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After the program tells you conversion was successful, be sure to preview it by loading
it into the Kindle previewer.  Try out all the guide items and table of content chapter links.  Make sure you don’t have random blocks of blankness showing up in the pages. Check that the title page information is well balanced on the page. Go back to your .doc file to make any changes, re-save as web page filtered, re-upload to the conversion program, and whiz through the process again, since you’ve already practiced it once.  Preview again. Correct as necessary. When it looks perfect on the previewer, you’re ready to re-visit kdp.amazon.com .

(But seriously, get April’s book.)

Cover Images

My books published through CreateSpace have cover images provided by CreateSpace in
their cover creation  templates.  Some of the templates also allow you to upload an image you have created or own. If you have published a POD book through CreateSpace, you can use that cover image for your Kindle ebook image. I didn’t, however, since the cover photos are in color and at the present time Kindle only has black and white.  I don’t know enough about images to be able to visualize what the color photos would look like in b/w.

Amazonwill provide a ‘placeholder’ image for your ebook if you do not upload a cover
image.  All placeholder images are the same, except for title of book and name of author.

I used Word to create a simple cover image on a standard 8 ½ x 11 Word page, then saved it as a jpeg picture, and uploaded that.  My intention was to have an image that is not generic like the placeholders, but reflects that this edition is an ebook, not the paperback.  The thumbnail image is clear enough to be easily read, unlike many color photo covers I’ve seen.

Make it all html

After the manuscript has been formatted to be html friendly, has a hyperlinked TOC, and
appropriate bookmarks, ‘Save As’ your file in the format  ‘Web Page, Filtered.’  Don’t ask me why.  It’s an html thing. This is the file you upload to the conversion program.

Adding Guide Items

Ebooks have “guide items” as a way to jump quickly to various parts of the book. At the
least, you need to have three guide items: the cover “cover”, the Table of Contents “TOC”, and where the content  starts “beginning” or “start.”  My experience was that the “cover” guide item is added automatically by the conversion program, as long as you upload a jpeg
cover image when asked. (And you should – more about cover images later.)

The ‘TOC’ and ‘beginning’  bookmarks should be added to your Word .doc file BEFORE YOU START THE CONVERSION.  I wasted a lot of time because I did not understand that. April L. Hamilton’s book guides you through the process of adding bookmarks to the .html data of your file, but that is no longer necessary.  Just position the cursor properly in your manuscript, (on a blank page between two page breaks for the TOC, and before the first word of the first chapter for the beginning), then use the Word “insert
bookmark” feature and give your bookmark the proper name (‘TOC’ or ‘beginning’).
When the conversion program asks for the guide item file name, put in the
book’s file name followed by a hashmark (#) and the name of the bookmark.

I think you can add more bookmarks for front matter pages, appendices, etc., but not for an index.  At this time ebooks don’t do indices (probably too much hyperlinking required since the book doesn’t have page numbers.) Those bookmarks would also need to be added in the Word file before uploading to the conversion program, and the file names specified in the conversion program’s dialogue box where it says “add a guide item.””

Adding a Table of Contents

Go to each chapter heading, highlight it, and apply one of the styles (heading 1 or
heading 2 are safest). If you right click on the heading style you can select
“modify” and make some judicious changes to create a heading that pleases
you.  But don’t get carried away. Remember you are stuck with html pickiness. Do not use this heading style for ANYTHING other than chapter headings.

Now use the Word program to insert a table of contents. Word will race through your
manuscript and pick out every line formatted with the chapter heading style,
and create a list. When you click Insert Table of Contents, a dialogue box
opens to show heading levels. For a book with only simple chapter headings, you
can ignore the levels. This dialogue box also has a couple other options.
Uncheck “show page numbers,” and check “use hyperlinks.”   If you CTRL + click on a chapter heading in the table of contents, it should take you to the start of that chapter in the manuscript.

Once you start using the conversion program (MobiPocket or Calibre), you might be given
the option to again “create a table of contents.”  At one point I ended up with two “Table of
Contents” pages, but the page the guide item jumped to had nothing under the heading.  This was the table of contents created by the conversion program.  I was able to correct this after I learned about inserting bookmarks prior to upload. Now the books have two TOC’s: the bookmarked Word TOC, and the Calibre-created TOC  (at the end of the book.) Since the extra pages don’t add to production cost, I don’t see any harm in having two
TOC’s.

Start formatting

Highlight everything and change it all into one of the ebook html-friendly fonts
(Verdana, Tahoma, Arial – there might be others.)

Insert a ‘page break’ after the last sentence of each chapter.

Delete most blank lines between the end of one chapter and the heading of the next

If you want a blank line to appear anywhere within a chapter, put a blank space before the
paragraph sign

Highlight the title and use the’ title’ style to format it. If you don’t like how that
looks, you can make some modifications in the style settings – but don’t try to
get fancy. Remember, this is for an ebook reader , not a coffee table.

Don’t use many other formatting commands.  A boldfaced or italicized item here and there won’t skew the results, but an entire chapter or book in bold italics could cause a problem.  If your book has tables, lists, graphs, etc. you need more information than I can give you.

Take It Out of the Tub

Highlight the entire Notepad file and copy/paste it back into a new Word file, then ‘Save as’ this new file as  .doc file. (Give it a new name, like initials of book title + ebook )  This is the file you will work with.