10. You should have lots of text scroll by. At the end it should tell you that a file has been created. If you look in your KindleGen folder, you should see your file with the new extension .mobi . If you got a message about “could not find file”, then you need to check and make sure you have the right folders named. The easiest way to do this is to go to your Windows interface, find your kindlegen folder and right click on it. Scroll down and click on Properties. You should see a line tell you “File Location”. The string of information should look identical to what you typed. If it doesn’t, fix what you type in the command prompt window to match what Windows says the file location is.

11. Now, open KindlePreviewer, Click on “File” and Click on “Open Book”. Find your file (it will be in your KindleGen folder with a .mobi extension) and click “Open”. If it worked, congratulations. If it didn’t work, check and make sure you have the right file location and are selecting the file ending in .mobi Also note that you can click on “Devices” in the Kindle Previewer menu and select several options. You can see what your book will look like on KindleFire, Kilde E-Ink versions, Kindle for iPhone, etc.

Again, this post would not be possible without the wonderful members of the best gamers guild in the world: The Call of Fate. Yes, I’m a gamer and proud of it. Yes, these folks are some of my best friends. If something goes horribly wrong with my computer my first call is always to one of them. Special thanks to Sloshed, Lyel, Korav, and Kigva, without whom I’d still be cursing at a command prompt.