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My printed instructions from Kindle on how to make a
Word document into a Kindle e-book.
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How to Make Your Manuscript a Kindle E-Book on Amazon (for Free) - Part 1: Formatting Your Kindle Document
Your homework from the previous post was to get your book written and your document formatted.
This month we'll talk about creating your front matter, back matter, and inserting images. (Tweet that!)
Introducing my newest e-book: The 7 Feasts of the LORD
Before we start on this month's instructions, I've been working hard on my own Kindle e-book and I now have it available for pre-order. It will release later this month in time for Easter. I hope this inspires you in what you can do with your projects.
This is the third in my series, "Best of Bible Prophecies Fulfilled Blog."
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| The 7 Feasts of the LORD |
You'll also learn how the last three Feasts not only teach and prepare us for, they also predict, His second coming. Learn how these Feasts are connected to the Blood Moons you heard so much about in 2014 and 2015, which were the subject of an earlier Kindle e-book I produced.
All this plus a brand new Leader's Guide is included in the e-book. You'll be equipped to easily share the information with your Bible study, friends, and family.
Pre-order your copy right now. Get it the moment it releases. Please share with your friends: (Tweet this!)
Order here: The 7 Feasts of the LORD
Now, more on how to create your own Kindle e-book:
Create a Template of Front Matter and End Matter
Do you think you might create more than one e-book? You'd be wise to plan more books because the sales of your e-books increase as you create more e-books because you can cross promote all your other books in each e-book.
That's why I strongly recommend you create your Front Matter and End Matter in separate Word files on your computer. Why? Because…
- You can copy and paste them into each new e-book without having to re-recreate them.
Why not just put them into your template? Because…
- When you have them in separate files, you can update them whenever you want and then copy and paste them into each e-book document that you've already created.
Why would you want to do that? Because…
- You may want to tweak your front matter. But you'll definitely want to tweak your back matter with every new e-book you publish.
Why? Because…
- In your End Matter you will want to include "More Books by…" You'll also want to include "About the Author" which will probably need to be updated with each new book. So when you have your End Matter in one document, it's an easy thing to update it once with your new e-book's image, description, and link, and then cut / paste your entire End Matter into each of your already-published e-books' documents. Then you can re-upload each of your e-books again to Kindle and you'll have your newest e-book in your "More Books by You" section in every e-book that's downloaded from then on. Readers will see your other books, including your newest one and you'll get more sales. (Tweet that!)
So create two new Word documents: one for your Front Matter and one for your End matter. I put both documents in a separate folder so I can find them easily.
We'll now create your Front Matter and then we'll create your End Matter next.
Your Front Matter Template
Your Front Matter includes a:
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Dedication (optional)
- Acknowledgements (optional and now I'm seeing more and more at the back of a book. If you want yours at the back of your book, put this in your End Matter.)
Title Page
I create a title page with a placeholder for the title.
I include my name, my publishing company, and anything else I want. I create these in different fonts and font sizes to make things stand out and so it looks nice.
When I'm ready to create a new e-book, it's then easy to type in the title and everything else usually stays the same. (Tweet that!) With fonts, fonts sizes, and any other formatting already set, all my e-books have the same look to them.
A word about fonts: Kindles won't do a lot of different fonts, so don't spend a lot of time creating with fonts. I make my title in a large font, my author name in a small font. My publishing company in a small font at the bottom of the title page. If you have a logo for your publishing company, you can insert it here as an image. (See below for how to properly deal with images so they work right in your Kindle e-book.)
Copyright Page
Insert a page break after your Title Page and then create a copyright page for your e-books. I followed the patterns of other books to create mine. You can follow my template to create yours if you want to. (Tweet that!) I can't remember now where I found the paragraph included below, but I do remember permission was given to copy and use it.
I added "Cover image: by…" and "Cover design: by…" just because I wanted to acknowledge Morguefile.com where I often get my images, even though Morguefile allows free use of its images and giving credit or attribution is not required.
I put a note in about my blog only because for this particular e-book I recycled the information in the e-book from my blog. Unless you want to make a special mention like that, you can leave that off.
Here is what I put on my copyright page:
Copyright © 2016 by Dianne E. Butts
A Publication of Connections Press
Cover image: by Morguefile.com
Cover design: by Dianne E. Butts
This information was originally published on the http://BiblePropheciesFulfilled.blogspot.com blog. © 2014 – 2015 and beyond Dianne E. Butts Kindle Edition
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. This e-book may be available for Kindle Prime members in the Kindle Lending Library. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.If you include a Dedication and/or Acknowledgements, be sure to format those words at the top of your page using Heading 1 as described in the previous post for your chapter titles. You want to use Heading 1 so they will automatically show up in your Table of Contents.
Your End Matter Template
For your End Matter, create another Word document.
Put "More Books by…" at the top of the page. Use Heading 1 so this will show up in your Table of Contents.
Insert images of your other books here. (Don't copy and paste them in. Use the Insert menu in Word. See below about adding images.) Add the title, price if you want to, and make the title a link to your book on Amazon. These links work so a reader can go directly to your book and make the purchase. Note that if your book is available on other e-platforms, it's not a good idea to link to them as those are Amazon's competitors. So think before you link. (Tweet that!)
Once you have this part of your End Matter created, I recommend that every time you create another book (e-book or print), you:
- add it here with an image and a link.
- Then copy / paste your new End Matter into each previously-created e-book document.
- Then re-upload each e-book to Kindle.
That way all your books will be in the End Matter of all your books and you will always be cross-promoting your other books.
Insert a page break after your last book.
After your inserted page break, type "About the Author" at the top of the next page, again using Heading 1 so Word will automatically add it to your Table of Contents as we learned in the previous post.
Here you can insert your author photo (Don't paste it in. See the section below.) and a bio about yourself. Keep it fairly short. Your readers will want to know a little bit about you, but they won't read pages.
Your photo is needed so readers can make an emotional connection with you. They want to see your welcoming, smiling face. This would be the same photo you'd put on the back cover of a print book. (Tweet that!) But you get more room to tell about yourself than you can on the back of a print book.
You can also add links to your web site, blog, and social media pages. (Amazon doesn't mind these because they're not leading to competing booksellers.)
You can put these "About the Author" first in your End Matter and "More Books by You" last if you want to. I continually wonder which should come first. I finally decided I'd rather put my other books first because I want to catch readers who might skip this end matter. If I can interest them in other books I have available, I want to do it right away. If they have to scroll through my Author bio, they might not and I might lose a sale.
How to Put Images Into Your Kindle E-Book
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| Pay special attention to the instructions for inserting images on page 3. |
For your images to work correctly in your Kindle book, you need to use the "Insert" menu on Word and select "Picture." (Tweet that!) Then a box opens where you can find the image and past it in. Leave it centered.
Pay close attention to this section on page 3 in the Kindle instructions which you printed out in the previous post.
Tips from Dianne
How to Strip Annoying Codes
Occasionally I want to use material from another source, such as my own blog, to put into my e-book. If you just copy from that source and then paste it into your Word document, it can carry with it all kinds of coding that can cause you headaches trying to find it and get rid of it. One way to get rid of all the coding is to use Notepad on PCs. (Tweet that!) Mac has a similar program.
Copy your material into Notepad first. Notepad will strip all the codes out. Then re-copy the words and paste it into your Word doc and it should behave because all that coding is gone.
Create Internal Links
You can create internal links in the text of your Kindle e-book so your reader can jump around inside your manuscript and immediately go to another location you've referenced.
One use for internal links is footnotes. For example if you create a footnote in your book, your reader can click an internal link and read the footnote, and the come back.
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| This will be my next Kindle e-book ... once I figure out all the internal links it will need. |
But when I wanted to create an e-book with this same material so it would be accessible to a lot more people who need it, I was completely stymied on how to create that association between the instructions and the examples. There's no way I could put a number floating out in the margin of the sample letters and have it stay in the correct location in an e-book.
This is why I've been procrastinating on creating this particular e-book. And this is what has stopped me for so long from rolling out more e-books for writers.
I just couldn't figure out how to do it! It was a roadblock.
Recently I thought about creating internal links to accomplish the same thing as my numbers in the margin of my printed pamphlet.
It seems like a lot of work. And I've struggled to figure out how to link everything I want to link together. But I think I have it in my head. Doing it feels daunting, so I've put it off. But I think the work will pay off for my readers once I get it done.
What project do you have that could hold added value for your e-book buyers if you created internal links? (Tweet that!) It's something to think about.
Coming next...
Next month we'll talk about e-books covers. You're going to need a cover for your e-book. We'll look at where to have one made at an affordable price, where you can create your own, and what you want to consider when creating your cover.
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