How to Format for eBooks: Part 1

Seems I’ve begun a sort of ongoing series of posts on my experiences with ePublishing. I hope these posts might be useful to some pondering the self-publishing route, or already experimenting with it, but let’s get things straight right off: I’m no expert.

I mean, hell, that’s the whole point: I’m new to this, just trying things out and reporting back. I’ll tell you what worked (or seemed to work) for me, and I’ll tell you what hasn’t. But don’t think of these posts as a how-to guide . . . despite the fact that this post is actually titled How to Format for eBooks . . .

Okay, now that the boring stuff’s out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff. I’ve self-published two short stories as eBooks and I plan to publish my first novel in a couple weeks. I’ve also done a fair amount of research on the subject, of course, but, for the most part, I learned what I needed to know and just gave it a shot.

So, based on this tiny, tiny hunk of experience, what tips or suggestions have I got for you?

Well, first off, forget just uploading your story as is. Chances are it’ll need some formatting. Smashwords requires more work than Amazon, but I suggest following Smashwords’ guidelines and, that way, you’ll have things pretty much covered.

You’ll find the Smashwords Style Guide right here.

You’ll find info on submitting to Amazon here.

This is very important. If your piece isn’t properly formatted, best case, it’ll look like hot trash on an eReader and, worst case, it won’t be accepted at all (actually, reverse those, the worst case is that every one of your would-be readers will see the mess your opus has become thanks to improper formatting).

Read through the guide and follow its steps closely. It’s worth it.

If you haven’t even written your piece yet, you can avoid many of the formatting headaches by using the “Styles” in Word (sorry, I write in Word on a PC—if you use a Mac or anything but Word, I may not be much help).

Don’t use the Tab key to indent paragraphs. Instead, modify the “Normal” Style to include a specific indentation (I recommend 1.27cm). In the same way, you can specify the font, type size, and line spacing, ensuring that your piece remains uniform and consistent.

That’s the key: your piece has to be the same all the way through and you can’t trust your eyes to tell you if that’s the case. Modifying the “Normal” creates a baseline to which you can always refer and on which you can always fall back.

Learn more about using Styles in Word here.

Don’t overuse hard returns (the “Enter” key). Use them only to start a new paragraph. If you want to create space between sections, limit yourself to four or five hard returns (or two and then a series of asterisks). No more. At the end of a chapter, give it four hard returns then insert a page break. If you’re uploading only to Smashwords the page break is optional. With Amazon it’s essential.

Those are just a few tips but, please, read through the Smashwords guide and check out a step-by-step outline of the process I follow here.

In my next post I’ll outline what I’ve learned so far about creating covers (an ongoing process, believe me).

Hope this helped, I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have and, as always, I’d love to hear any advice or tips you’ve got.