Formatting problems

[Rachael]

I’ve recently published an ebook. It looked fine when I first uploaded it, and the preview on Amazon seems okay, but when I try to read the ebook on the Kindle app on my phone, it looks terrible, not making it clear where there are new chapters, running sentences together and spelling words incorrectly when they were correct in the original document. No such issues were highlighted before I published.

What did I do wrong? Is there any way of fixing this?

[Gail]

Others will hopefully have an explaination for you, Rachael. I use Kindle Create to upload my books on Amazon and it does all the formatting for you.

[Tomas, Wandering dreamer]

I'm not an expert but can you share what method you used for the formatting? Have you done it yourself? If yes, what software have you used? Or have you hired someone to do it for you? If anyone is to help you, we'll need more information.

[Eldon, Lost on the road to Mordor]

Tomas wrote: "I'm not an expert but can you share what method you used for the formatting? Have you done it yourself? If yes, what software have you used? Or have you hired someone to do it for you? If anyone is..."

I agree with Tomas, in order to help we first need to diagnose the problem. I've formatted many books and would love to help you out, but need to know more first :)

[Gifford]

If you're not exclusive to Amazon, Draft2Digital has a free formatting tool that works great. It'll give you epub, mobi & pdf versions from the same input.

They'll also do wide publishing for you with no upfront costs & a reasonable commission on sales.

[Raymond]

Rachael wrote: "I’ve recently published an ebook. It looked fine when I first uploaded it, and the preview on Amazon seems okay, but when I try to read the ebook on the Kindle app on my phone, it looks terrible, n..."
Hi Rachael, I use Kindle Create and the formatting hasn't been an issue for me, for the most part. My last couple of books had a Kindle issue where the "Book is Finished" message appeared before the last page. I went back and forth with someone from KDP on email who kept suggesting it was a Kindle Device issue and I should contact the Kindle Device department. I read a lot on Kindle and the issue doesn't happen with other books, or with my previosuly published novels. In the end, I reformatted the end of the book to incorporate the Author Info section within the body of the book. That seemed to work. Kindle Create is pretty user friendly.

[Rachael]

Hi guys, thanks for your suggestions. I will have a look at it this weekend and see what I can do.

[Eileen]

Lots of great suggestions here. I have seen books with formatting problems, but I've never experienced it with my books.

I've used Vellum for formatting for the last couple of books and it works like a dream. It requires a Mac computer (or at least it used to; they just put out an update and I'm not sure if they're still limited to Macs) and it's a little pricey, but I can completely format my books into a finished product in a couple of hours with it. Before Vellum, I spent a several weeks trying to get a different software to work!

[B.A.]

I you format correctly in MS Word (using the format tools in the tool bar, not space bar indents or tabs) it will load correctly. Things like putting each chapter to start at a new page.

if you get it to look like you want, put it into PDF format and use the children's book upload to up load it. (I've done that)

Or you can get a template to use. Joel Friedlander had a bunch of them for various genres of books.

Vellum in for MAC but you can buy the program and use it in cloud format on a PC. For me $250 or whatever they are charging for it now, is beyond my price range just to format a book. You can get it done on Fivver for a whole lot less.

I do basic formatting in MS Word and use that in Draft2 Digital for the final copy.

[Gail]

I agree that formatting can be an issue. However, I've found Microsoft word does it just fine. Unfortunately, it isn't automatic. I have to put in the book size, line format, tab stops, select justified, etc myself, but once I learned what worked, I just do it.

[Rock]

I've used Word 2016 to prep all four books with no problems. (I write in yWriter, then export to RTF, post-process with Perl, then snarf the resulting RTF up into MS Word for final formatting) There is a PDF export out of Word that works just fine for paperbacks. The same PDF works for both KDP and IngramSpark. I use the corresponding .docx for e-books (KDP only - I'm deep in KU). There is a very good tutorial on how to format for KDP in MS Word somewhere in the KDP help system. I'd post a link, but, well, can't do that. Follow those directions and it should work out well for you. It is hard the first time, but easier each time thereafter.

Good Luck!
-Rock

[Eldon, Lost on the road to Mordor]

Rock wrote: "I've used Word 2016 to prep all four books with no problems. (I write in yWriter, then export to RTF, post-process with Perl, then snarf the resulting RTF up into MS Word for final formatting) Ther..."

"Snarf"??

[Rock]

Sorry, old programmer slang.

Replace with 'open the resulting RTF in MS Word...'

[Eldon, Lost on the road to Mordor]

Rock wrote: "Sorry, old programmer slang.

Replace with 'open the resulting RTF in MS Word...'"

Gotcha ;)

[Greg]

I have used Microsoft Word on my first two books, but don't have it with my new computer. I've been using Reedsy which is supposed to format in upload. Anyone have an opinion on that versus Kindle Create? I saw Gail had used Kindle Create.

[B.A.]

Kindle Create is now KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing. As long as it is in .mobi format you can use it. It should work with Reedsy. May sure to check that everything comes through as you want it.

[Rob]

If you lost MS WORD, a good alternative is a FREE program called Libre 5.0 which is a complete package similar to MS Office. Their word processor called Writer is very similar to WORD. I would use it if I did not have MS WORD to work with.

[Gifford]

I use Libre Office for everything & then upload to Draft2Digital for formatting (the only problem I've ever had was with indented paragraphs for quotes, but they've fixed that). I highly recommend both.

[Rob]

About Libre 5.0, I failed to mention although it is free, they do ask for donations to support their programs and updates. I did contribute but not as much as I spent to get MS WORD. If I had known about Libre earlier I probably would have just used Libre - it is that good.