Kindle Format Made Easy

I recently decided to Kindle one of my books, called Chromatics Attack. In doing so, I learned a lot about the process, and thought it would be good to blog about how I did it. I converted my own Word document to HTML, and then to the kindle format. I did all of my edits in Word, and then saved the file to TXT to get rid of all the word formatting.

If you don’t know HTML, you only need a few tags which I will tell you about now. You can use your Word search and replace feature to add them all to your document. I know there are a million different ways to edit HTML, but this is how I did it. A couple of the steps are manual, like adding the italics and bold HTML code, but I didn’t have a lot of these, so it didn’t take too long. If you do have lots, I recommend doing it another way.

The exact steps I took are as follows:

Open up my document in Word (I used 2007)
Make sure the document is single spaced, and that each chapter heading starts with the word “Chapter” (this is needed to search and replace later)

NOTE: REMOVE SPACES AFTER ALL HTML < SYMBOLS--
BLOGGER WOULDN'T LET ME DISPLAY HTML WITHOUT A SPACE.

On the first line of your document, place this: < body >
Make sure it is the very first line, before the table of contents, title page, etc.
On the last line of your document, place this: < /body >

To add HTML paragraph tags, do this in MS Word:
Find “^p”, replace with “^p< p>< /p>”
(NOTE: No need to put the quotes in the find/replace, just the text between the quotes)

To add HTML italics tags, do this in MS Word:
Find format->font->italics
Manually insert < i> before your italics
Manually insert < /i> after your italics

To add HTML bold tags, do this in MS Word:
Find format->font->bold
Manually insert < b> before your italics
Manually insert < /b> after your italics

To change your chapters in to formatted headings, do this:
Find “chapter”, replace with “< H2>Chapter X< /H2> < br>< br>< br>< br>”
(where Chapter X is the number of the chapter – adding the chapter number will have to be done manually)

For example:
Find “chapter”, replace with “< H2>Chapter 1< /H2> (add 1 manually)
Find “chapter”, replace with “< H2>Chapter 2< /H2> (add 2 manually)

To add HTML/Kindle Line breaks and Table of Contents Tags , do this:
Find “chapter”, replace with “< p>< mbp:pagebreak /> < /p> < a name="TOC"/>
< a name="chapX"/>< p>chapter< /p>”
(where ChapX is the number of the chapter – adding the chapter number will have to be done manually) Also, note you do need the quotes around “TOC” and “chapX”

For example:
Find “chapter”, replace with < p>< mbp:pagebreak /> < /p>
 < a name="TOC"/> < a name="chapX"/>< p>chapter< /p> (added 1 manually)
Find “chapter”, replace with < p> < /p>
< a name="chapX"/>< p>chapter< /p> (added 2 manually)

I hope I haven’t confused you too much.

Your final chapter heading for each chapter should look like this:

< p> < p>< /p>
< a name="TOC"/> < a name="chap3"/>
< center>< h2>Chapter 3: < /h2>< /center>
< br>< br>< br>< br>

Perhaps you could copy this text out, and just replace it for each of your chapters. You’ll notice, I also have a < center>txt< /center> tag in there to center my chapter headings. Your final HTML formatting step step is to add the table of contents at the beginning of your book, like this:

< mbp:pagebreak /> < p>< /p>
< a name="TOC"/>
< h2>Table of Contents< /h2>
< p>
< a href="#start">Chapter 1< /a>< br>
< a href="#chap2">Chapter 2< /a>< br>
< a href="#chap3">Chapter 3< /a>< br>
< a href="#chap4">Chapter n< /a>< br>
< /p>
< p> < p>< /p>

Then save your word document as a .txt file (and say ‘yes’ when it says: “are you sure, because you are going to lose your formatting” – you won’t lose your html and that’s exactly what you want)

Now, from your file menu, rename your .txt file to .html you are now set to upload to Mobipocket Creator, which is a free downloadable program that is pretty self-explanatory.

If you have any questions about html, please post something in the comments section, and I will try to help you out. Good luck formatting, and let me know how it goes!  Oh, and if you want to see how it looks, you can always buy my book for the cheap price of .99 by clicking on the cover of Chromatics Attack on the right pane.


Cheers
Karen