How to Format a Book for Kindle using Microsoft Word
I published my first indie book years ago by uploading a Microsoft Word document to my Kindle account. The preview of my eBook looked okay, but when it showed up on Amazon it looked horrible with mismatched indents and wordsscrunchedtogether. The Nook version was no better, nor Smashwords. I needed a better way to format a book for Kindle.
After much trial and error, I was able to upload passable eBooks to Kindle and Nook (but not Smashwords).
Format a Book for Kindle: Applied Styles Magic
Fast forward to a couple of years later when I worked inside a publishing house. There I learned the magic of “applied styles” in MS Word. This process helped our book designer (also known as “typesetter”) see exactly how the production team wanted the final book to look. This process also helped eliminate wingdings and spaces that somehow find their way into the average MS Word doc.
(As an example of just how simple it is to do, I “styled” the heading above – Format a Book for Kindle: Applied Styles Magic – by simply highlighting it and choosing a style from the drop-down box in my WordPress platform, aka this blog’s platform)
Once I understood that I could produce a clean manuscript with styles, I unpublished all of my eBooks. I then reformatted them by “applying styles” to the text, section by section, and resubmitted them to Kindle, Nook, and to Smashwords as well. (More on the various distribution channels in future posts … I now sell directly to most.)
The final product turned out to be a huge formatting upgrade for my eBooks using nothing but time and sweat equity. They looked SO much better, i.e., no weird spacing, the fonts matched, etc.
Word to Kindle to Save Money
These days I write my stories in Scrivener and format them them in Vellum, which is a Mac-based program that gives books a clean, professional look and also allows for some design elements that are more difficult to control in MS Word documents.
But if your budget is tight and and your book has straightforward text – no charts/graphics – try applying fixed styles to your manuscript in MS Word before uploading the file to Amazon. Doing this should eliminate wonky styles that often get embedded into Word docs. In my opinion, this is one of the simplest ways to format a book for Kindle.
How to Apply Styles in Microsoft Word
To open Styles in MS Word, click on the Styles Pane:
(In older versions of Word, you might find a slightly different box that says “styles.” Look for a small arrow in the right-hand corner,and click that arrow to open the styles box.)
After opening Styles, you should see a pop-up like the one below. I’ve circled a few of the styles. Each one can be used as-is, or you can modify them according to your needs by running your cursor over the paragraph symbol next to each one. The symbol will change to a drop-down arrow. Click on that and you can modify the style as you wish. For example, you can set paragraphs to a different sized indent, such as .3.
To “apply” the style, highlight the text in your manuscript (such as the title), then click on the style in the box. This action will set the style for the text. Do this throughout your entire manuscript in order to “set” each section to stick to a particular style. This way you won’t have any tabs or weird spaces sneak in.
See the screen shot below for an example of a very simple template I created with the styles pictured in the style box. Four fixed styles appear here: one for the title, one for the subtitle, one for the author, and the rest for the text. “Apply” styles to your entire manuscript, and then upload and check it in your preview window.
After applying styles to the entire document, your eBook should look very clean! You have now prepared your book to be converted from Word to Kindle. Now it’s time to log in to your KDP dashboard and upload your eBook.
One final caveat: You will still need to manually create a TOC (table of contents) for your eBook. It’s a bit tedious but can be done by using the Bookmark/Hyperlink features in Microsoft Word.
When you’re ready to upgrade to a Mac-based program for book formatting, check out my review here: Vellum Book Formatting Software