Kindle & CreateSpace Conversion Guide
Copyright This eBook is Copyright © 2013 Teresa Miller (the “Author”). All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States of America. The legal notices, disclosures, and disclaimers in the front and back of this eBook are Copyright © 2009-2012 Law Office of Michael E. Young PLLC, and licensed for use by the Author. All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system -- except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or website -- without permission in writing from the Author. For information, please contact the Author by e-mail at [email protected] or by mail at Post Office Box 1723, Nashville, AR 71852. For more information, please read the “Disclosures and Disclaimers” section at the end of this eBook.
First PDF Edition, February 2013
Published by Freestyle Books (the “Publisher”).
Contents Conversion Basics ...................................................................................... 1 Converting Your Kindle Book To CreateSpace ................................................ 1 Adjust Your Margins And Page Size ............................................................ 1 Adjusting Word Styles .............................................................................. 4 Using Images In Your CreateSpace Book .................................................... 6 Changing Your Table of Contents ............................................................... 6 Headers, Footers & Page Numbering ........................................................ 10 Converting Your CreateSpace Book For Kindle ............................................. 11 Adjust Your Margins And Page Size .......................................................... 11 Adjusting Word Styles ............................................................................ 12 Using Images In Your Kindle Book ........................................................... 13 Changing Your Table of Contents ............................................................. 13 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 16
Conversion Basics This guide is broken into two sections. The first covers converting your existing Kindle book to a CreateSpace-ready file. The second will show you how to "strip-down" a manuscript that has been formatted for CreateSpace, so that it is suitable to publish as a Kindle book. Converting from Kindle to CreateSpace means adding the elements you want in your physical book. Converting from CreateSpace to Kindle means taking out the formatting that Kindle doesn't like.
Converting Your Kindle Book To CreateSpace If you've properly formatted your book for Kindle, there won't be much formatting in it! So in order to make your book print-ready, you'll want to add some stuff. You can do this in one of two ways: you can cut and paste your book content into one of the CreateSpace templates provided with this course (or into your own template that you created according to the instructions) or you can convert the file you already have. This guide will cover the latter option. Adjust Your Margins And Page Size Depending on how you set up your Kindle book, you may or may not have set a page size. It isn't necessary for Kindle, but of course you want to set your trim size and margins for your physical book. Click on Margins, and then on the drop down, go all the way down to Custom Margins and select that. You can set your margins according to what appears pleasing to your own eye, but just remember to allow plenty of "white space" for the reader. You don't want to have the text too close to the edge of the page, or to have it disappear into the binding. These settings are a pretty good starting point: Top: 0.6” Bottom: 0.6” Inside: 1.10” Outside: 0.6” 1
Gutter: 0.0” Multiple Pages: Mirror Margins Preview: Apply to Whole Document
Use a wider inside margin, instead of setting margin and gutter dimensions, just for simplicity's sake. These settings should work well even with books that are pretty long. If your book is extremely short, you may want to bump the inside margin down a bit. You can get some idea of how it's going to look on your screen, but the best way to judge is after you order your proof copy of your book. You can then adjust the margins to make it look the way you want. Next, on the paper tab of that same dialog box, enter the Height and Width of your trim size. As you can see in the following image, the example is set at 6 x 9.
2
Again, make sure the preview setting is Apply to: Whole Document. The final tab is the layout tab. This is where you will set the information for the headers and footers that you will more than likely want to add for a physical book. On the layout tab, make sure you check both of the following: Different odd and even, and Different front page. Set the headers and footers at no more than 0.5”. If your header and footer text appears too close to your book content, you can adjust it a little, by making the headers/footers narrower, or by increasing the top and bottom margin setting slightly.
3
Make sure this is set for Whole document, and click Ok. Adjusting Word Styles Styles are the preset formatting rules for various parts of your document, such as Headings for your chapter levels and Normal for the bulk of your content. You have more than likely set very basic styles for a Kindle book, and you may want to make adjustments to them for your CreateSpace book.
You can make adjustments to any of the style settings on the Home ribbon in Word by right clicking on that style and selecting Modify. You will then see a screen like the one in Figure 8.
4
The font information for the style is on that view, and if you click on the format button and then select paragraph, you can make additional adjustments.
On the Indents and Spacing tab, you can adjust alignment, indentation, line spacing and spacing before and after the paragraph. For a physical book, sans serif fonts are NOT recommended. It is recommended that you use a common serif font such Garamond, Georgia or Bookman Old Style. The font size should be set at about 12. 5
You may use indented paragraphs, with no spacing between paragraphs, or you may space between and use no indent. It's up to you, but it wouldn't hurt to look at a few books in your niche or genre to see how they're done. I usually set the indent to 0.5” and set the line spacing to Multiple and 1.15, so that there is a little space. You should also justify the text. See the main CreateSpace Intensive PDF guide for more information about creating and using styles. Using Images In Your CreateSpace Book All images that are used inside a print book should be saved at a resolution of at least 300 dpi in order to not appear pixelated in your book. Images should be inserted by using the Insert>picture function in Word, instead of using copy-paste. (This is the same for Kindle or CreateSpace, so should already have been done.) Keep in mind that if you use color images inside your book, it will drive the print cost of your book up considerably. That could result in much lower royalties for you, and/or make it necessary to charge a higher price in order for the book to be profitable. Greyscale images add no additional cost to your book, so you may want to consider that as an alternative. I suggest that you convert them to greyscale yourself, using graphic editing software, instead of leaving them color and letting CreateSpace make them greyscale. For your Kindle book, all images will be in-line with the text. For a print book, you can use text wrapping to allow you to flow your text in various ways around your image. If you have a lot of images, you may have to work with it quite a bit to get the look that you want. Changing Your Table of Contents A Kindle Table of Contents will normally have no tab leader or page numbers. It WILL normally be hyperlinked. For your print book, you want to have page numbers, and NO hyperlinks. Your table of contents has a style just like everything else. You can edit the settings by right clicking anywhere in your table of contents and choosing Edit Field. 6
You'll get a box with a list of fields running down the left side. Scroll down and choose TOC and then click the Table of Contents button at the top.
Then you can make the changes you want to the table of contents. It may take a little practice to get a feel for what's what but here are the basics.
7
The first screen you see gives you a preview of your current TOC and has the general settings. You want to show page numbers in a print book, since hyperlinks won't work. Right aligning page numbers always looks better, so keep that checked. You can use a tab leader or not, that's up to you. Further changes can be made on the Options and Modify buttons. On the Options, button, you can see a list of the available styles in your document and their assigned TOC level. The default is a three level TOC with Heading 1 = Level 1, etc. This will work just fine in most cases, but if you need something different, you can set that here.
8
If you go into the "Modify" section, you'll be able to modify the styles of each of your levels.
9
Just select the TOC level you want to adjust and click on the Modify button. On the next screen that pops up, click on the Format button for a drop-down list of the things you can format about that level. A note about tab stops: It took me a long time to figure out how to make sure that all of my page numbers lined up correctly in my TOC. Sometimes, they would get "off" and nothing I would do would fix them. To calculate where the page stops should be if you want them at the right margin, use this little formula: Width of page – left margin – right margin – gutter (if any) = Tab stop. Headers, Footers & Page Numbering Headers, footers, and page numbering should only be done AFTER you have all of the rest of your book formatted. If you have all of your content formatted, margins set, styles set, and images inserted, it's time to look at your book's layout. After you are completely finished with all of your book’s content, you should go through your manuscript from the TOP and insert blank pages and section breaks where they are needed. Then unlink your headers/footers and insert your header/footer content and page numbers. (Complete instructions for headers, footers, and page numbering can be found in the CreateSpace Intensive PDF guide.) After you have all of your margins, styles, images, table of contents, and headers, footers and page numbers set the way you want them for your book, proceed with converting your book to a PDF to upload to CreateSpace.
10
Converting Your CreateSpace Book For Kindle As mentioned earlier, when converting from a print format to one suitable for Kindle, you will be taking almost everything out. I usually just work backwards from the way the print manuscript was created. In other words, remove the headers, footers and page numbers first. KINSTANT NOTE: If you plan to use the Kinstant Formatter, it will remove any headers, footers, and page numbers for you. It will also auto generate your TOC based on your heading styles. Adjust Your Margins And Page Size You don't actually have to set a page size or margins for a Kindle book, although I like to use settings that give me a visual similar to what would be viewed on a Kindle device. Because of that, I usually set the page size pretty small, and the margins at 0.5" all around.
11
Be sure to set the Multiple pages setting back to normal instead of Mirrored margins, and Apply to: Whole document. You can use either a block paragraph style, with spacing between paragraphs, or use an indented style. I've even seen some people use both. I personally think it's overkill to use both, and prefer to use one or the other. If you’re going to use the indented style, then you will want to set it no larger than 0.3”.0.3” is the standard when adding a first line indent on your paragraph style(s). Under no circumstances should you ever go higher than a 0.5” indentation setting. The Kindle's viewing area is so small that larger indents will look pretty awful. Adjusting Word Styles You can use bold, italics, and heading styles, and they will translate into your Kindle book. Bullets, special characters, and special fonts will not translate. You’ll need to remove those. You also should not use tabs. Instead use indents as mentioned above. KINSTANT NOTE: If you plan to use the Kinstant Formatter, you can use bullets, because it will improve the appearance of your bullet points. It will also remove tabs and extra lines. In a lot of my print books, I use drop caps to set off the beginning of a paragraph. It gives a more professional look to the interior design of the book. Drop caps won’t translate well at all on a Kindle book, however. If you want the effect, you can simulate a drop cap style by manually adjusting the font on the first letter of the chapter. Just use a size larger font, and bold it. For example:
This is how you can achieve a drop cap look, without using formatting that Kindle doesn’t like. The first letter “T” above has a larger font size setting and has been bolded. KINSTANT NOTE: If you plan to use the Kinstant Formatter, and have drop caps in your document, it will convert them to the effect described above.
12
Kindle will over-ride any font you use, but some other readers may not. Because of that, when formatting for any e-reader device, it’s best to stick with the most common serif fonts. For example: Times New Roman, or Georgia. Sans serif fonts are not recommended. To simplify, Times New Roman set at about 12pt will be the closest match to what your readers will be seeing on their Kindle screen. The largest you should go with any font size (for headings) is 18pt. Nothing larger than that as it could cause problems and may even result in rejection from Amazon. See the Kindle to CreateSpace section for how to adjust styles. Using Images In Your Kindle Book Images should be inserted by using the Insert>picture function in Word, instead of using copy-paste. (This is the same for Kindle or CreateSpace, so should already have been done.) You are free to use color images in your Kindle book, and in fact it is encouraged, since there are so many of the readers these days that have color displays. If you have converted images to greyscale for your CreateSpace book, you may want to consider going back to the color versions for Kindle. Changing Your Table of Contents A print book will have page numbers and NO hyperlinks. It may also have a tab leader. For your Kindle Table of Contents you will want to remove the tab leader and page numbers and add hyperlinks. Your table of contents has a style just like everything else. You can edit the settings by right clicking anywhere in your table of contents and choosing Edit Field. You'll get a box with a list of fields running down the left side. Scroll down and choose TOC and then click the Table of Contents button at the top.
13
Then you can make the changes you want to the table of contents. It may take a little practice to get a feel for what's what but here are the basics.
14
The first screen you see gives you a preview of your current TOC and has the general settings. You want to uncheck the show page numbers box, and check the Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers. When you uncheck the Show page numbers, the Tab leader will automatically cease to exist. For more information about setting the different levels in your Table of Contents, see the Kindle to CreateSpace section. After you have all of your excess formatting removed, and your margins and images set for a Kindle book, you can proceed with converting to a Kindleready format, or upload the Word document directly.
15
Conclusion As you can see, it really isn't that complicated to convert your book between the two different publishing styles. If this seems like too much work for you, you can always cut and paste from one version into a template for the other version. Take it from me though, I think you'll find that just as much work, if not more so, than doing it this way! Thanks and Happy Publishing!
16
First PDF Edition, February 2013
Published by Freestyle Books (the “Publisher”).
Contents Conversion Basics ...................................................................................... 1 Converting Your Kindle Book To CreateSpace ................................................ 1 Adjust Your Margins And Page Size ............................................................ 1 Adjusting Word Styles .............................................................................. 4 Using Images In Your CreateSpace Book .................................................... 6 Changing Your Table of Contents ............................................................... 6 Headers, Footers & Page Numbering ........................................................ 10 Converting Your CreateSpace Book For Kindle ............................................. 11 Adjust Your Margins And Page Size .......................................................... 11 Adjusting Word Styles ............................................................................ 12 Using Images In Your Kindle Book ........................................................... 13 Changing Your Table of Contents ............................................................. 13 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 16
Conversion Basics This guide is broken into two sections. The first covers converting your existing Kindle book to a CreateSpace-ready file. The second will show you how to "strip-down" a manuscript that has been formatted for CreateSpace, so that it is suitable to publish as a Kindle book. Converting from Kindle to CreateSpace means adding the elements you want in your physical book. Converting from CreateSpace to Kindle means taking out the formatting that Kindle doesn't like.
Converting Your Kindle Book To CreateSpace If you've properly formatted your book for Kindle, there won't be much formatting in it! So in order to make your book print-ready, you'll want to add some stuff. You can do this in one of two ways: you can cut and paste your book content into one of the CreateSpace templates provided with this course (or into your own template that you created according to the instructions) or you can convert the file you already have. This guide will cover the latter option. Adjust Your Margins And Page Size Depending on how you set up your Kindle book, you may or may not have set a page size. It isn't necessary for Kindle, but of course you want to set your trim size and margins for your physical book. Click on Margins, and then on the drop down, go all the way down to Custom Margins and select that. You can set your margins according to what appears pleasing to your own eye, but just remember to allow plenty of "white space" for the reader. You don't want to have the text too close to the edge of the page, or to have it disappear into the binding. These settings are a pretty good starting point: Top: 0.6” Bottom: 0.6” Inside: 1.10” Outside: 0.6” 1
Gutter: 0.0” Multiple Pages: Mirror Margins Preview: Apply to Whole Document
Use a wider inside margin, instead of setting margin and gutter dimensions, just for simplicity's sake. These settings should work well even with books that are pretty long. If your book is extremely short, you may want to bump the inside margin down a bit. You can get some idea of how it's going to look on your screen, but the best way to judge is after you order your proof copy of your book. You can then adjust the margins to make it look the way you want. Next, on the paper tab of that same dialog box, enter the Height and Width of your trim size. As you can see in the following image, the example is set at 6 x 9.
2
Again, make sure the preview setting is Apply to: Whole Document. The final tab is the layout tab. This is where you will set the information for the headers and footers that you will more than likely want to add for a physical book. On the layout tab, make sure you check both of the following: Different odd and even, and Different front page. Set the headers and footers at no more than 0.5”. If your header and footer text appears too close to your book content, you can adjust it a little, by making the headers/footers narrower, or by increasing the top and bottom margin setting slightly.
3
Make sure this is set for Whole document, and click Ok. Adjusting Word Styles Styles are the preset formatting rules for various parts of your document, such as Headings for your chapter levels and Normal for the bulk of your content. You have more than likely set very basic styles for a Kindle book, and you may want to make adjustments to them for your CreateSpace book.
You can make adjustments to any of the style settings on the Home ribbon in Word by right clicking on that style and selecting Modify. You will then see a screen like the one in Figure 8.
4
The font information for the style is on that view, and if you click on the format button and then select paragraph, you can make additional adjustments.
On the Indents and Spacing tab, you can adjust alignment, indentation, line spacing and spacing before and after the paragraph. For a physical book, sans serif fonts are NOT recommended. It is recommended that you use a common serif font such Garamond, Georgia or Bookman Old Style. The font size should be set at about 12. 5
You may use indented paragraphs, with no spacing between paragraphs, or you may space between and use no indent. It's up to you, but it wouldn't hurt to look at a few books in your niche or genre to see how they're done. I usually set the indent to 0.5” and set the line spacing to Multiple and 1.15, so that there is a little space. You should also justify the text. See the main CreateSpace Intensive PDF guide for more information about creating and using styles. Using Images In Your CreateSpace Book All images that are used inside a print book should be saved at a resolution of at least 300 dpi in order to not appear pixelated in your book. Images should be inserted by using the Insert>picture function in Word, instead of using copy-paste. (This is the same for Kindle or CreateSpace, so should already have been done.) Keep in mind that if you use color images inside your book, it will drive the print cost of your book up considerably. That could result in much lower royalties for you, and/or make it necessary to charge a higher price in order for the book to be profitable. Greyscale images add no additional cost to your book, so you may want to consider that as an alternative. I suggest that you convert them to greyscale yourself, using graphic editing software, instead of leaving them color and letting CreateSpace make them greyscale. For your Kindle book, all images will be in-line with the text. For a print book, you can use text wrapping to allow you to flow your text in various ways around your image. If you have a lot of images, you may have to work with it quite a bit to get the look that you want. Changing Your Table of Contents A Kindle Table of Contents will normally have no tab leader or page numbers. It WILL normally be hyperlinked. For your print book, you want to have page numbers, and NO hyperlinks. Your table of contents has a style just like everything else. You can edit the settings by right clicking anywhere in your table of contents and choosing Edit Field. 6
You'll get a box with a list of fields running down the left side. Scroll down and choose TOC and then click the Table of Contents button at the top.
Then you can make the changes you want to the table of contents. It may take a little practice to get a feel for what's what but here are the basics.
7
The first screen you see gives you a preview of your current TOC and has the general settings. You want to show page numbers in a print book, since hyperlinks won't work. Right aligning page numbers always looks better, so keep that checked. You can use a tab leader or not, that's up to you. Further changes can be made on the Options and Modify buttons. On the Options, button, you can see a list of the available styles in your document and their assigned TOC level. The default is a three level TOC with Heading 1 = Level 1, etc. This will work just fine in most cases, but if you need something different, you can set that here.
8
If you go into the "Modify" section, you'll be able to modify the styles of each of your levels.
9
Just select the TOC level you want to adjust and click on the Modify button. On the next screen that pops up, click on the Format button for a drop-down list of the things you can format about that level. A note about tab stops: It took me a long time to figure out how to make sure that all of my page numbers lined up correctly in my TOC. Sometimes, they would get "off" and nothing I would do would fix them. To calculate where the page stops should be if you want them at the right margin, use this little formula: Width of page – left margin – right margin – gutter (if any) = Tab stop. Headers, Footers & Page Numbering Headers, footers, and page numbering should only be done AFTER you have all of the rest of your book formatted. If you have all of your content formatted, margins set, styles set, and images inserted, it's time to look at your book's layout. After you are completely finished with all of your book’s content, you should go through your manuscript from the TOP and insert blank pages and section breaks where they are needed. Then unlink your headers/footers and insert your header/footer content and page numbers. (Complete instructions for headers, footers, and page numbering can be found in the CreateSpace Intensive PDF guide.) After you have all of your margins, styles, images, table of contents, and headers, footers and page numbers set the way you want them for your book, proceed with converting your book to a PDF to upload to CreateSpace.
10
Converting Your CreateSpace Book For Kindle As mentioned earlier, when converting from a print format to one suitable for Kindle, you will be taking almost everything out. I usually just work backwards from the way the print manuscript was created. In other words, remove the headers, footers and page numbers first. KINSTANT NOTE: If you plan to use the Kinstant Formatter, it will remove any headers, footers, and page numbers for you. It will also auto generate your TOC based on your heading styles. Adjust Your Margins And Page Size You don't actually have to set a page size or margins for a Kindle book, although I like to use settings that give me a visual similar to what would be viewed on a Kindle device. Because of that, I usually set the page size pretty small, and the margins at 0.5" all around.
11
Be sure to set the Multiple pages setting back to normal instead of Mirrored margins, and Apply to: Whole document. You can use either a block paragraph style, with spacing between paragraphs, or use an indented style. I've even seen some people use both. I personally think it's overkill to use both, and prefer to use one or the other. If you’re going to use the indented style, then you will want to set it no larger than 0.3”.0.3” is the standard when adding a first line indent on your paragraph style(s). Under no circumstances should you ever go higher than a 0.5” indentation setting. The Kindle's viewing area is so small that larger indents will look pretty awful. Adjusting Word Styles You can use bold, italics, and heading styles, and they will translate into your Kindle book. Bullets, special characters, and special fonts will not translate. You’ll need to remove those. You also should not use tabs. Instead use indents as mentioned above. KINSTANT NOTE: If you plan to use the Kinstant Formatter, you can use bullets, because it will improve the appearance of your bullet points. It will also remove tabs and extra lines. In a lot of my print books, I use drop caps to set off the beginning of a paragraph. It gives a more professional look to the interior design of the book. Drop caps won’t translate well at all on a Kindle book, however. If you want the effect, you can simulate a drop cap style by manually adjusting the font on the first letter of the chapter. Just use a size larger font, and bold it. For example:
This is how you can achieve a drop cap look, without using formatting that Kindle doesn’t like. The first letter “T” above has a larger font size setting and has been bolded. KINSTANT NOTE: If you plan to use the Kinstant Formatter, and have drop caps in your document, it will convert them to the effect described above.
12
Kindle will over-ride any font you use, but some other readers may not. Because of that, when formatting for any e-reader device, it’s best to stick with the most common serif fonts. For example: Times New Roman, or Georgia. Sans serif fonts are not recommended. To simplify, Times New Roman set at about 12pt will be the closest match to what your readers will be seeing on their Kindle screen. The largest you should go with any font size (for headings) is 18pt. Nothing larger than that as it could cause problems and may even result in rejection from Amazon. See the Kindle to CreateSpace section for how to adjust styles. Using Images In Your Kindle Book Images should be inserted by using the Insert>picture function in Word, instead of using copy-paste. (This is the same for Kindle or CreateSpace, so should already have been done.) You are free to use color images in your Kindle book, and in fact it is encouraged, since there are so many of the readers these days that have color displays. If you have converted images to greyscale for your CreateSpace book, you may want to consider going back to the color versions for Kindle. Changing Your Table of Contents A print book will have page numbers and NO hyperlinks. It may also have a tab leader. For your Kindle Table of Contents you will want to remove the tab leader and page numbers and add hyperlinks. Your table of contents has a style just like everything else. You can edit the settings by right clicking anywhere in your table of contents and choosing Edit Field. You'll get a box with a list of fields running down the left side. Scroll down and choose TOC and then click the Table of Contents button at the top.
13
Then you can make the changes you want to the table of contents. It may take a little practice to get a feel for what's what but here are the basics.
14
The first screen you see gives you a preview of your current TOC and has the general settings. You want to uncheck the show page numbers box, and check the Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers. When you uncheck the Show page numbers, the Tab leader will automatically cease to exist. For more information about setting the different levels in your Table of Contents, see the Kindle to CreateSpace section. After you have all of your excess formatting removed, and your margins and images set for a Kindle book, you can proceed with converting to a Kindleready format, or upload the Word document directly.
15
Conclusion As you can see, it really isn't that complicated to convert your book between the two different publishing styles. If this seems like too much work for you, you can always cut and paste from one version into a template for the other version. Take it from me though, I think you'll find that just as much work, if not more so, than doing it this way! Thanks and Happy Publishing!
16
