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I spent a few hours last week doing some research and learning how to format a file to upload to Amazon's DTP site (Digital Text Platform). Of course, I have to say, this was after several hours of trying to figure out why my formatting icons disappeared in WordPress on this site, but that's another post. (For when I've figured it out.) It took me a while, and I found all sorts of people offering to do it for me, but I wanted to do it, AND I wanted to be able to write up a how to for others who are looking to do it as well.
Why am I publishing to the Kindle?
I could have gone the traditional route with Muse – Breathe. Focus. Achieve. I know how to find an agent and a publisher, but I wasn't looking for large scale publication. I wrote an eBook to help writers get over writer's block and included guided meditations. I never even thought to see if an agent, much less a publishing company would want to mass produce it.
Why?
Because I created it to go along with the courses I teach, not to mass produce and sell. It's a niche book. I'm not into killing trees. I'm into helping others succeed at their goals. I wanted to retain control over the information presented and the audio files that go along with it. I chose the Kindle as another method of distribution because I love mine. Yes, I'll be working on doing the same thing for the Sony Reader and the iPad too.
Coding it yourself?
I'm a techie, a geek. I admit it. Friends tease me about having to have the latest gadgets, and they're right. My husband realizes I'm dying to get my hands on a iPad even if I think the name is ridiculous. I want to see what it can do, under my fingers. I love my iPhone and both my Mac and my new Windows 7 box. I am never far from technology. I can code in HTML, tweak CSS and some PHP. I'm not a developer by any means, but I can eventually figure out how to make changes to things to suit me. I swear it's because I love languages and just consider coding a part of language. (I build sites in my spare time for us…just to play.)
So, I naturally figured, oh hell, I can do the coding for the Kindle. It can't be THAT hard, right? Yet, I've downloaded some pretty ugly versions of books. As an editor, that just sets me off and really doesn't impress me. I lose focus and start ignoring potentially great information because my eye keeps hiccuping on bad formatting or spelling. And, this may only be designer error and not author error, as I've learned.
Honestly, it's not that hard to format. Although, it did take me several attempts to get it right. I don't think I have the tables down at all.
The Kindle wants the purest form of HTML it can get. That means, DON'T SAVE IT FROM MS WORD. MS Word adds in all this extraneous info….see I almost put in a bad word there 
MS Word and I have our moments, usually during crunch time and it decides to eat a document. Boooo.
My steps?
- Save my Word doc down to a .txt file.
- Open .txt file in Dreamweaver (or other web development program that is NOT Microsoft – MS adds in code that will cause your doc to look bad)
- Switch to Code View to start formatting
- Add in <p> and </p> for my paragraph breaks
- Add in the code <span class="noind"> to EVERY line so my paragraphs DON'T indent automatically.
- Add in <mbp:pagebreak /> before where I want the pages to break
- Take out all the pictures/images – they don't translate well here. I'm sure Apple has fixed this issue with their publication abilities, but I can't say for sure yet.
- I added in some CSS information too at the beginning (I wanted the Kindle to maintain SOME of the custom headings):
<style type="text/css">
h1 {
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0;
height: 100;
}
h2 {
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0;
}
h3 {
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0;
}
h4 {
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0;
}
h5 {
text-indent: 0;
}
.center {
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0;
}
.noind {
text-indent: 0;
}
.right {
text-indent: 0;
text-align: right;
}
.left {
text-align: left;
}
.gray {color:#808080;}
.style1 {
text-indent: 0;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
}
.style2 {text-indent: 0; font-style: italic; }
</style> - Upload to Amazon DTP and click Preview to see if it all worked out ok.
It took me three tries to get it right, but I did. I'm not happy the tables didn't translate well, but oh well, we all need something to work on.
Have you tried publishing to the Kindle? Anything I missed? Or do you need help formatting your doc?
