PROOFING AND KINDLING

Before you can Kindle, you have to proofread your book. This can take awhile.

Remember, unless you send the thing out to be dry-cleaned, you are the final barrier between your nasty mistakes and a reader's outraged eyeballs.

So take your time. Get it right. Then take some more time.

Here's what I do:

I open the html file of the book in my browser (Firefox) and slide the right edge over until I have a window about five inches wide. I hit Control+Plus a few times to pump up the font size.

About this big is big enough.

 

You want to be able to spot the little stuff, like curly quotes going the wrong way, or straight quotes that have survived the transformation process. Especially if you've done some revisions in the html version of your book. It's easy to forget to convert the apostrophes (single right quotes) in contractions.

You could do this: in Notepad++, do a search for ' and " – just to make sure you haven't left any behind. Search also for double spaces and double periods that might have survived the conversion to the text version.

Actually, you really should have made those searches back when the book was in your word processor. And speaking of proofing in ms. form, it's suggested you put your book in a mono-spaced font (like Courier New) and boost the size for easy viewing.

You may already know that printing the book out makes some problems easier to see. In printed form, you can also read it backward—taking it a page at a time, but starting at the end. Keeps you from getting caught up in the story.

Some folks like to read their books out loud, if only to hear what their dialogue sounds like.

Another technique is to have your computer read the book to you. I use a text-to-speech engine called DSpeech. (There are others.) Believe me, when you drop the r out of through, you'll hear the difference.

(Okay, when I wrote the previous sentence I typed "head" instead of "hear". I'd have heard that error pretty easily. too.)

Having your book read out loud gives you the chance to pick up on unconscious rhymes and sound repetitions—some of which you might not be going for.

If you fix your problems in Notepad++, you might want to keep a window open with Word or another wp, so you can copy and paste new text there to make a quick check for spelling errors.

By the way, if you've used Notepad++ for a while, you will have noticed when you double click a word to highlight it, all other instances of that word are also highlighted. Might help you see when you've accidentally a word twice (not just in a row, but twice in nearby sentences).

When the book is perfect, give it a spin in your Kindle Previewer. Note that if you want to confirm all the buttons are working (for Tables of Content and cover), you have to Open the opf file, not the html version of your book (as you've probably been doing to see the book in your browser).

If you read my posts on punctuation, you'll recall I obsess about what will work in what version of Kindle and at what font size. Further experiments have given me to conclude you should ignore anything that happens in Kindle font size 7 or 8 (the largest), and in Fire in font size 9 and 10 (also top end). And you really have to go down to Kindle 6 or Fire 7 to find a reasonably sized text. Above that, all hell breaks loose.

Generally, ellipses survive pretty well in Fire, but at the highest fonts you can't count on so-called non-breaking spaces. Even WORDS get torn apart at the highest fonts.

In all fonts, when the text hits the right margin, stuff happens to dashes. Using a non-breaking space in front means the dash will not appear at the center of the space between words—which I find annoying.



I now use a regular space surrounding an en dash, and only in the middle of paragraphs. The dash is centered; I go away happy. (Em dashes may cling to the word on the left, with a space to the right. I find that annoying, too.)



In any font size, at the ends of lines you can lose the quote from interrupted dialogue (en dashes) or the whole dash-quote combo (em dashes). I don't want to show you the carnage: Test it for yourself.

I now only use the dash at the end of interrupted dialogue when the line is no more than about 20 characters. Same with ellipses at the end of dialogue. Both will survive in tact on that single line, though in the higher fonts the right margin looms close.

And I pretty much eliminate the use of ellipses in the middle of paragraphs. Mainly because I'm getting too annoyed at the variation of spacing (with the non-breaking space and period version). I already rejected the small cluster of dots created by the ellipsis code (…).

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Once your book looks as good as it can be expected in Previewer, you're just about ready to Kindle.

But first, write your blurb, figure out what your category is (you can pick two), and slap together seven key search words.

Now, if you haven't already done it, go online to Amazon and sign up for an account. Go to your dashboard and click the button "Add new title."

 

You first have to decide if you want to sign up for Select. If you do, Kindle gets your book exclusively for three months (and the option to go another three months is automatically selected, so beware). I think the main attraction here is the ability to give your book away for free for five days out of every three months. This might stimulate "sales" and boost your rating.

 

Next, they want some information about your book: "Book name". Also, if it's part of series, they want that name, too. (Series names appear in parentheses after your book title when the item comes up on a search. Some folks like to add the number in the series title, so that appears, too.)

Next, you can put in the name of your fake publisher. And paste the text of your blurb in the Description.

You might overlook "Book contributors," thinking there aren't any: You wrote this thing all by yourself, right? But this is where you need to go to put your name on the book, so you better click Add contributors.

English language is already selected. Input your publication date if you want, and your ISBN if you happen to have one. Tell them if the book is somebody else's (public domain) or all yours.



Next, Categories and Search keywords.

Then you browse to where your book cover sits on your computer and let them upload it.



Decide on Digital Rights Management, yes or no. There's a lot of debate over this one, so good luck. What you do here and now stays with your book forever—they tell me.



Finally, you browse to your book file and upload it.

Which brings you to another decision. If you've just used Previewer, and the book looked great, you should upload your mobi file, which was created by KindleGen when you clicked Open Book. You'll find it in a new folder added inside your book's folder called "compiled-content.opf." Open that folder to find the mobi file. If you've messed around here before, creating various (failed) versions of your book, check the date on the mobi file and upload the latest one. If that's the one you liked best. (If you mess up and upload the wrong file, you can always go back and update with the right file. Just hope a lot of people haven't already bought your book before you figure that out.)

If you click your html file, the book will have problems—no Tables of Content, and so forth. So don't do that.

And after going to all that trouble to perfect your custom-coded book, I doubt you'll want to give in and return to your doc file...

After the book is uploaded and "successfully" converted, you might want to check the truth of that statement by viewing the book. When I downloaded their mobi file, it wouldn't work in Previewer for Fire. And the online Previewer also blew up and said come back later. Is this important? Kind of depends on whether the book looks okay after it goes live. Unfortunately, except for the 10 % sample you can get for free, you'll have to buy a copy of your book to seek what it looks like in all its excellent glory.

Click Save and Continue...to continue.

On the next page you'll set your selling territories and select a royalty. Lot of things to consider about the second item. If you want to price the book below $2.99 (for promotional reasons), you'll have to go with 35%. (You'll also avoid delivery fees [fifteen cents per megabyte].)



Choose 70% and you'll have to select a price between $2.99 and $9.99. But remember, Amazon can set the price lower to match some other site's selling point, and your royalties are based on sell price, not list price. Plus, delivery fees will be added on.

Prices on foreign editions can be tied to the U.S. version, which makes life much simpler.



You'll be given a chance to put your book in the lending library. Books borrowed there get a pro-rated share of some big promotional chunk of money Amazon puts up.



Finally, they'll want you to assure them you really are the one allowed to publish and prosper from the sale of this book. Say yes to that and you're off to the races: Save and Publish.



When the button called "Go to my bookshelf" becomes active, click it. You're done.

In ten to twelve hours—more or less—the book will be live on Amazon. And you can start checking the Sales page. What fun.

Next time, some ideas about promoting your book.