Kindle Output

[Techno]

Apologies if this has already been raised, but wanted to know if there had been anything made available to assist with preparing documents for the Kindle?

The requirements are for quite basic HTML, which suggests it would not exactly be rocket science. I've used their "KindleGen" application on an HTM file file created from Word, and have been very impressed so far, but it's quite a bit of extra work.

Equally appealing is the potential to make a charge for the publication for which you keep up to 75%.

George.

[RamonS]

Having published a book for the Kindle I can only stress the "very basic HTML" aspect. Centering images? Forget it! Tables with borders? No way! Any other formatting other than plain paragraph and a few simple heading levels? No. can't do.

There are two options to use. One is to craft a PDF and use PDFRead to convert it into the applicable eBook format (see http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,4751.0.html). While that works fine, the pages tend to be small. That would be OK as long as the Kindle would keep the focus setting from one page to the next, but it doesn't!

The other option is to craft one (!) huge HTML file that contains the absolutely totally minimalistic amount of formatting, no scripts, and nothing else other than text and images (jpeg). And I mean really minimalistic formatting. After stripping everything that you think you could leave out, take a second and third pass and strip more. Tables come in handy as they seem to be the only way to make text appear where you want and that without the borders. That said, if you do have to include a table, turn it into an image unless it can still work borderless. Finally, craft front matter, although by default that isn't shown. I then used MobiPocket Creator to put the eBook together. If you want to use Kindle Direct Publishing to sell / pubolish through the Kindle store you must add DRM, otherwise they will not accept the book. Also, test the output on a real Kindle, not the emulators for PCs. The emulators adjust the screen size and that may make look things better than they do on the real device.

Despite the disappointing mediocre formatting support of the Kindle I am pleased with the results that I could create. It was a lot of work to take a print optimized book and turn it into an eBook (several weeks of work for me, mainly due to not knowing what I mentioned above). You can use Amazon's CreateSpace services as well, but the quote that they gave me was several hundred bucks. An expense that I in no way would ever be able to make up for. That said, if you do want to publish print on a low budget, CreateSpace is the way to go if you are willing to do the work and have the skills to do the cover art (which isn't easy at all!!).

I haven't tried anything with the Fire yet, maybe that has better support for formatting, but if there is a weak spot with eBooks, that's definitely it!

[Techno]

Many thanks for your advice and comments.

What I was rather (optimistically perhaps) hoping for, was that Flare or someone might have developed Templates, etc., to aid the production of such simplistic HTML files for Kindle conversion.

I have to say that I've so far been very impressed so far with the results of using KindleGen to convert HTML files. Moreover, I have also been more than surprised at the interest shown from Kindle users.

[ksoltys]

Use WebWorks ePublisher to generate an EPUB version of the book, then use Calibre (open source tool) to convert it to Kindle.

Regards
Keith

[Techno]

Good suggestion, but extra work. If you've not already seen it, it's worth getting a hold of "Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines"

http://s3.amazonaws.com/kindlegen/Amazo ... elines.pdf

It's a free download.