Kindle Publishing: The # 1 Killer Formatting Secret

by Paul Stevens

Overview

If you intend using Microsoft Word to prepare your document this is for you. Now here’s the thing. Word is actually a single computer program. But it is a very complex program with hundreds and hundreds of options and their possible combinations. And what are most of us authors? We probably haven’t had special Word training. No, what we do is to open Word and start typing. Sure we correct errors in spelling and syntax but basically we just default to whatever the current settings are. If you print the page out it looks great, so why shouldn’t it go onto Kindle just like that? In my case the Word document was set up in block format (in which the first word of a paragraph is not indented) and it introduced an extra line after each paragraph and it looked terrible on Kindle…too much white space between paragraphs. Search as I did I could not find an answer anywhere of how to suppress this additional spacing. At this stage I had produced about 12 titles on Kindle. I have had to go back and laboriously delete every additional superfluous line, and then republish the documents. In this short article I am going to give you the #1 secret to perfect formatting on Kindle for a Word document. You can buy a 100 page book or you can solve this issue in the next minute or two. If only I could have bought this article when I started! It’s taken me 10 months to find this out, but that’s maybe because I’m stupid. And what’s more I’ve waded through several books on formatting and never got a 100% answer to this. Well here it is and it’s all you’ll ever really need and it’s all set out in 1000 words. It is Word 2003 specific but the entered values are equally relevant to Word 2007 except that the click sequencing is a bit different.

[Article - 1148 words]

Product Details

BN ID:	2940044484092
Publisher:	Paul Stevens
Publication date:	04/16/2013
Series:	Steve's e-Book Publishing
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	267 KB

About the Author

There is a favorite line from my novella Dinner Party For Eight in which Angela asks Harry:

“What do you think I am?”
Harry considered this for a moment. What was she actually?
“Well I suppose you are a very beautiful cook.”

So if I have to answer the same question what am I actually? I would also need to consider this for a moment. I would like to say I’m an ex astronaut, have more degrees than a thermometer, have competed in the Tour de France without any EPO, surfed Teahupoo in Tahiti and emerged unscathed, sailed round the world, am an ace Alpine skier, am a member of Mensa, have a beauty queen wife and gorgeous kids, and started my own corporation which has listed on NASDAQ. I could go on but like Arnold Schwarzenegger I don’t want to boast.
Well to be honest, I have gone some of the way towards all those things. I do have a letter from Wernher von Braun, I do have three degrees in Physics, I have flown in a jet plane (Emirates Air), I do cycle the mega steep hills here where I live but unfortunately can’t get EPO anywhere, I am a keen surfer who has almost managed to break his neck, I am an ocean going skipper and I did own my own yacht though if it was me I wouldn’t sail with me as captain, I do ski but you need to get out of the way, I do have a beautiful wife (though her agreeing to marry me has to be my biggest piece of luck ever) and two great kids, I do have my own software business but no stock exchanges alas and I would like to take the Mensa test but I’m pretty sure I would fail and then I wouldn’t be able to live with that so I would rather rationalize. I live in that sapphire city – Cape Town.