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{"id":717,"date":"2014-09-04T18:55:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T18:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasmcgann.com\/?p=717"},"modified":"2014-09-04T19:24:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T19:24:39","slug":"formatting-ebook-kindle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thomasmcgann.com\/so-you-want-to-be-an-author\/formatting-ebook-kindle\/","title":{"rendered":"Formatting your eBook for Kindle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Nuclear Option<\/p><\/div>\n

When it comes to formatting eBooks for Kindle, there is a lot of information out there on this subject that is very limited in scope and can be misleading. If you visit YouTube you will find brief (5\/10\/20 minute) videos that purport to explain how you can format your eBook in 5 or 10 easy steps. You cannot. Amazon uses basic HTML code for publishing eBooks. To format without HTML coding requires following a strict and rather involved regime.<\/p>\n

Some experts who prefer perfect products, or as close to perfect as one can get, warn against\u00a0 using \u201cmeatgrinder\u201d programs such as Scrivener, Smashwords and Calibre because they take your manuscript and force-feed it through their program. For the most part, however, these programs get very few complaints. In fact, raves are the norm but never having used them myself, I cannot voice an opinion. My manuscript is a young adult fantasy and I have used numerous unusual formatting techniques that may or may not be amenable to these programs so I decided not to use them.<\/p>\n

Another option is to hire a professional formatter, but that is not an option for me.<\/p>\n

After much searching, I came across this link<\/a> by Matthews Lee Adams that I have been following step by step. It provides the type of simple explanations I find invaluable. Thank you, Matthew.<\/p>\n

The first, and most crucial step, is to remove all formatting from your manuscript. To do this copy your manuscript, and paste it into notepad.<\/strong> Then copy it from notepad and paste it back into a new Word document. This is the so-called \u201cnuclear option\u201d because it eliminates all formatting. It also means that desirable formatting such as italics, bolding, underlining, etc. be reformatted, by hand, all over again.<\/p>\n

I elected to use this \u201cnuclear option\u201d because of the numerous changes I made over months and months of revisions and because I sometimes jury-rig problems that I do not know how to correct properly.<\/p>\n

Using the link above these are the procedures that I followed:<\/p>\n