How to Check the Format of a Self-Published Book for an Eventual Upload to Kindle

The Kindle can hold a library of hundreds of titles.

Amazon's Kindle is a popular portable e-book reader. If you have a self-published book and want to eventually sell it for the Kindle, format the book according to Amazon's guidelines. Adhering to the guidelines means that anyone reading your book on a Kindle will read the text you intended her to see. Once you have formatted your book, you'll be able to successfully upload it to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Word

Instructions

1. Ensure that your document is in Microsoft Word DOC format. Other formats like RTF or DOCX do not convert well to Kindle.

2. Check that your document does not have bullet points, special fonts or headers and footers. Those items will not transfer to Kindle format at all.

3. Insert a page break after every chapter, if you haven't already. Page breaks prevent text in different sections from running together. To insert a page break in Microsoft Word, click Insert and then select Page Break.

4. Check that you have the required title page. The title page should be the first page in the document and have the book title followed by the author's name. The text should be centered and followed by a page break.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have included images in your book, they need to be JPEG format and centered. If you copied and pasted the images into your document, you should reinsert them using Word's Insert Picture feature. Click Insert and then select Picture.

References

• Amazon: Kindle: Simplified Formatting Guide