I just published my first book of short stories on Kindle Select this week. I really messed up. First, when I used the previewer, it appeared to be fine on all devices. However, when I to the actual book, the formatting was a royal mess. I pulled it down and did it again. Actually my first mistake was paying someone from fiverr to format the book for me - she/they had no idea what they were doing even though they claimed to have done this many times. It took six weeks to get the product I did, even then I was not satisfied, but was tired of dealing with them. My second mistake was forgetting to research the title - a million books with titles similar to mine. I had already researched all the other titles I'm using, but this one slipped by me.
I had tried for months to format for Kindle and was not able to get it right. I read everything I could find and it never made sense. I write, I'm not a computer guru. I was completely lost. Since I have another book of short stories almost ready to publish, a novel almost done and two more in the works, I really wanted to get this one done. At my age, it's now or never.
Thanks for reading my tale of woe. Good luck to each and every one of you. What's the writer's equivalent to 'break a leg'? Whatever it is, hope y'all do!
Hi Barbara,
I've used a free product called Calibre ( http://calibre-ebook.com/ ;) to convert MS Word documents to Kindle e-reader format. It has relatively simple instructions, and was one of the easiest products to use that I found when I was looking for a tool to format for Kindle.
I've never posted any of the files directly to Amazon, but I find it useful for sending formatted copies of drafts to the Kindle for review.
The software allows you to send a copy to yourself, via your Kindle email address ( you can find it in your account settings when you log in to Amazon ) each time you revise and compile a new copy. You can also forward copies this way to beta readers prior to self-publishing.
Hope this helps - best of luck with your writing.
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