How to Format Your eBook for Kindle

Word files with limited formatting translate well to Kindle.

Check out the Simplified Formatting Guide for more information.

File Format

Save file as .doc file. On Windows, it might be .doc (97-2003). On Mac, it might be .doc (97-2004). Kindle is a little behind on digital formatting. If you already have your file saved as .docx, that is fine, just save the file as .doc. You might have to make a few extra changes to it.

These file types will not convert properly to Kindle Digital Platform (KDP).

.docx
.pdf

Table of Contents Setup

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Conclusion

About the Author

Hit Control + Enter right after the last piece of text on the previous page.
Go to the Style Panel, and select Heading 1. That tells Microsoft Word that this is the start of a new chapter. This will render the start of a new chapter for KDP. Normal text will render to KDP as such.

Styling

The Kindle user can control the size and format of the text. Using the Styles panel in Word, you can control how you want them to appear - centered, bold, italic, or size.

Use the Styles panel for your headings, and subheadings.
Use the Paragraph panel for your numbered or bulleted lists.

Heading

Go to the Style panel and select Heading 1.

Subheading

Go to the Style panel and select Heading 2.

Numbered List

1. Ordered list item one.
2. Ordered list item two.
3. Ordered list item three.

Go to the Paragraph panel and select numbered list.

Bulleted List

* Bullet list item one.
* Bullet list item two.
* Bullet list item three.

Go to Paragraph panel and select bulleted list.

How to Make Your Table of Contents Clickable

Once you have your table of contents, headings, and paragraphs ready, you'll want to create a clickable Table of Contents.

Go to your Table of Contents and select the text you want to make clickable.
Right click and select Hyperlink....
Select This Document.
You'll see all your headings and subheadings throughout the book. If you used the Styles panel to set your headings and subheadings as described above, you'll see them appear here. It makes this whole process much easier.
Select the heading you want to link to.
Repeat these steps for all your chapters.

The link directs you to the heading, not a page number, which makes reordering and adding new chapters in the middle of your book easy, as you won't have to redo any of the linking. The links will persist. Once you're done, test out all the links to make sure they direct you to the correct spot in your book.

Remove hard returns and insert page breaks at the end of chapters for optimal Kindle viewing.

How to Add and Format Images for your Kindle eBook

Image File Requirements

Photos inserted into your book should be in .jpg file type. Kindle will recognize this format. There is limited support for .png, and .bmp.
Largest page size of a Kindle: 600px wide, 800px height.

Add an Image

Be sure to use the "Insert" function to insert any images, rather than copying and pasting.

Format an Image

Right click on the image and select Format Picture....
Select the Size tab.

Image and Text Layout

You can only have text above and below the images, not to the side, unfortunately. Sucks but KDP doesn't allow it. Having text along side the image will through the whole format out off. 💩

Image File Size

The larger the image file size is, the larger the file size of your book will be. You'll want to optimize these images so they don't bloat the size of your ebook file. Digital delivery will take longer for larger book files. Amazon might charge you more for the delivery fee as well. You'll want to keep your total file size as small as possible. There may be free online resources to resize/optimize your image files, if you don't have access to a photo editing program.

You can also reduce image size by compressing it within Word:

Right click on the image.
Select Format Picture....
Select the Picture tab.
Select the Compress button.
You can compress one image, or all images in your document.
Change resolution to Web/Screen.

Preview Your Kindle Book

Kindle Previewer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765261

anthoula/kindle-ebook