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A few days ago I wrote about Jennifer-Crystal Johnson's new book co-written with N. Jones called If you're human don't open the door which has recently been published on Amazon's Kindle.
With Amazon announcing that Kindle books are now outselling physical books, and given that Kindle is a free and assessable resource that can be used by anyone wishing to self-publish their own work, I thought that some advice on publishing on Kindle would be useful to readers of this blog, I emailed Jennifer and asked if she had any advice for people considering publishing on Kindle. Here are a few tips from Jennifer on formatting for Kindle:
"As far as having advice on self-publishing for the Kindle, I would say that the most important aspects of having a professional eBook out are editing and formatting. Word can be tricky to do formatting with because it adds so much unnecessary html into the document that it gets to be pretty confusing for the Kindle to display quickly; for example, if you have something in bold and then take the bold formatting off, the html will keep the tags in front of the word or phrase but it won't show up bold. I get pretty OCD with that kind of stuff because I went to college for website design, so looking at html and having it appear messy is a "thing" for me."
"Since the Kindle only has one font face, if I want to make a title appear in a specific font style, I save it as an image and then put that into the document as a title. You can do this with opening paragraph letters, too, although you cannot wrap text around images in the Kindle yet."
"For now, I'll say this: one of the best investments for formatting eBooks that I have ever made is buying an eBook by Joshua Tallent entitled Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide. It outlines everything from reducing your file size to spacing, line indentation, inserting images, and the pixel aspect ratio of the Kindle screen so you can make the most of the images you include."
And some tips from Jennifer on editing:
"Once you have the formatting down, the other aspect of self-publishing that is important is to have an editor; not just someone to proofread, but having someone who can help with technicalities as well as suggesting minor changes in sentence structure and word usage. You can often hire editors through freelance web sites like oDesk, a site that provides me with clients on a very regular basis. I write, edit, and work on other random projects in graphic design as well, so I work entirely from home and write fiction when I'm not preparing publications for authors signed under Broken Publications."
Finally, for any out there writing short stories or poetry, here is a chance to submit your work for two anthologies:
"Broken Publications is open for submissions for two anthologies: Soul Vomit, focusing on domestic violence, and the Apocalypse Project, featuring end-of-the-world stories of all kinds (zombies, disease, natural disasters, planetary collisions, you name it!). I'd like to invite people to submit their work for one or both of these projects =)."
You can find out more about Jennifer's work by visiting: http://www.jennifercrystaljohnson.com/index.html
With Amazon announcing that Kindle books are now outselling physical books, and given that Kindle is a free and assessable resource that can be used by anyone wishing to self-publish their own work, I thought that some advice on publishing on Kindle would be useful to readers of this blog, I emailed Jennifer and asked if she had any advice for people considering publishing on Kindle. Here are a few tips from Jennifer on formatting for Kindle:
"As far as having advice on self-publishing for the Kindle, I would say that the most important aspects of having a professional eBook out are editing and formatting. Word can be tricky to do formatting with because it adds so much unnecessary html into the document that it gets to be pretty confusing for the Kindle to display quickly; for example, if you have something in bold and then take the bold formatting off, the html will keep the tags in front of the word or phrase but it won't show up bold. I get pretty OCD with that kind of stuff because I went to college for website design, so looking at html and having it appear messy is a "thing" for me."
"Since the Kindle only has one font face, if I want to make a title appear in a specific font style, I save it as an image and then put that into the document as a title. You can do this with opening paragraph letters, too, although you cannot wrap text around images in the Kindle yet."
"For now, I'll say this: one of the best investments for formatting eBooks that I have ever made is buying an eBook by Joshua Tallent entitled Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide. It outlines everything from reducing your file size to spacing, line indentation, inserting images, and the pixel aspect ratio of the Kindle screen so you can make the most of the images you include."
And some tips from Jennifer on editing:
"Once you have the formatting down, the other aspect of self-publishing that is important is to have an editor; not just someone to proofread, but having someone who can help with technicalities as well as suggesting minor changes in sentence structure and word usage. You can often hire editors through freelance web sites like oDesk, a site that provides me with clients on a very regular basis. I write, edit, and work on other random projects in graphic design as well, so I work entirely from home and write fiction when I'm not preparing publications for authors signed under Broken Publications."
Finally, for any out there writing short stories or poetry, here is a chance to submit your work for two anthologies:
"Broken Publications is open for submissions for two anthologies: Soul Vomit, focusing on domestic violence, and the Apocalypse Project, featuring end-of-the-world stories of all kinds (zombies, disease, natural disasters, planetary collisions, you name it!). I'd like to invite people to submit their work for one or both of these projects =)."
You can find out more about Jennifer's work by visiting: http://www.jennifercrystaljohnson.com/index.html
