Who do you recommend for eBook formatting?

[Becca]

Most of my sales for The Chakra Diaries have been on Kindle. Since I have two self-help books in the works that I'd like to publish, I'm considering going straight to eBooks. Any suggestions on how best to format? CreateSpace formatted The Chakra Diaries into Kindle for me after creating the format for the print book.
Thanks! Becca Chopra

[Letizia]

Hi Becca! If you don't know it already, I suggest you to take a look to The Book Designer blog: really a great source for designing and self publishing ebooks! Hope this may help!

[Ward]

I used mobipocket creator to create my Kindle version. It is a free product. You can download it at

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/download...

I did my Kindle first and then went to Create Space to go into paper.

[Julia]

Some indie ebooks look really good. I'd love to know their secrets & will def. take a look at the Book Designer's blog when I've time. Seem to be up to my ears in reviewing at the moment - not that I'm complaining!

[Becca]

Thanks for the advice!
Becca

[K J]

Hi,
http://calibre-ebook.com/

Calibre is a free tool that will format into nearly everything. I found it fare better than Mobi Pocket Book, and better than uploading a word doc to Kindle.

Regards,
Kevin

[Anthony]

K.J. wrote: "Hi,
http://calibre-ebook.com/

Calibre is a free tool that will format into nearly everything. I found it fare better than Mobi Pocket Book, and better than uploading a word doc to Kindle.

Regard..."

I have Calibre. I've only toyed with it a bit, but it is very full featured. I see it getting updated constantly, which is a very good sign. The developers are active with the project.

[Becca]

Thanks, I was disappointed in how Create Space formatted my Kindle version of The Chakra Diaries, so I will check out Calibre.

[Libbie Hawker]

Calibre is great...I also really like Smashwords. They have very clear instructions on how to format and WHY to format it a particular way. I've been so pleased with their products and their service.

[Ken]

Lavender wrote: "Calibre is great...I also really like Smashwords. They have very clear instructions on how to format and WHY to format it a particular way. I've been so pleased with their products and their serv..."

I'm going to download and try Calibre this weekend. The mobipocket seems to have some issues with hyphens. some of mine get turned into left facing solid arrows. I asked Kindle support about it and they suggested I go into the HTML and add some script at each occurrence. Like that's going to happen soon.

I've also discovered randomly between words I get a question mark in side a box. I wouldn't even know how to add one of those if I wanted it.

[Libbie Hawker]

I strongly recommend Smashwords. You can format for Kindle with them.

[Tim]

Ken wrote: "The mobipocket seems to have some issues with hyphens. some of mine get turned into left facing solid arrows. I asked Kindle support about it and they suggested I go into the HTML and add some script at each occurrence. Like that's going to happen soon.

I've also discovered randomly between words I get a question mark in side a box.i>

Hi, For Kindle I use MobiPocket Creator and then hand-code anchors and ncx navigation. I've seen strange characters before but that has always been because there were control characters or other special characters that Mobi didn't understand. They need to be stripped out before you send to Smashwords or whatever. Smashwords do a good (and free) formatting guide. I suggest you use that as a bible for how to get your manuscript document simplified and free from hidden naughties before you use Calibre, Mobi or whatever.

[Ken]

Tim wrote: "hand-code anchors and ncx navigation"

..and I have no idea what those are. I'm not using any special characters. Regular punctuation in arial font with Word. No symbols. Its just the hyphens between words, not at hard returns as there are none. The weird symbol I just caught it twice and nothing shows up in word document map.

[Tim]

Ken wrote: " I'm not using any special characters. Regular punctuation in arial font with Word. No symbols."

Finding nasties in Word isn't easy. I had one manuscript with something that crashed Mobipocket. I couldn't find it, so Plan B (which worked) was to copy everything into notepad (which is plain text) and then copied into a fresh Word document. Lost all formatting but it worked.

Have you tried showing all formatting (If you are using Word, there will be a button on a menu bar/ribbon somewhere with a paragraph symbol -- or a menu name called something like 'show paragraphs and other hidden formatting symbol') and looking for strange symbols around your 'strange characters' problem area?

For hyphens. try searching for special characters such as 'non breaking hyphen' or 'optional hyphen'. You can find these under the 'Find' menu (click on the 'Special' button at bottom). Also if you've got justification on, turn it off. If you inspect the styles IN USE in your document (I'm assuming Microsoft Word here) and include font level styles then any justified text will show up. Whether you should justify text in your manuscript, or leave it for the eReader device, is a bit of a can of worms, but if your problem is coming down to hyphens in strange places, sounds like something somewhere is or was trying to justify.

BTW: those other things: anchors are in html what Word calls bookmarks. Unfortunately, Word doesn't put them in the right place and the effect is that if you follow a link within a document, the jump might work, but the formatting might get scrambled, especially if you turn back a page. The ncx file is something you can add that gives the navigation tick marks on the Kindle priogress bar and drives the navigation map on other eReaders (unless you've got an anthology or non-fiction, you don't really need one).

[Dana]

I use a program called Jutoh. It takes any Open Office documents and can turn them into various formats, including Kindle and Smashwords versions. I didn't want to post anything about it until I found out whether or not the e-book I submitted to Smashwords passed the test for Premium Catalog distribution. It did! I formatted my first e-book using two different step-by-step guides (one for Kindle, one for Smashwords). With Jutoh, the process only took a third of the time, and the finished products look great!!!! There is a one-time charge for the newest version of Jutoh, but my husband found a free torrent and downloaded it for me. It's fantastic! Now I can spend more time writing and less time formatting.

[Becca]

Dana wrote: "I use a program called Jutoh. It takes any Open Office documents and can turn them into various formats, including Kindle and Smashwords versions. I didn't want to post anything about it until I ..."

Thanks Dana,
Does the free version work on a MAC?

[Dana]

Becca wrote: "Dana wrote: "I use a program called Jutoh. It takes any Open Office documents and can turn them into various formats, including Kindle and Smashwords versions. I didn't want to post anything abou..."

I'm sorry, Becca, but I'm not sure, but I think so. You can visit http://jutoh.com and try out the demo for free. I know it works with Mac. It may be somewhat limited (being a demo), but I believe it will give you a good feel for the program and for how easy it is to operate.

[Susan]

Lavender wrote: "I strongly recommend Smashwords. You can format for Kindle with them."

Ditto - and it formats in epub (most common), pdf, lit, doc etc. etc. so it can be and IS distributed to as many stores (Sony, kobi, Barnes & Noble NOOK) as possible - so in a way - they're selling books for you!
(if you meet premium distribution status requirements - which is basically 90-100% error free text)

[Ken]

Virginia wrote: "My last freebie got the most downloads from Sony and Barnes and Noble through Smashwords. I just found their affiliate sales page. Big surprise! Over a thousand. If Amazon allowed freebies, I mi..."

See my new topic on KDP select in this group

[Christine]

I format manuscripts for ebook publishing with KDP, Smashwords, and Lulu. I've been doing it for the past year for dozens of clients. Check out my website to learn more: www.christinericepublishingservices.com.

[Raymond]

People here have mentioned MOBI Pocket Creator. If you are an author seeking to self-publish this may be a useful tool for you if you can actually get it to work. Getting it to create a Table Of Contents, for example, is a mystery and the "Help" at this point is no help at all. Online book stores won't sell a book without a table of contents. Like anything free you get what you pay for (not much). If you want MOBI books for personal use (without a TOC) the program is probably fine. If you are an author hire a professional. Try https://sites.google.com/site/ebookco... for conversions to MOBI, EPUB, PDF, and 6 other formats. Cheers!

[John]

I created both the Kindle and paperback versions of Treasure of Saint-Lazare using Adobe Indesign. It has a significant learning curve and is expensive, but you can rent it by the month for a reasonable price and, with practice, the results are outstanding. It has a plugin to create Kindle files.

The input to Indesign was the output from Scrivener.

I did have to tweak and re-upload the file several times to make it look exactly the way I wanted.

Find it here: http://www.adobe.com/products/indesig...