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How to Format an eBook for Kindle

You’re ready to start writing your eBook for self-publishing on Amazon.

And there is a process in order to get it self-published.

But in order to get to those steps, your eBook needs to be formatted for Amazon Kindle during the process of writing or editing your manuscript and then your eBook needs a cover.

Because once you upload it to the Kindle Create Software program, there is a huge limit to what you can edit in your book, so you would need to go back to your manuscript, make the changes there, and then start the upload over again.

I discussed in the best free ebook creator tool post, that I found the best file format creation tool to use and it’s very simple to format your book there.

Formatting Your eBook

Formatting a book means the layout, what it looks like: font, spacing, titles, paragraphs, etc.

Tips for Formatting

Book Formatting in Word

Font – Times Roman

  • Font Size– for the titles use 14 -16 font size
  • For regular sentences use 12 – 14 font size

So, if you use 14 font size for the titles, use 12 font size for the sentences.

Images

  • Compress each image
  • Should be formatted to JPEG (depending on image)
  • Spaces before and after each image

Compress your images before adding them to your manuscript (see eBook file size section).

Page Breaks – use Page Break after each chapter to start a new page in the eBook, if you don’t break up pages it will be a continuous page of writing, unless that’s what you want, one chapter running into the next. This also means that you could have a Chapter Title at the bottom of a page and then the first paragraph starting on the next page.

Spacing – set space between sentences to 1.15 or 1.5, whichever one you prefer.

Alt Text – Start each description with a capital and end each sentence with a period (this will be done in Kindle Create).

Writing an eBook in Word

If you’ve used Word before, just do everything like you normally do.

If not, we’ll go over some things here.

Hyperlinks

Whether it’s links to another site or affiliate links, you do them both the same way.

I want to add a link to Kindle Create, I’m going to highlight the word Kindle Create or the key phrase and only the word/s; no commas, no periods, nothing else, just the word/s:

Kindle create hyperlink highlighted.

And then go to the site I want to link to and copy the address:

Address copied for hyperlink.

Then come back to the word Kindle Create, right-click on it (make sure it’s still highlighted) and a drop-down menu appears, click Link.

Create a link button.

When you click on Link, the Insert Hyperlink box will pop up, paste the address in the address bar and click OK.

Insert hyperlink pop-up box.

When you click OK, the link will turn blue:

Blue link indicating hyperlink is active.

And if you hover over the hyperlinked word, it will show the address:

Hover over link to show address.

To remove a link, right-click on the hyperlink and click remove hyperlink:

Remove hyperlink button.

Affiliate Links

Can you add affiliate links to your eBook?

Yes, you can can.

Can you add Amazon affiliate links to your eBook?

Yes, you can.

But you will need to comply with Amazon’s Operating Agreement.

And you still need to add your affiliate disclosure and it goes in the front with the rest of your legal pages.

Adding an affiliate link is done the exact same way as a regular link.

I’m going to use my SiteGround affiliate:

Try SiteGround out for hosting services.

Highlight the word or keyphrase, get the affiliate code, right-click the word or phrase, enter it into the address box, click ok and the link will turn blue.

Affiliate code added to insert hyperlink address box.
Affiliate code activated.

And you remove it the same way as above.

eBook File Size

You put up an eBook, choose the royalty, calculate it, and sit back and wait for that payment to come in every time someone buys your book.

But your calculation was short.

Amazon charges a delivery cost per megabyte (MB) (every 1000 KB is 1 MB) for your digital book, which is going to lower your royalty amount.

You can find out about Amazon’s delivery costs here.

One way to cut down on the file size is to optimize your images.

My books are how-to’s and have a lot of screenshot images and I compress them using tinypng or Imagify.

To compress an image:

  • Get your image
  • Give it a file name
  • Do what you need to do to it; border images, text, etc.
  • Send it through tinypng (it’s for jpeg too)
  • And upload it to your Word document.

Now, Word compresses images and you can follow the instructions here to format your images that Amazon has or just do what you normally do for your images.

Here are a few more image optimization tools to check out, it’s just finding which one is easier for you to use.

Related Topics

How to Create an eBook Cover for Free

Where to Write Your eBook

What You Don’t Need When FormattingYour eBook

You do not need to worry about or set:

  • Headers
  • Footers
  • Page Numbers
  • Drop Caps – you will set this in the Kindle Create Program
  • Book Cover – this will be created and uploaded separately

But you should format your Chapter Titles in Heading under the style tab.

Conclusion for eBook Formatting

Book formatting in the file format of Word is simple.

After your manuscript is done, edit and review it to make sure it’s what you want and then it’s ready to export to the Kindle Create Software Program.

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