Notjohn's Guide to E-Book Formatting

The self-publisher's bible! In this clear and entertaining ten-step guide, now in its eighth edition, a prolific American author tells how he formats his books using free software for upload to online bookstores. The secret, he explains, is to use the universal "epub" format to create a single e-book file that will be accepted by every digital retailer, from Amazon.com through Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, and smaller booksellers like the Canada-based Kobo. "Most beginners write their books in Word or Open Office," Notjohn says, "and then they up to upload the same document for conversion to an e-book. Sometimes it works; more often it doesn't, because these programs litter the file with hidden formatting. The result can be a disaster." Instead, the word-processing document should be converted to clean HTML, the markup language used to create a web page. (All e-books are web pages at heart, and the Kindle and other e-book readers are just special-purpose web browsers.) The conversion from document to HTML file takes seconds. It can then be plugged into a simple template that Notjohn includes in this Guide and also makes available on his blog for anyone to use. He also supplies a style sheet to format the book for best appearance on the Kindle, Fire tablet, the various Kindle apps, as well as on competing tablets and e-book readers. If all else fails, there's Plan B: a stripped-down template for novels and for non-fiction that consists mostly of text. He concludes with a chapter on how best to present your e-book on the Kindle platform, with hints on encrypting the book, copyrighting it, and pricing it for the greatest return. And new this year: a chapter on adapting the e-book to a print edition. With illustrations and screenshots. Revised and updated 2017edition.