Formatting your manuscript properly is essential to making a good book. This is the preparation of your book for publishing. Preparation is a key in producing good books. No matter what publishing platform you are using, formatting will definitely be important so you will have a good quality work. This is the same thing with using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
Your manuscript has to be formatted properly in order to avoid any problems with the conversion. Otherwise, images might not show up and margins may be incorrect. Imagine selling your book looking like this. It would also be better to format it properly beforehand to avoid the hassle of troubleshooting the errors. KDP offers a simplified formatting guide that provides information regarding the right formatting.
In formatting your manuscript, you would also have to reduce the file size of your book content. Different platforms have different maximum file size. For KDP, the maximum size is 500MB. So you have to make sure that your files are within the limit, or else it won’t upload. In order to keep your files below the limit, make sure that your images are not that big. If possible, convert them to JPEG and keep all of them up to 127KB only. Aside from that, you will also have to format the images properly in the Kindle ebook. It is also important to remember that images will show in black and white in Kindle devices.
The cover is one of the important parts of your book as it is responsible for attracting the attention of readers. Make sure that you already have a high quality image for your book cover. There are also certain guidelines that you have to follow prior to uploading your book cover to KDP. There are requirements regarding the dimensions of the image, ideal ratio and dpi. You can also check more detailed guidelines regarding the book cover.
The table of contents is also something that you have to prepare, especially if you want to make it easier for your readers to look for certain chapters and pages. If you do make one, make sure that you use HTML anchor tags.
You also have to note on the characters that you are using, especially on the product description page. KDP will not recognize ‘illegal’ characters like Japanese, European and Russian characters among others. It will just ignore such characters. So make sure that you go through the text before posting it.
These are the important points that you have to consider when you are formatting your manuscript in KDP. Covering everything will help you in making an excellent book. This will ensure that you won’t have any problems in converting your work and that you’ll create a book that has excellent quality.
