Does anyone know how to insert some bold text in Amazon's Description

[M.R.]

Hi Folks. I've been trying to insert just a bit of bold text in my Description for Hearth: Episode 1, simply to indicate that the book will be free on Sunday (using my first KDP day). I have tried using Bold Styles, I have tried inserting html, I have tried everything I can think of, and nothing works. I know it's doable because I see bold text used in Descriptions all the time. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[M.R.]

Belinda, I'm not sure what you mean. There is no option to bold that I could find in the description. I tried Bold Styles (by right clicking) but that doesn't seem to work, either.

[Belinda]

Sorry, let me send you to the link I found. This is a tutorial on how to add it.
http://theselfpublishingtoolkit.com/t...

[M.R.]

Oh wow, I appreciate this. I'm not sure how I would have ever found it. Thanks!

[Clay Held]

Amazon is tricky. HTML DOES work, but you have to futz with the < and > tags. It goes like this:

< becomes <
> becomes >

It's a little easier to remember if you think of "lt" meaning "less than" and "gt" meaning "greater than."

So, for example:

<b> EXCITING BOLD TEXT </b>

Will render the text in bold.

BTW, this works for most standard HTML (bold, italics, links, etc).

Hope this helps! I've used this for one of my books, and it's worked for me. Why Amazon makes it so difficult is beyond me. I think it counts as some sort of occult secret.

[Clay Held]

Oh wow, so goodreads translated the decoded HTML markers into their correct HTML characters.

I'll try that again:

& l t ; b & g t ; YOUR TEXT HERE & l t ; / b & g t ;

I inserted spaces into encoded characters so hopefully Goodreads doesn't translate it their HTML equivalents. You'll want to remove the superfluous spaces.

[Clay Held]

And this dude's page has a pretty good breakdown of the process. Best of luck!

http://www.jesusp.com/how-to-format-y...

[M.R.]

Clay wrote: "Oh wow, so goodreads translated the decoded HTML markers into their correct HTML characters.

I'll try that again:

& l t ; b & g t ; YOUR TEXT HERE & l t ; / b & g t ;

I inserted spaces into enc..."

So, I know basic HTML but when I tried to bold, it didn't work. The difference I see with your example is using ampersands.

[Clay Held]

The ampersand-l-t-semicolon should all be together. I can't type it out properly else Goodreads will automatically translate it into the less than sign.

Also, when you're typing this into the description field on Amazon, you will only see it in plaintext, so the formatting won't show up until it's live on Amazon (which is unfortunate).

[M.R.]

Gotcha. I gave it a shot. We'll see what happens.

[Michael]

Clay wrote: "Amazon is tricky. HTML DOES work, but you have to futz with the tags. It goes like this:

< becomes <
> becomes >

It's a little easier to remember if you think of "lt" meaning "less than" and "gt..."

Thanks Clay, it worked perfectly for me on my books on here! I kept trying it, but I only wanted to convert a small section into bold, but it kept changing all of the text, so thank you so much. It was so frustrating!

[M.D.]

There's a simpler way! Go to Author central.com and edit your book description, no HTML required. You can even edit descriptions of paperbacks. :-)