How$to$Create$an$eBook$

Copyright 2017 Emily Buehler

In 2014, I converted Bread Science into an ebook. I did the entire process myself because I

wanted to save money. I could not find a set of guidelines that answered all my questions, so I

typed up my notes to share. I initially published using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) simply

because it was easiest. By the time I finished, I was exhausted and temporarily gave up on other

retailers.

expert, so there may be better ways; I’m just sharing my experience.

Table&of&Contents&

Part%1:%Formatting%Your%eBook%for%Kindle%Direct%Publishing%....................................................%2$

ISBNs%................................................................................................................................................%2$

Do%a%test%document%(optional)%..........................................................................................................%2$

Part&1:&Formatting&Your&eBook&for&Kindle&Direct&Publishing&

ISBNs&

The ISBN is a number that identifies your book—it is universal in the book world. Do you need

an ISBN for an ebook? This is uncertain, but Amazon no longer requires one.

There is only one place to buy an ISBN in the United States (Bowker, http://www.isbn.org), and

the price drops drastically if you buy several at once. You can buy one ISBN from a reseller, but

the ISBN will always be registered in the reseller’s name. According to Bowker, each version of

the book needs its own ISBN: versions include hard cover, soft cover, EPUB, MOBI (the Kindle

format), and PDF. Other sites say that all ebooks can share an ISBN as long as the content is the

styles, bookmarks and links, various kinds of formatting). Then I went through the conversion

process with this test document to see what worked and what didn’t, before I invested time in

doing the whole book. There are a few ways to preview a Kindle file, some of which work more

consistently than others; these are discussed below. Doing the process with the test document

made me feel more comfortable. If your ebook is not super complicated, you might skip this

step.

Process&images&

I could not find consistent parameters to use. Even for one platform (Kindle), on the platform’s

own website, I could not find clear instructions. The instructions below are what I did and what

seems like common sense.

• each image must be less than 5 MB

• the total manuscript must be less than 650 MB

• for maximum screen coverage, use a ratio of 9:11

The cover is uploaded separately from the rest of the book; it should not be part of your main

document. I found the following specs to use (in 2016):

• jpeg or tiff, no compression

• RGB

• less than 50 MB

• 72 dpi

terms and instead think of a “flowing” document, with images positioned in-line with the text.

ebook does have pages, but you do not know the page size or what content will fall on each

page.)

If a PDF were used on an e-reader, the person reading might have to zoom in to read and then

move right and left to see all the text, which would not be easy. Do not think of the ebook as

pages; think of it as one long scroll.

To prepare a manuscript for e-publishing, you need a word processing program. There are free

programs (like Open Office) and programs you buy (like Word). KDP will allow you to upload a

Word document, but sometimes the document does not convert perfectly. They recommend that

you export your file as HTML, zip the resulting files into a folder, and upload the whole folder.

Pages 09, so I exported my file as a .DOC and uploaded it. [Note that the current Mac Pages is

You must format the document correctly so that the styles transfer to the ebook. For example, if

you use tabs, multiple line breaks, or multiple spaces to position text, they will not be preserved

in the ebook, and your text will not look good. I also had bold text that disappeared in the ebook.

KDP has a lot of instructions on dozens of pages on their website. They now offer a free ebook

of instructions (available as a PDF as well) that I find much easier to follow. Note that this ebook

assumes you are using Word; there is a separate version for Word for Mac users. As of March

2016, you can access the ebooks and PDFs here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2MB3WT2D0PTNK?ref_=pe_390220_166678400_kdp

gp_e_us_en_fn_l12

Here are some simple formatting guidelines that I worked out:

At the end of a chapter, insert a page break; this should result in a new page in the Kindle file.

(It did not when I uploaded a Word DOC in 2014, but did when I uploaded an HTML file in

2016). Note: if you plan to sell your own ebooks (see Part 2), it may be important to use heading

styles at the starts of chapters and sections.

indents instead, so I’m not sure it makes much difference which style you use.

Do not use multiple spaces or paragraph breaks, as they will be removed.

Insert an image in-line (embedded, not floating) in the text: insert it on its own line (i.e., hit

Return to get to a new line, then insert the image, then hit Return again). You don’t want the

image moving location or text wrapping around the image.

If you want two images side-by-side, create one jpeg with both images in it.

Image captions and in-text descriptions: If you use a caption, it might not stay with the image,

so that the reader will arrive at the image and not have the caption there, until he or she scrolls

down. You could make the caption be part of the jpeg to keep it with the image, but this is not a

great solution as the caption may not be readable by screen readers for the visually impaired. It

might be best to refer to images in the text (e.g., “In the image below, the horse is seen as it eats

pages.

In general, make sure that your text works, regardless of the e-reader: If the print book text reads

“the image at the right,” it won’t be accurate in the ebook; even if you do allow text wrapping,

the image might no longer be at the right on some e-readers (which is why you should avoid text

wrapping). If you insert images as described above, you can safely use “above” and “below.”

Recipes and tables: I created a jpeg of each recipe and table in my book instead of using tabs or

a Word table to ensure that the recipe or table would look right.

eBooks do not have page numbers! Don’t refer to page numbers in the text. I numbered all my

sections (e.g., chapter 1, section 1.1, section 1.2, etc.) to give myself an easy way to refer to parts

of the book.

Create a table of contents (TOC) that links into the ebook. KPD has very specific instructions

for doing this, which I recommend reading. (Although as of March 2016, item #4 in their

instructions for Mac seems to be a mistake.) There are different instructions for Word and Word

for Mac; I’m not sure about Open Office.

• In Word on a PC, you apply the style “Heading1” (H1) to each chapter title; then you create the

automatic TOC, which finds all H1 text and pulls it into a TOC that links into the document;

finally, you delete the page numbers in this TOC (which are irrelevant). Note: H1 will make text

look a certain way (size, color, font); you can adjust this. Also note: I don’t have a PC so I did

not test this.

• In Word for Mac, you must manually type the TOC and then link each entry in the TOC to the

I created a bookmark in the text for each index item. I named each bookmark to match its index

entry so that when I created the link (from index entry to bookmark), it was clear which

bookmark went with which entry.

This was a huge hassle and involved hundreds of bookmarks. There were also complications

KDP offers something called Digital Rights Management (DRM) that is supposed to protect

comfortable publishing with KDP. However, I have since read articles opposed to DRM,

• Amazon Author Central is for managing your author profile and linking to the books and

ebooks you’ve written (for sale on Amazon); you can also link to your own website, so this is

When you create a seller account, Amazon will link your buyer and seller accounts; this can be

annoying if you want to use different emails (such as personal for buying, business for selling).

Their rules say you cannot have multiple accounts.

Also, you are only allowed to have one author account. You are, however, able to create

been published.

Remember that you must have the rights to all content (e.g., the image on your cover).

Thoughts&on&direct&sales&

I first thought I would sell ebooks from my website with no middlemen. I encountered several

problems, however.

I would still need someone to process the credit card payments (e.g., Paypal).