Help/advice- formatting for e-book??

aeschylus

Firstly, I am slinking back on to here after a long time away. Nothing sinister, you understand. Just other stuff going on.

I've just finished writing a 16000 word study guide for those lucky souls who are trying to understand Emily Dickinson for A level English Lit with OCR. I have fanciful plans to make this available as an e book.

Unfortunately, I think that all my carefully kept pieces from archived editions of WN about formatting word docs for e-books may have been (ironically) disposed of along with back copies of The Times. So much for print media, eh?

Can anyone please give me any hints on WHAT TO DO?

Thank you all.

pbw

Firstly, decide which sites you plan to publish on. Presumably Amazon is your first choice. Formatting for Amazon Kindle is reasonably straightforward because all you have to do is to make sure your MS Word doc is formatted according to their modifications. You'll need to register on the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing site) and you can use your existing Amazon log in to do it. You'll find instructions on formatting your book there.

If you want to publish on Smashwords, their tech is different and you'll have to format your manuscript differently. Put simply, you have to strip out all the hidden MS Word formatting for your MS to go through the Smashwords "meatgrinder".

If you want to publish directly to the sites of other major eBook retailers such as Barnes & Noble etc, and Apple, you'll need to format in ePub. I don't think this is too difficult, but I haven't done it myself and I think there are other TBers who can advise.

By the way, there are some articles on ePublishing in more recent editions of WN. I can't remember offhand but if you look through the last 4 or 6 issues I'm sure you'll find some answers.

If you want my Smashwords "Cheat sheet" listing the formatting glitches that cause the meatgrinder to throw out your upload, whisper me your email address and I'll send it to you.

Phots Moll

I did a blog post about this which might give a few pointers. http://patsy-collins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/how-to-publish-ebook-on-amazon.html

sallyj

I used this free guide - it's not specifically for Kindle formatting but it does the job:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smashwords-Style-Guide-Format-ebook/dp/B004XWJ7UK

aeschylus

Thank you for all the tips. The e-book is now available on Kindle. If you search "Emily Dickinson study guides" it will appear by magic!

Print version will follow soon.

Baggy Books

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Emily-Dickinsons--Level-ebook/dp/B00FDVC2T8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379972823&sr=1-1

Liz

Can't wait for magic round here, Aeschylus. We need Baggy. Congratulations!

Island Girl

Good to hear from you again, Ae. Long time no hear from. All well, I hope?

Congratulations on the e-book. Sounds as though you've been being constructive in your much-missed absence. x