Hey y'all! I have my first book out now in Kindle and paperback. When I received the paperback it looked good to me and I approved it. So far so good. I wrote it on Open Office and they have an automatic PDF exporter on there that is awesome because it also exports the fonts too. On top of that Open Office is free and I no longer have Microsoft Word, nor can I afford it. So I exported my book manuscript into PDF and thought it was all good because Kindle also accepts PDF format. Oh yay I was done...NOT!
Last night I downloaded my new book "For The Love Of Cyprus" for Kindle to my PC app for Kindle and it looks horrible!! :-( . I admit I have a few typos too but I'm not as concerned about that as the way it reads. I looks just awful. So I bought a book on Kindle called "Format Your Book On Kindle In One Hour" by Derek J Cannon for $2.99. I read through this and it looks pretty good. I know HTML and web design already but there are still things particular to book formating for the Kindle that I am not familiar with. I admit I have NOT begun to reformat yet as I need to see what it is I have to do to get it republished in the better looking form. As of yet I've not unpublished it. Still checking it all out. But anyway, this book could help your formatting issues. I read that Smashmouth.com has a good format guide too but I haven't even checked out what Smashmouth is yet. DUH me lol!!
I hope this helps some of you and will make formatting a little easier. I have to now go redo this and see how it looks. Bleh lol. AND I'm sorry to those of you who bought my book and it looks stupid on the Kindle. At least I think it does. *mutters*
Have a beautiful and prosperous day and Much Love to Y'all. xoxo
That sucks. I hate formatting. That is what I am doing now. I am using the Smashwords guide. But seriously it isn't fun, but we have to do it.
ReplyDeleteBut yay for your book! Can't wait to read it.
I lucked out with the formatting in that my friend who's critiquing my story gets it on her Kindle, so I have no choice but to see it the way it looks on there. :D Of course I let Calibre do the heavy lifting, but I clicked the buttons so it counts. ;)
ReplyDeleteKindle Formatting by Joshua Talent is also an excellent guide for formatting. It's $10, but worth it. Everything you ever wanted to know about Kindle formatting. Start with Cannon's book first, then graduate to this.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it might be better for you to pay for someone to do this professionally for you. I believe the cost is around $200. J.A. Konrath's e-book designer is linked off his blog. Worth checking out.
As for me, I'm planning to do all of my own formatting.
ReplyDeleteYou can fix it... glad you got it on there in the first place.
ReplyDeleteHope to hear more about your formatting issues...and your pc gets fixed!