Publishing Your Book: Formatting for eBook

Introduction

In the last post, we discussed how to format your manuscript to prepare it for printing (whether it be for traditional publication or print-on-demand. Regardless of which path you take, it is often beneficial to prepare the manuscript for electronic publication as well. The content remains the same, of course, but the formatting is quite different. If you have a publisher, they will most likely have editors to do this. But if you are submitting it yourself, this post will point you in the right direction. You can, of course, hire services to do this for you, such as own own formatting service. Even if someone else is formatting it for you, you should know the basics to make sure they are preparing the manuscript as you wish, and that they are not overcharging you. (The process and tools required to do this can be complicated and confusing, but it is not rocket science.)
As in the last post, let’s assume you have your nonfiction or fiction work written and edited. You are now ready to format it. Here are the steps we will cover (we are on step 2):

You make think you will only publish a print version, or only an electronic version. Yet giving your readers another option opens up more sales channels, despite the work involved (though formatting for eBook can be more difficult than print.)

General Formatting Procedures

Here at Sulis, we begin by first formatting for print (if the client desires both). That way, the formatting for headings, title pages, block quotes, and all other special formatting is finished. It also enables us to catch any problems that might have been missing in editing and proofing. Some of this formatting will need to be altered, but much of it can stay in place or requires only minor changes.
As for distribution and platform, you have some options. Kindle is a platform, of course, but it is Amazon’s and so Amazon is the vendor you can upload your book for distribution. (You can also upload Kindle books to other sites, however.) Apple iBooks is another platform, but like Amazon, it can also be the distributor. You have two options: an iBook (in ePub format) which is viewable on any iOS device or computer, and an iBook-only book, which can only be viewed on an iPad, but has special formatting and user-interface options for a more full media experience. SmashWords, on the other hand, is purely a distributor, though they will take your file and translate it to many different formats for Amazon, Apple, Nook, pdfs, etc. It also includes their own format for reading online (you choose which formats).
At this point, there are two processes to follow. The first are formatting changes that must be applied no matter the vendor/platform you choose (Kindle, iBook, Nook, etc.) The second are the changes that each of those distribution channels might require. The latter is where it can get complicated.
Below are the basic and common steps that we here at Sulis follow to prepare a document.

While white space is necessary in print, it is virtually verboten in an eBook, especially spaces before and after paragraphs and headings. We turn on the “show formatting” function in word, and delete multiple returns (paragraph marks). Between sections we might leave one or two, if a break is needed. (Some platforms will not accept a file with more than 3 or 5.)
Change the typeface (font) to a standard ebook font. Readers will often use a default font, but there are options. We use the default font for Kindle or iBooks. While it is possible to install fonts for special purposes, it can be tricky and cause problems. If it is not absolutely necessary, I recommend against it.
Check font sizes. Again, the best here is to use the default font sizes for the eBook platform (something like 18 point for titles and 14 for body text).
Footnotes. There is pretty good support for footnotes for both Kindle and iBooks—the problem is translating the footnotes from the Word style (“insert footnote”) to one that will work with eBook formats. It is required, however, that you change all of the footnotes from bottom-of-the-page footnotes to endnote. Once that is done, they translate pretty well to Kindle and iBooks, though we have had problems sometimes with submission to Smashwords and in the iBooks Author for iPad formats. For a foolproof method, use the bookmark function in Word and place them at the end of the document, rather than the footnotes function. Of course, if you are publishing a hard copy, then you will have to either hope the first method works, or re-do your footnotes. (We once had a book of 300 footnotes that had to be reformatted.)
Table of contents. The standard Word-compiled table of contents often translates well to all formats, but can still be problematic in some areas. It matters little in an eBook—the page numbers are meaningless. The foolproof method, like footnotes, is to use Word’s bookmarks function.

The print version of a book. Notice the white spaces, footnotes, and page breaks for a clean look.
The same section for ebook format. Note the constant flow, lack of styling, and the footnotes are now at the end of the file.
We have found that if we have a clean document that works with Kindle, it will work with iBooks (and the reverse). Delete (or do not use) headers, footers, or special fonts, but tables are okay. Images must be in .jpg format, and cannot be pasted into the document—they must be inserted using Word’s Insert function and set to a centered alignment. The first page should be a title page, the second (after a page break) can be a copyright page and then a dedication page. You can flow these one after the other—we like page breaks between them. We also use page breaks before each section (introduction, afterword, index, bibliography, and chapters). This mimics paper books and seems to provide a better reader experience than a continuously flowing ebook.
All of the services we use require you to upload your book’s cover (usually a jpg) and the text as separate files. All allow you to set the price (including free). Most important, all the services are free to sign up and upload your books—they take a percentage of each sale.
Do not include the book’s cover in the Word file; this will be uploaded separately. Once you have your clean document ready, it is a fairly straightforward process. Create a new project or title, fill in the requirement information (title, author, description), choose a pricing structure, upload your file and your book cover file, and click submit.
Once you have been through all of the above steps, it is crucial to check your book. There are a variety of ways to do this, but we use three options. First, we open the file in Adobe Digital Editions (Mac OS, iOS, Windows). This allows a check of the ebook to make sure the table of contents is working properly, and the formatting and bookmarking is correct. Flip through the book, check the links, and make sure the book works as it should. We then do the same with Kindle’s app (Mac OS, iOS, Windows), and then with Apple iBooks (pre-installed on Macs, iOS). If there are any problems in format, style, or navigation, go back and fix the problems, then recheck in the three apps. If your book can pass muster on all three apps, you are ready to upload your masterpiece (and it will look and work better than most self-published books).

Uploading Your Book to Kindle, iBooks, and Smashwords

Kindle. You will need an Kindle Direct Publishing account if you want to upload your book directly to the Kindle store on Amazon. Or, you can open a CreateSpace account to do both print-on-demand and Kindle versions that will appear on Amazon in both formats. Amazon will accept .doc or .docx format (Word), ePub, HTML, MOBI, RTF, TXT, PDF, and KFP formats. In our experience, using a Word file works best and allows more control over the document, though if you are well-versed in HTML that may be the best choice. PDF is the most problematic. See my detailed post on setting up a Kindle account and uploading here.

iBooks. To upload your iBook files directly, you need an Apple ID, with which you can then enable iTunes Connect. You can upload files in epub, PDF, or the ibooks format (from the free iBooks Author). PDFs can create problems; epub is the best because it will display on all devices, whereas iBooks Author files are for iPad only (but includes media capabilities that pub cannot). After downloading the free iTunes Producer app to your computer, you can create titles, fill in the information, choose pricing (or free) and distribution channels, then upload your file and your cover (separately). Apple also provides a nice iOS app to track your books and sales. See my detailed post on setting up a Apple account and uploading here.

Smashwords. Smash words is different from Kindle and iBooks in that it is not a platform for eReaders, but rather a service (though they do also provide their own web reader). Sign up for an account, and you can choose whether you will be a Publisher (publish books by different authors or pen names) or an author (best if you only publish your own books. You can upload your file as a Word or epub file, but epubs often create problems (though if you have followed the steps above your book will like be fine.) Smashwords prefers Word docs, and their “meat grinder” processing enables it to produce books in epub, Kindle (mobi), PDF, RTF, Sony Reader (LRF), Palm Doc (PDB), plain text, and their own HTML online reader. If you can format your book to pass all of the proper tests, it will also be places on iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Overdrive, Flipkart, Oyster, Scribd, Blio, and more. Smashwords also has an extensive and detailed support documents, including ebooks, online tutorials, and videos. In many ways, Smashwords is a “one-stop” publishing (though we believe you should still publish directly with Kindle and iBooks store because it gives you more visibility there.) Once your file is ready, you create a new title, fill in all the standard information, set prices, and select which formats you want it available to readers. Upload the file, upload the cover image, then wait for Smashwords to take it through two processes. The first checks that there are no major problems (usually not) and then immediately makes it available on its website. The second check is more extensive and may take a few days. This puts the book through its paces, ensuring there are no problems in distributing to all the formats you have selected (premium distribution). This is where most people run into problems, but if you can pass this phase, your book will appear on a wide variety of platforms and distribution channels within a week or less.
The drawbacks? Ensuring that your document will pass all of Smashwords tests to be listed in the “premium” catalogue can be a nightmare—so much so that there is the recommended “nuclear” option in which you remove all formatting from your Word document and start from scratch. All the work you did getting it ready for print and for Kindle and iBooks is gone. Smashwords will also only accept Word files in .doc format, not .docx. “Doc” is the old Word format replaced in 2008 by the .docx format and is an an official standard by the international standards body ISO. Because Smashwords insists on standard that was superseded seven years ago (a lifetime in the digital world), some of the functionality of the new standard is lost, and you must always remember to save you files in the older format. None of that is particularly a big deal, Word does quirky things sometimes when saving in the old format.
We use Smashwords, but the process often makes us pull our hair out. We believe it is worth it, and tell our clients, but it can be a lot of extra work.

Summary

Preparing your book for publication as an ebook is fairly straightforward as long as you know of few of the basic formatting rules and can navigate the online front end of each service. If you want your book to look professional and have wide distribution on a number of formats, it can be a lot of excruciating work and confusing problems. Yet there is a lot of help on the internet, and it can be done. In my opinion, it is well worth it.
If you prefer to write and keep the formatting or navigating the processes at a minimum, we are glad to help with parts of it or all of it. View our paper and ebook formatting services here, and our publication services here.
Happy writing!
Sulis is available to help you with any of these stages—contact us from our home page or email us here.
As always, feel free to enter a comment or a question in the Comment field below this post.