Getting ready to publish your book through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)? Then one of the questions that you will be asking yourself is how can I format my book so that it appears as professional as is possible upon publication? The good news is that Amazon actually provides you with a guide that you can use when preparing your book for publication through KDP. Feel free to consult that guide if your are looking for step by step instructions on how you prepare your book for publication on KDP?
A concise guide to preparing a book for KDP
However, if you are looking for a concise guide to preparing a book for publication on KDP, then you have come to the right place. We have previously produced another article in which we attempted to simplify the Smashwords Styling guide, for those that are interested in publishing their books on Smashwords.
To be frank the KDP guide is much simpler to follow than the Smashwords Styling guide. However, this summary should still come in handy to those who are looking to quickly launch their books. So, how do you prepare your book for publication on KDP?
- Write your book using Microsoft Office word. KDP finds it easier to convert books that are uploaded in this format.
- Most of the styling options that you choose will get lost during the conversion. So, you may as well go for the Times New Roman Font at font size 12.
- Separate your chapters by inserting Page Breaks.
- Begin with a title and a copyright page on your manuscript.
- You can choose to either justify or not to justify your text. It’s entirely up to you.
- Use 1.5” line spacing. Single line spacing will also do.
- For indentation, choose First Line at 0.5 inches. (Don’t be afraid to play around with these numbers to suit your style).
- Create a table of contents if one is needed.
- Choose a heading style for your headings (eg Chapter 1, Chapter 2 etc). Again, feel free to be stylish, knowing full well that most of your styling options will be lost during the conversion.
Instructions for creating a Table of Contents before publishing a book on KDP
There are a number of things that you need to do when creating a Table of Contents for the book that you wish to publish through KDP;
- Go to a new page and Type “Table of Contents.”
- Bold the text and give it a font of 14
- Highlight the text “Table of Contents,” and go to Insert, Bookmark. Give the bookmark the name “toc” and click on Add.
- Now go to References, Table of Contents.
- Scroll down and click on “Insert table of content.”
- A table of contents will now be created, based on the headers that you have been using. That is why it is important to use a header style for your titles.
- Separate the Table of Contents Page from everything else using a Page Break.
That’s it! Hope this quick KDP eBook formatting guide will help you. Admittedly, it is mostly geared towards those who are looking to publish fiction (novels). If you have any queries, feel free to refer to the KDP comprehensive formatting guide.
