This article was written by J. Dane Tyler and originally appeared on one of his blogs. You should also check out his fiction blog.
This series reflects the path Dane took to self-publish his short story collection via the Kindle Store and SmashWords. You can check it out prove to yourself that he knows his stuff. (And of course read some good fiction)
- A Fine Cast of Characters
[Amazon]
- A Fine Cast of Characters [SmashWords]
Thus begins my series of posts about how to self-publish an eBook on Amazon.com’s Kindle store and Smashwords.com. As I warned before, if this is not something you’re interested in, click away and I’ll see you when the series is over. I’m not sure how many parts this will run, though, so I hope at least some of you with stories you feel are entertaining and would be enjoyed by others but don’t think you have a market for them will stick around and consider this.
J. A. Konrath also suggested if you’ve got a manuscript which did its rounds – that is, you sent it out for representation and an agent didn’t pick it up or your agent sent it around and no publisher picked it up – you consider doing this with those as well. What have you got to lose? At the worst it languishes just like it is now. At best, you have an eBook bestseller on your hands and who knows what doors that will open.
I self-published my eBook for a number of reasons.
- Short story markets are generally non-paying and take months and months to respond, in general, to submissions. Not all, but some. The benefit is a publishing credit, and you know what? I have those already from a non-fiction book. Why do I need them from non-paying markets?
- My situation isn’t stable and my future’s a little rocky. I wanted to see results now.
- I believe the buying public will let me know if story collections are still interesting or desired by the readers of the world.
- EBooks are the way of the future. As many people as there are bellyaching about I’ll never give up books, I’ll never give up books, lots of figures show eBooks are currently outselling print books by a fair margin, which is only going to grow. Get with the program or be run over by it.
- I can get 70% royalties with Amazon’s Kindle program. Try THAT with a mainstream publishing house. Go ‘head, I dare you.
- My stories were already on my blog for free; why not try to make a little money from them?
I could keep going, but you get the point. All the money I’ve made so far is that much more money than I made with them by not publishing them on Amazon and Smashwords. I’m already ahead of the game. That’s why I did it, and it looks like I was right so far.
First things first: What you need
You’re going to need a few things, but you’ll already have most of them, and what you don’t have is free, so don’t freak. Just go get it.
- A good text editor. Something like Notepad++ would be ideal, but you can use Notepad – which comes with Windows – if you’d like. If you’re not using a PC, or if you’re using a PC without Windows on it (AHEM, Bryce) [Note from Bryce: What? I use windows. I just don't use Word...], you’re on your own. But I think Notepad++ is multiplatform, so I use it and I’m going to assume you’re using it too for the rest of this tutorial series.
- Amazon’s Kindle for PC or Kindle Previewer software. I prefer the latter, but I have both. I can’t speak for how Kindle for PC works; never used it. The previewer does everything I want it too. I need this; it’s the only way I can test the behavior of the file and get an idea about how it looks on a Kindle. You can’t skip this one; go get it from Amazon’s Kindle publishing page.
- Microsoft Word, or something which can save as a Microsoft Word document, like OpenOffice Writer or such. Try to avoid Wordperfect; it does strange things and no one recommends it. Also Smashwords ONLY accepts Microsoft Word documents. Go figure.
- Mobipocket Creator. This is the program which will transform your file into a Kindle-friendly format for you. This is completely optional; many, many people upload their HTML document straight to Amazon’s DTP (Digital Text Platform) and the conversion to the Kindle-native file format is done for them. No hassles, no hair-pulling, no cussing. What fun is that?
- I like to use KompoZer – which is a free, multiplatform HTML editor (like a word processor for HTML) to do some of the heavy, repetitive lifting. It’s not necessary, but you’ll see why I use it when we get into the process.
- Patience. Yep, you’re gonna need it. It’s gonna take a couple of days to get this right, but by the time you do, you’ll be a pro and can do it in your sleep.
Okay, once you’ve got all that stuff together, you’re going to need a story. Of course, that story should be imported or copied and pasted into Microsoft Word if you didn’t write it in Word. The part where you have a story, I’ll assume is done.
Next time, we’ll get to the nuts and bolts.
See ya then!
Uploading to the Kindle Store
*edit* Added info for page breaks and cover images
After you’ve set up your account at dtp.amazon.com, there are a couple of ways to prepare your ebook so that you can upload it. You can prepare and upload it in html, doc, prc, or one of the other accepted formats. I like to prep books in html and then upload to Amazon. I let them do the conversion to the Kindle’s format. So in this article I’m going to talk about preparing a book in zipped html. If you want even more control, you can produce a file in the Kindle-Friendly .prc format. My buddy Darcknyt has a tutorial for that.
Why HTML?
If you are going to publish your ebook directly to the Amazon Kindle Store, one way you can upload your ebook is in zipped HTML format. I like html because it is easy to work with and I understand it inside an out. Plus, it’s easy to test.
Basic Steps
- export book to .html
- clean up html using notepad++ (or any old text editor with a search and replace)
- test in a browser.
- put html file into a zip file (using windows archiver thingy or 7-zip)
- Upload zipped html to dtp @ amazon.
1. Export
Exporting is easy. I use OpenOffice.org, so when I want an html version of my book, I just use File->Save As
then I select html from the Save as Type list in the file dialog.
Microsoft work handles it in a similar manner.
2. Clean Up
Word processors tend to put in a whole bunch of stuff into the html that doesn’t need to be there, and may very wel affect your formatting when you upload the book. So I open the file in my favorite text editor ( notepad++ ) and erase the crap.
The crap come in two forms: header crap and extra styling crap that is fed into the body of the work.
Header crap is easy to remove, just select it and delete it.
The extra styling crap I take care of using search and replace. In notepad++, you just hit Ctrl+H to open up the dialog.
In my OpenOffice.org exported html, I had just a couple of tags that extra crap thrown in.
<H1 CLASS="western" STYLE="page-break-before: always"> <P CLASS="first-paragraph" STYLE="margin-left: 0.49in; text-indent: 0in"> <P CLASS="first-paragraph"> <P STYLE="font-weight: normal">
I used the find and replace to change them to (respectively)
<H1> <P> <P> <P>
Also, if you have extra lines anywhere that look like:
<BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>
or
<P></p> <P></p> <P></p> <P></p>
make sure you remove them, too.
3. Test
Just close the text editor, then find the html file and double click it, or use file->open in your browser. Just scroll around and make sure things look ok.
4. Zip
You need to put the html in a zip file so that you can upload it to Amazon. Just put the .html file in it’s own directory, rename it to index.html (your windows may automatically handle the .html part), then right click the file and select Send To –> Compressed (zipped) folder.
You can now use the zipped html file.
5. Upload
As you are using the wizard on dtp.amazon.com to create your book, just select your shiny new zipped html file at the appropriate time.
Other Stuff
Table of Contents
If you want to have a table of contents, here’s how you can easily add one in.
Open the html file in notepad++ (or your favorite text editor). After the title & copyright information, you add in an unordered list that looks like this:
<p>Table of Contents</p> <ul> <li><a href="#ch_01">Chapter 1</a></li> <li><a href="#ch_02">Chapter 2</a></li> <li><a href="#whatever">Chapter Whatever</a></li> </ul>
The hash mark “#” is important, but you can pretty much name your chapters anything you want after that.
Now you add anchors to your chapter headings like this:
<h2><a name="ch_01">Chapter 1</a></h2> <p>It was a dark and stormy night...</p> <p>...</p> <h2><a name="ch_02">Chapter 2</a></h2> <p>Her hair smelled of watermelons and rancid corn...</p> <p>etc...</p>
Make sure you test the html file in your browser to make sure you’ve gotten the links right.
Page Breaks
If it’s important to you to have page breaks before each chapter (to make sure every chapter starts on the top of a page) you have two options.
- Add in the special tag <mbp:pagebreak /> before each chapter heading.
- modify the h1> (or h2> or b> or whatever) tags to be like this <h1 style=”page-break-before: always”>
Adding a Cover Image
Ok, here’s how to add an embedded cover image.
- Make a cover .jpg image. For example, call it “cover.jpg”
- Put the cover .jpg in the same directory as your .html file
- Open the html file in your favorite text editor. Right after the <body> tag, add in the following line
<div id=”cover”><center><img src=”cover.jpg”></center></div>
then save the html file.
- Now select both the cover and the html files in your file explorer and right click on one of them, then choose Send To -> compressed (zipped) archive from the menu as before. Both files will be included in the zip.
- Upload your new cover-containing zipped html file to dtp.amazon.com. Amazon will grayscale and resize your cover for you.
This post is random bits of information and thoughts about self-publishing an ebook, based off an online conversation I had with my buddy J. Dane Tyler.
There are two great places to distribute your book in electronic format.
If you are lazy and only want to choose one, choose smashwords. Smashwords not only sells ebooks from their own store, but they distribute to several other stores: Barnes & Noble, Sony eBook Store, KoBo, Amazon, and the Apple Store. Smashwords takes a 15% cut of your profits to distribute. That’s great for the stores you can’t get into by yourself, but hey, that’s like an extra dime for every sale if you set it up yourself. So, yes, you can get a higher royalty if you set up Amazon separately, but there’s no shame in only wanting to manage your ebook in one place.
Thoughts on formatting an HTML file.
Here’s the basic idea: use your word processor’s “export” or “Save As html” to get a basic html document.
Your word processor is almost certainly going to add in a bunch of html tags that you don’t want. To fix this, you need to get really familiar with your plain text editor’s “Find and Replace” function. If you only have notepad, I’d suggest downloading Notepad++. As you look at the text, it may have tags that look like this:
<p style=’font-size:10pt;font-family:tahoma;’>
You may want to find and replace them down to <p>
You will also want to remove any extra line breaks. Because eBooks can end up on any number of eReaders, you don’t know how the extra lines are going to work out for you. Instead, you should just leave extra lines out.
Usually if there are css instructions in the <head> section, you can take them out.
Thoughts on formatting a .doc file (for smashwords)
To make your life easier, you may want to attempt the following.
- Format your book in html. Make the formatting simple.
- Save a copy of your html file, but with a .doc extension.
- Open your new doc file in your word processor, make a change (add and erase a space or something.) and then save it.
The html file will have the crap screened out and Word and OpenOffice are smart enough to open a .htm file that has been renamed to .doc, but they will re save the file in the full .doc format.
Unless of course your original .doc already didn’t have any crazy formatting. If it already had minimal formatting, just upload it. No extra conversion crap necessary.
Thoughts on cover creation
Smashwords requires a at least a 900×600 image. Kindle wants one that is much bigger. From amazon’s help: “Image pixel dimensions of at least 1280 pixels on the longest side, 2560 or larger preferred.”
Cover page?
Don’t bother making it a separate page by adding in extra lines or anything. Just make it a section before the body of your text.
The book info section at the beginning of my book Oasis looks like this:
Oasis
by Bryce Beattie
Smashwords Edition
Published by Baby Katie Media, LLC at Smashwords
©2008 Bryce Beattie
Bountiful, Ut
http://www.StoryHack.comFor Aurora, who encourages me to write, even when it’s about zombies.
1: The Last Shift
I heard Donald running down the corridor calling my name, but I didn’t care. I just tightened the straps on my backpack kept walking toward the door. In fact, I sped up, hoping to get to the parking lot before he could…
For more information, check out:
- The Smashwords Style Guide – the official resource for what to do when formatting your book.
- Amazon’s Digital Text Publishing Forum
This tutorial will cover using OpenOffice.org to produce a pdf of your book interior. You’ll be able to take that pdf (depending on the page size you choose) and upload it to places like CreateSpace, Lulu, or UniBook.
Why?
Most of the self published books I’ve read look completely unprofessional on the inside. No headers, bizarre margins, and funky spacing are not only common, but seem to be the standard. Fortunately, it’s easy to format things in a way so that it doesn’t detract from your work. Yes, you may get a little extra something if you pay the $10 a page (or $500 flat rate) some people charge. However, You can do pretty well by yourself with free tools.
The Plan
We are going to take a plain text file (this short story by Mark Twain) and turn it into this pdf. Of course you can use your own work. This method is by no means the only way to do this, and you’re pretty flexible as far as fonts/sizes go. We won’t be working with graphics for this tutorial, but it’s not that hard.
Before We Start
If you want to follow along with this tutorial, you need to go download and install OpenOffice.org.
Here we go.
Part 1 – set up the file
Part 2 – insert the text
Part 3 – export/upload/profit
Conclusion
Pretty easy, huh? If you have any questions or comments, just leave a comment below.
I’ve got some templates you may use with OpenOffice.org. Feel free to use these, modify these, pass them along, whatever. If you find them useful, of course I’d appreciate a link, but it’s not necessary.
- Cram – cram example pdf
- Dexter – dexter example pdf
- Modern – modern example pdf
- Textbook – textbook example pdf
Download OpenOffice.org Book Templates – zip file containing all the templates (.odt format)
Here how to use them.
- Download OpenOffice.org (it’s free, but a large download) and just open up and take a look at the templates.
- Pick the one you like best, and replace The book title, author, and copyright information.
- If you use the template with the Table of contents, you don’t need to mess with it, you can automatically generate it when you’re done by right clicking on the table and selecting ‘Update Index/Table’ .
- Chapter by chapter add the text. Every time you insert a chapter, use Insert>manual break>page break then click ok.
- Select the text that is the name or number of the chapter (whatever the author uses) and then in the little box in the upper left hand corner, change the selection from “Text Body” or “default Text” to “Heading 1″.
- Insert any images.
- Export to a pdf.
- Upload to the self-publishing site of your choice.
Note: If you ever have a problem formatting a piece of text (like the url on the copyright page) select the text, then go here:
And select “Clear formatting” and then reformat that portion of text.