CUSTOM CODING

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!