The next step in converting your manuscript to Kindle e-book turns out to be an elective course.
You don't HAVE to mess about with images in the body of your book, either as random illustrations, or as title page or chapter-start treatment.
On the other hand, someone—though not necessarily you—WILL have to come up with some sort of cover image for the book.
If only a very simple design, like the Salinger-mandated cover for later paperback editions of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. (It's just yellow text on a maroon background—title and author's name, only—and it's the same front and back.)
Or you could go the other way, spreading out images on every page of your book, turning your novel into a kind of manga.
But aside from the time you put into this stuff—which may take away from your writing (I'm just assuming you're a writer here)—there is one other drawback to peppering your book with excess graphics.
The delivery fee.
You need to be aware that Amazon charges the author for the delivery of the book to the reader.
Typically, this fee is small—in the range of five or ten cents per download—and is only charged to the author who requests the highest royalty rate (70%). Go for the 35% royalty, and Amazon picks up the tab for delivery.
But you have to pay attention.
Worse case scenario: You slap together a big ol' book of photography or art work—a kind of e-coffee-table-book—maxing out the size to KDP's upper limit of fifty megabytes. If you choose the 70% royalty option, then sign up for Kindle Select and give the thing away for the full five days, you could end up with (let's say) a hundred thousand download requests from cheapskate art-lovers...and a bill from Amazon for three-quarters of a million dollars. Whoops!
Fifteen cents a megabyte is the current delivery charge.
Probably won't be a problem for you.
Okay, let's get started. The program I use for creating chapter headings, title pages, and cover images is GIMP.
That stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and is the FREE alternative to PhotoShop.
(I'm using version 2.6. The latest is 2.8, but it calls for SP3 for Windows XP, and I didn't want to bother to upgrade. If you're using GIMP 2.8, there may be a few changes obvious in the screen shots below. Just ride with it, okay?)
Let's make the simplest title page: just words, plus the space around and between 'em.
Start GIMP, click File, New, and set the width to 600 pixels and height to 800. Select Advanced Options and set the resolution to 300 by 300 pixels per inch. Click OK.
Now you have a canvas.
The orientation is portrait, the size the standard (original) Kindle page. This is also the size and shape of your embedded cover. (Your display cover is the same illustration, sized much bigger. We'll get to this stuff in a later post.)
Let's add the title. Click on the text tool icon in the Tool Box (left side, top). It's the big A. Use your cursor to click/drag open a text window in the upper half of the canvas (or wherever). Type your title into the GIMP Text Editor window. Don't worry about the font size or style; you'll be fiddling with that next.
Go to the Size box in the Text Tool window (left side, bottom) and goose the UP arrow to get a better look at your title. Now click in the Font box and experiment with new fonts.
Farther down are the Justify controls. There you can experiment with flush right or flush left or centered text. (To center up on the canvas, make sure you spread your text box across the whole thing.)
You can also mess with the color of the text.
You can then open a new text box for the word "by" (if you're using this form). And another box for your name. (And the name of your publisher, if you're making up one for your book.)
You'll notice the Layers window (on the right) adds each new element to the list. Select the element (title, by, name, background) to fiddle with it—change size, font, color, etc.
Move the text elements about, experiment with positions, mix it up or make it uniform, and so forth.
We're in the twisty, anything-goes world of "art" now.
Save interim versions and keep going until you're satisfied.
It's best to save as a GIMP project file (xcf), which allows you to go back and mess about some more with individual layers. (Even after you've closed the file, you can open it again and go back to work on it.)
When you get serious, also save as a jpeg (or jpg) file for use in your book. GIMP will prompt you to Export the file (prepare it for conversion) before you'll be able to save it as jpeg. Do that.
Here's an important detail: As long as the original file is open—even if you've already saved it as a jpg—you can still work the layers. But if you close it, then open it later, the layers will be squashed up flat into one inseparable layer. If you've thought of some cool adjustment you want to make, you'll have to go back to the xcf version and do it there. Or—if you forgot to save an xcf version—you'll have to start over from scratch.
Perhaps you're thinking: If I just want a simple title page (title and author, let's say), why bother with creating an image of it. Can't I just use header fonts in my html file?
Not if you want to spread stuff about on the page. Remember, using non-breaking spaces to separate elements won't work in all versions of Kindle (both vertically and horizontally). Also, you're at the mercy of the reader, who has the option of choosing a bigger font than you'd like—messing up your design. An IMAGE of your perfect title page works for all versions.
Title page background: Kindle does not support transparent images. If you have black letters on a white background—and the Kindle is also set to a white background—the whole page might seem to meld with the screen, your words floating in space. But that's an illusion. If the reader selects a different background color, a big, possibly ugly rectangle of white will pop up, containing your text.
To avoid that shock—and give your title page a sense of identity when displayed on any background—you can tint the canvas some neutral color: gray or beige or pale yellow, etc.
Unless, of course, you have in mind a bold statement of blazing color—available in various versions of Kindle, but not in Original.
Change the color of the background with the Bucket Fill tool.
Select a Foreground or Background color and click on the canvas.
You can also select the Pattern fill option, picking patterns from the Layers window (right side, bottom).
A nice red title on a wood-grain background, perhaps. (Really more of a cover design, now that I think of it.)
Select a layer of text, and you can bucket fill (with color or pattern) individual letters. That's cool, right? But limiting: Pattern fill letters only make sense if they're large enough for the pattern to be noticed—which means your title better be rather short.
Anyway, have fun with this stuff.
If you create something that looks too weird, click Edit and Undo to get rid of it. Then try something else.
Remember to check your results in grayscale, for use in standard Kindles. (Some color text and background combos absolutely drop dead in black and white.) Click Image, mouse-hover on Mode, and click Grayscale.
Satisfied, click Edit and use Undo to get back to color. You're going to save the color version and put it in your book. You just want to make sure it looks okay in grayscale, too. (Okay, if you want you can save a grayscale version before Undoing it.)
I grabbed a paperback off the pile and attempted to create a version of it.
I couldn't exactly duplicate the font, which was condensed and more squared-off, but you get the idea. The easiest part was the trick that sells the page: the blurred out MEMORY. Just color the text gray, then click Filters, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Experiment for just the right amount of blurring.
Now go nuts with the other filters and see what you get.
By the way, my version of the FALSE MEMORY title page copies the original's lack of background color. I would advise at least a light tinting of gray (or some other pale color) to avoid the thing bleeding into a white background in a Kindle or DX. Also, if you need to make a light tint even fainter, but can't seem to select the right color, try dropping the Opacity level at the top of the Layers window.
Here's another tip: You don't have to rely on font size to get things the way you want. You can also use the Scale tool. Select the layer for the title (let's say), and click Scale from the Toolbox. Ignore the window that pops up with the fill-in boxes for the new width and height. Notice the text now has sizing handles, which you can drag in various directions to adjust the words selected. Just be advised if you decide to change the actual words (or correct the spelling), the stretch goes away and you'll have to reapply it.
So far, we've worked with font faces and sizes, text position, colors, and patterns (for the background or inside individual letters).
Next stop: images on your title page.
You probably don't want to go overboard here. This is, after all, a title page, not a book cover.
But you might select a detail from your cover and reproduce it here. Or, you could concentrate on a fancy logo for the fake publisher you pretend is putting out your book. (Or maybe you're actually becoming an e-book publisher for your work and the works of others....)
Probably time to grab a lot of books off your shelf and see what's been done before. (You may have noticed I didn't bother to duplicate the Bantam logo on the FALSE MEMORY title page. Just laziness, really.)
What kind of image? Photo? Drawing? Abstract design?
You can experiment with the tools in GIMP and create something. Or go looking for public domain images on the Internet. (Public domain because you don't want to be sued.) You could also buy an image.)
Select something, open it in GIMP, and get to work on it.
Crop the image with the scalpel-shaped tool. Experiment with various methods of modifying the image: Paint brush, Eraser, Smudge, etc. Distort the shape or flip it right to left. Clone parts of it or simplify it.
Use the Path tool (or others) to cut an object out of an inappropriate background. Select New and create a canvas for the object. Copy and paste that object onto its own page. Fiddle about, then paste the result onto the title page.
Use the Move tool to nudge it into place.
GIMP is a versatile program with lots of features. It would take quite a while to see, let alone master, all of its tools.
Save often. Also, it's a good idea to change the name (or a add a number to the name) to keep different versions intact.
When you get what you want, save a jpeg copy in the same folder as your html file of the book.
Open the manuscript in Notepad++ (or wherever) and find the title page ID tag we added earlier (id="title_pg" or whatever you called it). Add this line below it:
<p class="center"><img src="title_pg.jpg" width="550" height="750" alt="title page" />
(I remind you it's possible to copy this tag and paste it right into your document.)
Save the html file, open it in your browser, and check out your new title page.
If it looks okay there, open the book in Kindle Previewer and check it across various platforms. Go back and mess about with the width and height specs if you want.
Next time: cover design.
This is the third part of the process converting your word processor document into a Kindle e-book. If you're behind the curve, go back and follow the instructions in CODING PUNCTUATION - PART ONE and CODING PUNCTUATION - PART TWO.
Paragraph styles allow you to format your e-book in a way that matches a typical print book. At least, as far as we're allowed by Kindle's rules and limitations.
Grab any book off your shelf and check out the paragraphs that start chapters and new sections inside chapters.
Starting paragraphs are often non-indented, while everything else is indented a little. Not as much as a typed manuscript (usually half an inch), but some.
Also, you'll note that the spacing between lines inside a paragraph and between the individual paragraphs is about the same. Left to its own devices, html likes to put a blank line between paragraphs.
We're going to fix both these problems with paragraph styles.
The first thing to do is de-clump the html coding in the first line, stuff that got mashed together by Mobipocket Creator.
Click in between the close carets (AKA greater-than marks) and the open carets (less-than marks) and tap Enter.
<html><head><meta [blah-blah-blah]</head><body>
turns into
<html>
<head>
<meta [stuff]>
</head>
<body>
Detail-obsessed folks will probably want to rush to the bottom of the file and separate </body> from </html>.
Now click behind the close caret on <head> and hit Enter. Add a title tag, and it will look like this:
<head>
<meta [stuff]>
<title>YOUR TITLE HERE</title>
Click behind </title> and hit Enter. Add a style tag:
<title>[etc]</title>
<style>
Click behind <style> and hit Enter. Add two paragraph styles and close the section with </style>. It will look like this:
<style>
p.body
{margin:0in;
text-indent:1.2em;}
p.start
{margin:0in;
margin-top:20;
margin-bottom:0;
text-indent:0in;}
</style>
</head>
Note the use of curly brackets front and back. Each part is terminated by a semicolon, items are hyphenated, values follow colons without spaces.
And remember, you can copy and paste into Notepad++ right from this blog post.
Let's apply these styles to your paragraphs. We'll begin by converting all of them to "body." We'll then go back and modify the starts of chapters and sections within chapters.
Search for
<p>
and Replace All with
<p class="body">
For the next procedure, it would be good if all your chapters contained the word "chapter" or something equally telling. Search out all your chapter headings, go to the tag for the opening paragraph, and replace the word "body" with "start."
Then go after your section beginnings (possibly marked with # sign) and do the same. Delete the # marks at the same time. The new paragraph style automatically places a space between sections. Feel free to experiment by changing the number in the "margin-top" line. (It's in pixels.)
You might decide to add a gimmick in between sections of your chapters. Print books sometimes use them, if only to indicate a section break—the blank line—when it occurs at the bottom or top of the page.
First, create a new class in the <style> section:
.center
{text-align:center;}
Now try one of these guys:
<p class="center">- - -</p>
or
<p class="center">*</p>
or
<p class="center">§</p>
Just be aware that most symbols outside the Latin-1 character set are unavailable to Kindle.
On the other hand, if you came across a symbol you've decided you can't live without, you could always use an IMAGE of that symbol in your book. We'll get into the use of images in the next post.
If you have no interest in creating custom images for your chapter starts, tart up the text already in place like this:
<h1 class="center">CHAPTER ONE</h1>
Whether your chapters start with a simple text title or an elaborate image, we need to add an ID tag in front of each one. It's necessary for the creation of an html Table of Contents, allowing readers to jump right to a chapter start point. (And Kindle insists on this capability.)
Just above your chapter heads, put
<div id="chap_1"></div>
and so forth.
You could also name it "chapter_one" or "c1" or the equivalent. So long as it's unique to this location in your book. (But using a numeral in the name streamlines the making of your table of contents. Once you have created the entry for chapter one, you can copy and paste to make all the others. All you have to do now is change all those 1s to 2, 3, 4, etc. We'll get to making of the Tables of Content [there are two versions] in a later post.)
Just below the <body> section, add title page and copyright locations, so a reader can jump right to them:
<body>
<div id="title_page"></div>
<div id="copyright"></div>
These are suggested names. Up to you what to call these locations. If you have a dedication page, KDP suggests it go right after the copyright page.
If you're not going to create an image for your title page, you can fake-up a text-only version with header tags of various sizes (h1 is the biggest, h6 the smallest) for title, your name, etc. Use the class="center" feature the way we did for the chapter headings.
Maybe something like this:
<h1 class="center">MY BIG FAT BOOK</h1>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h3 class="center">by</h3>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h2 class="center">Excellent Writer</h2>
But note: While some versions of Kindle allow non-breaking spaces to separate title and author text, etc., the iOS apps are pretty stingy with spaces. Actually, those guys come off quite conservative in their handling of a lot of code.
At larger fonts you might send the author's name off onto its own page.
This is why I like to create an image of the title page. You have full control of spacing, plus you can add illustrations. And you have access to fonts in styles and sizes otherwise forbidden in Kindle.
Below the copyright tag you could put:
<p class="start">Copyright © 2013 Your Name</P>
<p class="start">All rights reserved</p>
Because you want your title page, your copyright notice (along with some notes and acknowledgements, perhaps), and every chapter to begin on a new page, we need to insert some above every element (except the title page, which—being first—already lays claim to its own page). Add this to the <style> section:
.break
{page-break-after:always;}
Here's the code in action:
<div><br class="break"></div>
Open up a line above every ID tag and write this code (or copy and paste).
You could also fancy things up a bit by placing a horizontal line above or below (or both) each (or selected) elements. The code is <hr />. Give it a try, see how it looks in your browser.
<hr />
<p class="start">Copyright © 2013 Your Name</p>
<hr />
But note: The horizontal rule is treated oddly in Kindle Fire and Fire HD. Sometimes the line ends up on the bottom of the previous page, not at the top of the new one—even though the html coding is clearing saying the opposite.
The last thing we're going to do today is mess about with the opening line of the paragraphs that begin your chapters and sections.
In print books, special treatment is common. A large "drop" capital to start, the first few words in small caps, or in bold or italic style.
Try modifying the first line of an initial paragraph like this:
<p class="start"><b><big><big>T</big></big>he first few words</b>[etc]
The tags for bold are <b>[text]</b>. For italics: <i>[text]</i>.
For the time being, at least, save your file and open it in a browser. It should look pretty dang professional....
Now that you have the basic code in place, feel free to experiment. Rather than no indent for start paragraphs, try a much LARGER indent. Or mess around with the margin settings.
You could add the following line to your paragraph styles:
line-height:100%;
Change that percentage and you'll be able to vary the line spacing (called leading). You could loosen the spacing in your whole book this way. Note: only values above 120% work.
But only in some versions of Kindle: Works in Paperwhite and both Fire editions. But I can detect no difference in leading in regular Kindle (or DX) or the iOS versions (iPad and iPhone).
You can also add a new paragraph style just for chapter starts, using a different one for the start of new sections inside chapters. Just copy and paste one style and change the name of it, apply it wherever you want.
Go ahead and have fun with it.
Just remember that some combinations might only look cool for certain font sizes—and ultimately you have no control over font sizes.
Also, consider this: If you're about to publish a bunch of novels in the same series, you'll probably want to standardize the look for this and all future volumes. Branding is not just for cover illustrations.
If you've decided not to mess about with image files inside your book, the code for the text of your book is now complete.
Start Kindle Previewer, click File, select Open Book, browse to the html file (which you should find in the output folder of Mobipocket Creator—unless you instructed Notepad++ to put it someplace else), and double-click it. The KindleGen program built into Previewer will now compile your book. You'll get warnings about errors, but ignore them for now—they're on the list to fix in future posts. Click OK and check out the book. See what it looks like in various versions and apps, change the font size to see how weird (and annoying) things can get.
Next time we'll look into creating images and placing them in the code.
Continuing with punctuation, we're going to deal with dashes and ellipses.
(Recall we have opened the html version of the book in Notepad++. If you've come in late, go back to CODING PUNCTUATION - PART ONE and catch up before proceeding. The exact sequence of events is very important. Also, please note these instructions are for American publication format, not British; so practice caution, why don't you.)
Search for
--
[space]–[space]
I use the smaller en dashes because they center up in any space Kindle sees fit to insert into my sentences. Experiment, if you want, with the larger em dashes (—) to see what they look like. I find they often latch onto words and refuse to let go, forcing all the "justification" space into the zones in front or in back of the clump. I don't care for that. (Print books have "thin spaces" available to cut dashes loose, you don't.)
Now, the thoroughly nasty world of ellipses (AKA suspension points).
There are rules that govern print books. According to the Chicago Manual of Style, ellipses are used to indicate missing text. If the remaining text is incomplete (a fragment), it is followed by a space, then three dots. Another space is used after the ellipsis if the text resumes. If the ellipsis follows a complete sentence, a period fills the space after the last word (four dots in a row).
Note that the CMS is talking about the treatment of text reproduced from some other published work, where unneeded words (or whole sentences) have been removed by the quoting author.
In fiction, the ellipsis is used to indicate an incomplete thought or a line of dialogue that trails off. You might also see an ellipsis separating fragments of narration, or between bits of dialogue where the speech is halting or drops away only to pick up again. Some authors avoid the four dot ellipsis, even when the sentence in front is complete.
To create an ellipsis, you could use this string of code:
. . .
which is an alternating series of non-breaking spaces and periods.
There is also html code for a clump of three dots:
…
Pick one for your book—don't mix and match.
In a Kindle, spaces (including non-breaking spaces) are stretched to fill out the line to the right side margin (justification). And that can look pretty strange. It also means that if the next line also contains a non-coded ellipsis (made using non-breaking spaces and periods), the spaces there might be larger or smaller than those in the ellipses above. Weird, right?
Using the code (…) guarantees a uniform ellipsis every time, but now the spaces between the word and the ellipsis and between the ellipsis and the next word can be very large, with a compact trio of dots in the middle. Frankly, I don't like the look of that.
So I prefer the constructed ellipsis to the coded one. Most of the time.
It depends on the line length, ellipsis position, and font size—where font size is not in our control. All in all, an ugly business.
To make matters more interesting, the so-called non-breaking space might actually break in a Kindle (though not in the browser you might use to test your progress).
Okay, let's begin the conversion process with ellipses that follow a complete sentence.
Search the file for
....
and Replace All with your chosen version of the ellipsis:
. . . .
or
….
But be advised: At very large font sizes the period following the coded ellipsis (…) may be spaced differently than the other three dots.
Now search for
..."
and Replace All with either
. . ."
or
…"
Finally, search for all the other ellipses in your document:
...
and Replace All with either
[space]. . .[space]
or
…[space]
When the ellipsis occurs at the end of a paragraph, the end breaking space will be ignored.
When the ellipsis occurs between words, the end breaking space allows Kindle to bust off the rest of the sentence and put in on the next line—again, depending on the sentence length and font size.
In practice, how everything looks in your Kindle (or Kindle Previewer) should help you decide on one version of the ellipsis or the other.
In the end, it's all about proofreading.
And more proofreading.
Remember, as a self-pubbing indie author, you are the last line of defense for fixing EVERYTHING.
And now back to double quotes: All remaining DIALOGUE quote marks can be replaced with right-side double quotes.
WARNING: There are double straight quotes on your screen that are NOT part of the dialogue in your book. They occur in the <meta> section of code at the top of the page. You don't want to convert these guys—or if you accidentally do, you need to put them back the way they are now.
Here's how you handle this. First, you need to turn off "Wrap around" in the Find and Replace window. Then click in your document just after the <meta> section and before the <body> section.
Search for
"
and Replace All with
”
Now turn "Wrap around" back on and take a peek at the <meta> section to make sure nothing bad happened there.
Last, we deal with single quotes—AKA apostrophes. Since you've already located and converted your left-side single quotes, the only ones left are right side quotes. Search for
'
and Replace All with
’
This also fixes a bug in Word (or maybe it has already been fixed; my version is very old). When you change front-of-word contractions from straight to curly quotes, sometimes Word thinks it's beginning a quoted word or phrase and uses a left-side quote. The proper mark is a right single quote, identical to apostrophes used to form contractions.
Word also reverses double curly quotes following dashes, which is found in dialogue interrupted by another speaker. We've already handled those.
And that takes care of standard punctuation. Save the file and open it in a browser. I like to narrow the margin and increase the font size so I can get a good close look at the text and punctuation.
Just remember: Not everything that works in your browser will work in a Kindle e-book. It's probably too early to bother doing this now, but a little further down the road you'll want to open your html file in Kindle Previewer to see what your e-book really looks like. When the time comes, be sure to check multiple platforms and font sizes. Compromises may be necessary.
Next time we'll get into paragraph styles and some other stuff.
Now it's time to get into the details of turning your manuscript into a Kindle e-book. We'll start by making changes in your manuscript. Then we'll create an html-ready text file and run it through a program to produce the actual html code.
Then we'll go to work on that file, customizing the living heck out of it.
We'll need some tools, but don't worry, they're all free:
Mobipocket Creator
Notepad++
Kindle Previewer
Sigil (optional)
I'm assuming you've already written your book in a word processor. You've gone over it a million times. It's perfect. You're sick to death of it. Perhaps you've made numerous attempts to find an agent (or editor) willing to take a look at it.
With little success.
(Which is why you've decided to go indie, right?)
Your finished book may already have smart punctuation—curly quotes, one em dashes, etc. If so, we need to start off by making a few modifications.
Before you go any further, save the file with a new name.
Now search for your dashes and replace them with two hyphens (allowing no spaces between them and the word or punctuation). Like this:
"What the--"
or
Now we come--at last--to the [etc]
To do this search in Word, click "More" and "Special" and select "Em Dash" for the Find window. Or use the code: ^+ for the em dash, ^= for en dashes.
Why do you need to do this?
When you save your manuscript as text, all the dashes will turn into hyphens. Which means you'll have a lot of false hits when you start searching for stuff to replace with real dashes.
(Speaking of hyphens, please don't hyphenate your manuscript. Only use the hyphen to make compound words or maybe separate a range of times ["3 – 5 days"] and so forth. Your right margin should be ragged and [except for compound words] hyphen free.)
Use three periods for ellipses, with no spaces in front or after. Again, this will make the process of creating html punctuation a little easier.
(With these rare exceptions: If you have formations like
[fragment][ellipsis][line of dialogue]
or
[fragment][dash][line of dialogue]
they may cause problems in the automatic punctuation conversion process that will have to be dealt with during a thorough proofreading. Be a good idea to avoid such formations when you write.)
If you're still using two spaces to separate sentences within paragraphs, search for [space][space] and replace with [space]. Then get out of the habit of using two spaces between sentences. It's time.
Actually, even if you don't use two spaces between sentences, do the search and make sure you didn't slip up. You could also search for accidental double periods and replace with one—but this search is pretty tedious, since every ellipsis will cause multiple hits. You may have to wait until the proofreading process to find these guys.
But you've already proofread the heck out of this thing, right?
Using extra carriage returns (AKA the Enter key) to space down the page will not be a problem. Converting to html cuts them out automatically.
Make sure you have some way of knowing when you've begun a new section within a chapter. I use a # mark on its own line between sections. You'll need to be able to search for this marker later.
If you've already converted your document to curly quotes, don't bother to change 'em back to straight quotes—that happens automatically in the next process.
(And by the way, make sure to use the single quote key to form contractions, not the apostrophe key you may have on the left end of the numbers line on your keyboard. The process described below accounts for the difference between single quotes and apostrophes.)
Use Control A to highlight the entire text, then go into Paragraph style and remove the automatic indent, set the spacing to single. Search for the paragraph symbol and replace it with two of them. The result will be single spaced text with a carriage return separating paragraphs.
Save this modified file as Text Only (no line breaks).
There are a number of ways to proceed. One way is to convert your text file to simple html by running it through Mobipocket Creator. The html file is then opened in Notepad++.
(Using the Notepad that comes with Windows is a LOT harder.)
Another way is to open your text file in Sigil. Theoretically, you could even write your book in Sigil, because it has a "Book View" screen. The html code shows up on another screen called the "Code View."
If you end up making extensive changes to your book, using Sigil might be a better way to go. Another advantage, the code comes out with blank lines between paragraphs, which makes editing a little easier. It also promises to create an ePub file of your finished work. (This is a rival format to Kindle.)
On the other hand, if you want to compose lots of new material in Notepad++, you can easily create macros for adding tags to start and end paragraphs. You could also make macros for automating tags for double left quotes, double right quotes, and so forth. With a little practice, I guess you could write your book in Notepad++ and avoid the conversion process altogether.
Lots of options in this new world.
The description of punctuation formatting given below is based on the first method: Mobipocket Creator and Notepad++.
(It works pretty much the same for Sigil.)
Crank up Mobipocket Creator and input the text file you just saved. Make sure to note where the html file will go—or browse to select a new place—before clicking Import. When you close Mobipocket it will ask if you want to save changes to the "opf" file. Say yes. (We'll get back to this in future posts.)
You might wonder why you need to use a program like Mobipocket Creator (or Sigil) to get an html version of your book. Doesn't your word processor give you the option of saving directly as html (or Web page)? Maybe so, but I've found this method creates at least as many problems as it solves. The code you get is bloated with info Kindle can't use.
Open the html file in Notepad++ (and make sure the Word wrap feature is running).
Not too bad, right?
Cherish the moment, because now we start to make the code look...busy.
We begin by giving the punctuation—which has reverted to straight quotes and hyphens-as-dash—a more professional look. Please follow the sequence exactly for best results.
(Or try it in any order you wish, and learn from the odd and frustrating results not to do that....)
Open up Notepad++'s Replace feature (the icon to the right of the binoculars) and search for
"'
(That's a double quote followed immediately by a single quote.)
Note: You can copy items from this blog post and paste them into Notepad++. With some care. For instance, remove "[space]" but remember to tap the space bar on your keyboard. Nothing will show up, but it's still vital.
You might not find any hits for this search ["'], since this combination only happens when you begin a line of dialogue by quoting a previous speaker's word or phrase.
(Also, I think it's clear I'm dealing with American English usage here, not the British variety. If you're planning to use single quotes for all dialogue, holding back double quotes for the occasion of quotes within quotes, you'll need to modify my instructions.)
If you find a hit, make sure this is not a case of a leading word contraction (like 'Bout for About or 'Sup for What's up). If you find the quote within quotes combination, replace with
"‘
lsquo stands for "left single quote" and replaces the single straight quote with a curly left single quote. (The straight double quotes will be dealt with later, which is why you're replacing them now.)
All these html character tags begin with an ampersand and end with a semicolon. In Notepad++ the tags are highlighted in pale yellow, to make them less distracting. You'll have already noticed the paragraphs starts (<p>) and ends (</p>), along with the rest of html coding, come out in blue. The text in black represents the actual text of the book.
(Mostly. You'll find out....)
Now search for
[space]'
and evaluate for the quote-within-quotes situation (and not the more likely front-end contraction apostrophe). When you find it, replace with
[space]‘
Now for the left double quotes. Search for
>"
and Replace All with
>“
Also: Replace All
[space]"
with
[space]“
This will take care of all dialogue that begins at the start of a paragraph, as well as lines of dialogue that begin inside a paragraph.
Before we complete the quotes conversion, we need to deal with dashes and ellipses—which we will get to next time.
Patience!
The best way to have total control of your Kindle book is to give those guys at KDP just two things: a jpg image file of your cover and a mobi file of your book.
Mobi is the extension for the type of file that Kindle uses (there's also a prc extension). You get this sort of file as the natural output of KindleGen, the program Kindle uses to create your e-book.
You can download KindleGen and use it directly, or—better—get Kindle Previewer, which has KindleGen built into it. That way you'll also be able to see what your book looks like in various versions of Kindle—at which point you'll learn not everything that works in one version will work in others. Compromises are often necessary...
(Head on over to Amazon to download these programs for various operating systems.)
KindleGen looks for a minimum of five specific files on your computer within the folder that contains your book:
First, of course, is the HTML file of the text of your book.
Then it needs an HTML version of the book's Table of Contents.
Followed by the ncx version of the Table of Contents—so folks can see where they are in the book in terms of a percentage of the total.
(The ncx file creates what is called a Navigation Map of the book, noting in order the various parts: title page, chapter start pages, the about-the-author section at the end, and so forth.)
After this, KindleGen looks for a somewhat fussy item called the opf file.
(To be precise, KindleGen looks for the opf file first, since it points the way to all the other items mentioned—but I'm listing these guys in the order in which I plan to tackle them.)
Finally, KindleGen wants an image file of your book's cover.
(This is a reduced version of the cover and is embedded in the mobi file—so folks can remind themselves what your book's cover looks like while they're reading it. A much larger version of the cover image is used for display purposes on Amazon's Web page, but you'll be uploading that separately.)
This is the bare bones list. A well-made e-book may also contain an image file of the title page or additional images used to create custom chapter headings.
In future posts, I'll delve into each of these items in some detail.
You don't have to go very far out of your way to get your book up on Kindle Direct Publishing. Hand those guys a doc file (MS Word) or an rtf file (rich text format—available from pretty much any word processor [even WordPad, which ships free with Windows]), and they'll do the rest.
Okay, you also have to give them an image file (they like jpgs) for the cover of the book.
But that's all you need to get published on Kindle.
The problem is, this bare bones approach gets the dowdiest version of your book in front of your potential readers.
If you want to put a more professional version out there, you have two choices: hire a professional to format your book, or learn to do it yourself.
I'm all about the DIY version of self pubbing.
And not just because I'm cheap.
DIY is the best way to get your book exactly the way you want it, with no back-and-forthing with your format guy, and no extra charges tacked onto the bill.
You just need to learn a few things.
Mostly, you need to slap together a bare minimum of HTML coding. (HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.)
Since e-readers are essentially browsers, the code for a book uses the same tags as a Web page. To get a peak at the source code for this blog, try this:
In Firefox, click Tools, Web Developer, Page Source.
In Internet Explorer, click View, Source.
[Let's pause here for the Reader to check out the code....]
Now, for God's sake, stop looking at that mess! You're going to hurt yourself!
The coding for your book—at least, the code before Kindle gets its hands on it—is WAY simpler. There's some boilerplate mumbo-jumbo at the top, a couple of paragraph style definitions after that, then it's pretty much clear sailing between chapter heads.
And once you've got one of your chapter heads formatted, the rest follow suit—copy and paste—with minor changes to make sure all your chapters are not "Chapter One."
When you custom code your own book, you can easily give yourself the key elements that separate amateur books from the professional.
Here's what you want for your book:
Proper paragraph styles: slightly indented for nearly all, non-indented for those at the start of chapters or new sections within chapters—with special treatment at the beginning of each (maybe a big capital for the first word, use of bold or italics for the first three or four words [pick up any print book to see how it's handled]).
Custom chapter headings: use of images instead of text, including images of text or numbers in sizes and fonts you can't get from Kindle.
Smart punctuation: curly quotes that curve in the right direction (Microsoft Word has trouble with some of that); one em dashes (or, if you prefer, the shorter en dashes) instead of hyphens; proper ellipses, etc.
A bonus item, but a nice touch: an image for your title page, giving you custom fonts and illustrations.
All of this is achievable with a few simple bits of HTML code.
Tune in next time to see how easy it can be!
