This article gives you an overview of the entire Kindle publishing process and points you to the fastest, easiest route to a perfectly-formatted Kindle eBook.
That route is through the much maligned Microsoft Word.
That’s a positive statement I wouldn’t have made a few months ago.
Surely, I thought, something more sophisticated… PDF, or one of the desktop publishing programs would be better, so I spent a lot of time looking for that more sophisticated, better solution.
After much reading, researching, testing…and building of Kindle eBooks... I came to the firm conclusion that Microsoft Word is the best solution.
The reason is that the Kindle format uses only basic HTML code.
Anything more just goes to waste.
Some who know HTML well. format their eBooks in basic HTML and upload directly to the Amazon's Kindle publishing platform.
MS Word is better for the rest of us because it is so much easier to create a perfectly-formatted MS Word file than it is to write a perfect HTML file.
That is the key… a perfectly-formatted MS Word file.
That is also the problem, because there is almost no such thing as a perfectly-formatted MS Word file.
Submit anything less to the Kindle, and you will get a messy Kindle eBook, as frantic messages around the Internet will attest.
A perfectly-formatted MS Word file can be uploaded directly to the Amazon's Kindle publishing platform, but that is risky, as what looks perfect to you may not be perfect for the Kindle.
A better solution is to let Mobipocket Creator build your Kindle format file, so you can preview it on your own desktop.
If your input file is perfect, it takes only a few minutes longer to go through Mobipocket.
If your input file is not perfect, going through Mobipocket can save days of grief, plus the pain and embarrassment of seeing your poorly formatted eBook available for sale on Amazon.
Some people claim that MS Word is inherently messy… that, straight out of the box, it contains errant codes that you should strip out.
I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that, as a file is edited and re-edited, cut and pasted, converted, and backed up and saved here and there… it picks up garbage… and that does need to be cleaned out.
The first step, then, is to make sure your MS Word file is clean before you even think of converting it to Kindle.
