Quick Links: How to Prepare for Self-Publishing: Ebook Formatting

This is part three of a six-part series.

You’ve got your finished manuscript in Microsoft Word and you’re ready to turn it into an ebook. You need to convert it into MOBI format (for Amazon Kindle) and EPUB (for everywhere else). There are various companies, tools and programs that can convert your file for you, but how can you make sure it ends up looking right? You already know that ebooks behave quite differently from Word documents, so how can you be confident that your carefully crafted file will work as an ebook?

Keep it simple

Don’t forget that most ebooks—unless you’re specifically opting for a fixed format to handle lots of illustrations, charts, tables, etc.—are reflowable, which means that the reader can choose the size of the text and some other elements like font, line spacing and margins. So your careful choice of 12 point Palatino won’t always render exactly as you envisaged. By keeping the formatting as simple as possible, you reduce the risk of introducing anything that will be too distracting to the reader. After all, you want her to focus on what you’ve written, not on what it looks like.

Before you submit your book for conversion, there are a few really basic things you can do within Word to make it look more professional.

Switch on the “Show nonprinting characters” option—click the button that looks like this:

This displays the formatting marks, showing all the formatting you’ve used: spaces, line breaks, paragraph breaks, tabs, page breaks—the works. This makes it easier to see what you’ve done and will help you to strip out extraneous formatting.

Remove rogue spaces from the beginnings and ends of paragraphs. This can be a tedious job, but it’s worth it, because extra spaces often stand out on an e-reader.