How to Publish with KDP: Part Twelve

/ harmonykentonline

Image courtesy of bigstock.com

Hello SErs. Harmony here.  As promised, here is  part twelve in the post series dedicated to taking a step-by-step look at how to get your finished manuscript from your computer and on sale on Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

If you’d like to take a look back at the previous posts in this series, please click on the links at the end of this post.

So, here’s Part Twelve: How to Edit Your eBook.

If you need a recap on how to get your Word doc ready for conversion in Calibre, you can see an older post of mine HERE (How To: From Word to Book).

This will take you through all the formatting steps you need to complete before importing into Calibre.

Once you’re ready, you can check out another step-by-step post HERE (Transforming Your Book). This shows you how to convert from Docx to ePub using free software Calibre.

If you have Vellum, then the conversion is much faster and easier.

Whatever software you use, you need to first convert to an ePub. This is so that you can edit it easily and quickly if you come across any formatting problems that you cannot fix at source and/or which persist no matter what tweaks you make. I learnt this the hard way, and it is my fervent hope that I save you a lot of that trouble with these posts.

Calibre is my go-to free bit of software for converting outside of Vellum. You can import your Word doc directly into this program. If you have an ePub ready to go, you can also import that directly into your ‘bookshelf’ to either read or edit.

To edit your epub, see the image below …

 

You will need to select your epub and click on ‘Edit book’.

To convert from Docx, click on 1 ‘Convert Books’.

To edit your ePub, click on 2 ‘Edit Book’.

The following page will open …

With this tool, you can either work by inputting HTML, or you can use the visual pane to make changes, and the program will change the HTML for you–great if you don’t know code.

Above, I want to centre an image that just won’t behave itself, even though I have the formatting correct in all my source documents.

To do that, click on the area of the page you want to edit (the viewing pane on the far right). This highlights the relevant line of HTML in the middle pane. For the purposes of this post, I want to keep it simple, so I’ve focussed on centring the title header image as I mentioned earlier. You will see the relevant line highlighted. Now, if you know HTML, you can get going and type here (in the middle screen). If you don’t, then this program makes it super easy … on the menu at the top of the middle screen–where all your text tools, etc., are, click on the ‘centre’ icon, and the job is done! Your image will move to the middle of the page as you want, and Calibre’s editor will update the HTML for you.

When you’re all done editing, click on the save icon at the top menu (left-hand side), or click on ‘file’ then ‘save’ or ‘save a copy’.

With this software, you can edit as much as you need. I suggest that you have a play by taking a copy of an existing ePub file and saving it to a new location, then dragging and dropping your ‘spare’ copy into Calibre and clicking on edit. This is a safe way to play and learn while minimising the risk of overwriting your original ePub.

Once you’ve saved your edits, I would suggest uploading the new version to your various devices and doing another good check through to ensure all is as it should be. As well as checking again using Amazon’s previewer.

Top Tip: Although Amazon allows you to upload an ePub, which they will convert to Mobi for you, this often results in a large file size, and you may end up with a hefty delivery fee for each customer download. Because of this, I would strongly recommend making your own Mobi file to upload if you can, once you’ve finished editing your ePub file.

For more information on how you can end up paying to sell an ebook on Amazon, check out my post on this topic HERE.

That’s it from me for today. I hope you’ve found this post useful. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, and I’ll see you all again on Monday, August 3rd, where we’ll be taking a look at how to upload your paperback file.

Past posts in this series:

Outline: https://wp.me/p7OGru-29c

Part 1 (Software for Writing) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29t

Part 2 (General Formatting Necessities) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29J

Part 3 (Ebook Conversion) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2ah

Part 4 (Paperback Formatting) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2eS

Part 5 (Image Software for Making Book Covers) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gi

Part 6 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gQ

Part 6 B (Making your own ebook cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2hQ

Part 7 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for Paperback) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2jY

Part 7 B (Making your own PDF book cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2kf

Part 8 (Setting up your KDP account) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2kF

Part 9 (An overview of your KDP Dashboard) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2lq

Part 10 (Uploading your eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2pL

Part 11 (Previewing your eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2qc

To make it easy to browse back and forth, I’ve set all links to open in new tabs. As this series progresses, I will update the links for you so that each post includes links to all past posts in the series.

©Harmony Kent 2020

 

(If you’re reading this post on or after August 3rd, 2020, then here’s the link for Part 13 in the How to Publish with KDP series: https://wp.me/p7OGru-2Dz. Please note, the link won’t work until August 3rd, 2020.)

39 thoughts on “How to Publish with KDP: Part Twelve”

  4. Pingback: How to Publish with KDP: Part Twelve | Story Empire | Welcome to Harmony Kent Online

  11. Reblogged this on The Write Stuff and commented:

    If you are at all confused about formatting your book for publication on Amazon, Harmony Kent’s step-by-step post today will sort things out for you beautifully. Check it out, and then, please consider sharing far and wide, so others can learn some of these tricks, too. Thanks, and thanks to Harmony for such a terrific series! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  12. Thanks for these clear and helpful instructions, Harmony! I’m sure many folks will be glad to have this spelled out step by step for them, as each post in this great series has been. Will be sharing on TWS shortly! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. I use Calibre for my advanced reader copies. I’m able to make any format depending on the wishes of the reader. For a published e-book I convert the MS Word paper format to a standard e-book format plus a TOC and load it directly into KDP. I’m wondering after reading your post if I should convert to epub before submitting to KDP? Thanks for all of this Harmony.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In Calibre, the option is there to convert your Word doc into an ePub if at any point your formatting ‘flufffs’ up. If you have no issues, then for a smaller file size, stick with making your own mobi file for KDP. Often, Amazon’s conversion results in a big file, and they charge you to deliver that file for each sale. So, if you do need an ePub to tweak the formatting, make sure you convert to mobi before uploading to KDP. Hope this clarifies, John.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  15. I’ve played with Calibre before. I didn’t really know what I was doing (it was my first attempt) but I still managed to fix a formatting error. It’s not as robust as Vellum, but for free, it’s an excellent tool. Thanks for sharing this information.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

We'd love to know what you think. Comment below.

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s