Take pride in your eBook formatting
Posted by Guido ·Dec 7
To me, one of the key elements that sets apart a professional eBook release from that of an amateur has always been the technical presentation of the book. Sure, anyone can write a document in a word processor, run it through some export tool, use a fully automated conversion utility or peruse the services of an online service, but the sad fact of the matter is that none of these approaches typically results in, what I call, production-level digital books.
So, why are people using them? I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and observing how other authors approach their eBook publishing, and the more I examined it, the more I have noticed that there are generally two reasons for it.
The first reason is that many authors simply don’t know any better. They write their book, complete it and look for the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to deploy it. Don’t be one of those authors! It is a sad testimony in my opinion, and certainly not a valid excuse. You have labored over your book for months, maybe even years, you have read and re-read it countless times, cleaned out typos and grammatical errors, massaged the style and worked on the structure, grinding away in the wee hours of the night alongside holding a daytime job and maybe having a family. You did not get here just to break the first cardinal rule of book publishing:
Don’t get sloppy on the home stretch! It will reflect poorly on your work.
If you’re anything like me, an author you’re not familiar with has one shot to prove himself to you. I will never again touch the book of an author who has made a bad impression on me by delivering a broken eBook that is clearly sub-par. I can forgive many things in a book if I so please — stilted language, poor pacing, logical errors, uneven style, even the occasional typo. However, one thing I cannot forgive is poor eBook formatting, particularly if it is to the point that it becomes distracting from the actual reading experience, and sadly I have seen too many of these in recent memory.
I started reading books as a form of entertainment 35 years or so ago and to this day I have not once found a printed book that had formatting problems! Every book that goes to print is practically flawless, except for a typo, perhaps, or print issues such as ink blotting or somesuch production-line flaw. However, I have never seen a book where the font size suddenly jumped, where the font face suddenly changed, where indentations were all over the place or where paragraph adjustment switched from justified to left aligned halfway through a paragraph.
Since the dawn of eBooks, however, these things have become prevalent, and, what’s more worrisome, is the fact that too many authors this seems to be completely acceptable. To me that notion is ridiculous and disconcerting, and no writer who is worth their salt should ever be caught publishing an eBook that is not equally flawless as the longstanding tradition of print books has dictated.
You may frown upon traditional publishing houses and their supposed arrogance all you want, but most indie authors would still do well to take a few lessons from these dinosaurs. Among many other things, at least, they know how to produce and package a product for sale and do not discount professionalism as a sales point at the expense of instant self-gratification.
If you are a self-publishing writer and want to be taken seriously, spend a little time getting acquainted what digital eBooks actually are. Learn how they work, how they originated, what they can and cannot do. You might be surprised how many cool features you can actually add to an eBook with the proper background information and some of these capabilities may truly enhance your books. Sure, some of the features are not very useful for most types of books, but, just as an example, did you know that you can actually embed video content in eBooks?
The second reason why many authors never take the time to create proper, optimized eBooks is that they are perhaps intimidated by the process. It is a technical process, to be sure, but it is nothing to shy away from or to be afraid of. All it requires is a very basic sense of structure and sequencing, things we’ve all been taught since first grade and that we have down pat.
Let’s be realistic, for a moment. This is you, a smart and intelligent person. You have written a book. You have mastered the spelling of millions of words. You have internalized grammar rules and overcome countless stylistic challenges over the course of putting your book together, not to mention that, most likely, you had to plot it all out properly to create a dramatic arc, or to create a stream of conscious that readers can follow.
By comparison, creating professionally formatted eBooks is as easy as burning a marshmallow over an open fire.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will post different installments on this blog to show you how you, too, can get to state-of-the-art, professional-looking eBooks that work perfectly on any eBook reader in the market, taking the guesswork out of creating your final product. Stay tuned…
Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Part VIII • Part IX

Also, don’t forget to check out my book Zen of eBook Formatting that is filled with tips, techniques and valuable information about the eBook formatting process.






231 comments
Comment by Daniel Arenson on December 7, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Thanks for this post, Guido. I look forward to reading the rest.
Comment by consuelo baehr on December 7, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Very generous of you to do this. My books are all up and I used The Smashwords Style Guide. Friends who have downloaded and read say they are 90 % fine. However, I’d like them to be at least 99% so I will read whatever you have to say and change if necessary.
Thanks.
Comment by Simon Royle on December 7, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Totally agree with what you’ve posted here Guido. The other major blunder of course is the Cover.
If you’ve written a book and want to sell it a good cover, which usually means (unless you are talented at graphic design; specifically book cover design) hiring a pro. There’s a few of them out there and while it can cost from a couple of hundred to five hundred dollars it is worth it if you really want to get your book noticed. Consider it the first hurdle for a prospective reader.
Comment by Guido on December 7, 2010 at 5:31 pm
I completely agree. It seems too many indie authors seem to think that covers are not important enough to be done properly. It is something I will most likely touch upon also in the future. I mean it is something that drives me up the wall so you can be pretty sure that I will snark about it at some point.
Comment by Helen Hanson on December 13, 2010 at 9:33 am
The skill sets aren’t identical. The writer of a novel gets to make up everything and adheres to rules that, theoretically, are now habit. Formatting an ebook requires learning an entirely new set of rules, rules that demand obedience.
I agree, good formatting is essential. So it should be worth either the effort to learn or the money to pay someone who already knows.
Great topic!
Comment by Guido on December 13, 2010 at 9:42 am
Oh, I agree. The skill sets are far from being identical. What I was trying to say is that they are every bit as easy to acquire as learning how to write and spell, which all writers have mastered.
Pingback by IndieView with Guido Henkel, author of the Jason Dark series. | Simon Royle on January 4, 2011 at 1:51 am
[…] Also… special treat for those just getting into the eBook game – Guido has written an amazingly detailed guide to formatting an eBook. Sounds dry? Wait until you want to publish – it’ll be the most riveting thing you ever read! Here. […]
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Pingback by E-book Endeavors » Blog Archive » Help with Ebook Formatting on February 12, 2011 at 8:41 am
[…] Take Pride in Your Ebook Formatting by indie horror author Guido Henkel (this link goes to Part I in what is a very thorough nine-part post) […]
Comment by Emily White on February 20, 2011 at 4:05 am
Oh my goodness, this is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for! I’ve recently decided to self-publish my book and I plan on going about it as professionally as possible. My one concern was the ebook formatting because I’m not exactly technically savvy. Thank you SO much for doing this!
Comment by Lori on March 9, 2011 at 11:25 am
Thank You Thank You!!! I can’t say it enough. This series of posts have been a blessing to me!
You are honest and straightforward, and I truly appreciate that. With so many people these days just wanting to make a quick buck, especially in the book world, straight-forward information like this is hard to come by.
I am the designer for several self-published authors who have recently asked me to format ebooks.
It’s been an interesting process, especially since the printed versions are professionally done in InDesign. I started by formatting according to the Smashwords guidelines, the results have not been publish worthy. In the midst of that, I was given a link to this page, and have decided to go back what I originally knew was the right way to go, which is directly through Amazon, B&N, etc…, this way I have predictable results & skip the middle man. It’s worth the time and effort. The authors may be self-published but they have high standards, thus I am required to produce the best ebooks possible. It’s a fun challenge.
I’ve been asked to create a series of Children Books into ebooks, and the only suitable outlet I am finding is the Nook Color, yet B&N doesn’t give formatting guidelines. I am not seeing a way to ensure that it is only sold on the Nook Color as well. Even when I ask B&N, through emails, phone calls, etc. they haven’t given me anything specific to the Nook Color & how to format for it. Have you come across any information on this?
Thanks Again! ~Lori
Comment by Guido on March 9, 2011 at 11:51 am
Lori,
Thanks for the kudos. I have not come across any information regarding the Nook Color but I think it is safe to assume that even if they wanted to, at this point B&N would not even be able to treat books for these devices as separate entities.
What I would do is to putting very clearly and in bold letters in the product description that this book is designed exclusively for the Nook Color and that it is not recommended to be read on other devices. You have to remember though, that the software eBook readers also work on desktop computers, which can give you a similarly large and colorful representation.
On a related side note, I think you should also look at the iPad for these types of books.
Comment by R. Scot Johns on March 10, 2011 at 6:43 am
Hey Guido,
I just want to point out one flaw in your comparison of print to ebooks, which is that you were not around when print books were in their infancy, as you are now at the “dawn of ebooks.” Just one look at any 15th or 16th century manuscript will reveal the fallacy of your argument: no punctuation, fonts styles and sizes all over the place, variations in spelling from instance of a word to the next, line run together, spread out, cut off… you name it. Shakespeare’s First Folio is a perfect example, and after hundreds of years of critical nitpicking it’s intended formatting still can’t be determined.
I’m not arguing at all with your point, and cudos to you for the breadth and depth of this post, which will be highly useful to many aspiring (and published) authors. However, don’t lay false blame where it isn’t deserved. Ebooks are a new format and they change from month to month with new software and technology. There is no set standard as yet, and writers as a general rule are not code programmers, nor should they have to be. The transition to a new medium is bound to be fraught with difficulties, and it’s just one more thing striving writers now find themselves having to deal with. Cut us a little slack, like everyone else, we’re still learning.
Pingback by A Progressing Work « tfc Parks on March 10, 2011 at 7:18 am
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Comment by Guido on March 10, 2011 at 7:19 am
R. Scot,
Thanks for your comments but I could not agree less with you. You are just trying to give authors and publishers an excuse they do not deserve.
The kind of quality level we are talking about was simply not possible in the 15th or 16th century because books were written by hand. In addition, aesthetics were different back then.
It is very much possible to create a top notch eBook today. We have all the technology in place to make it not only possible, but to make it easy. Contrary to what you are saying, the eBook formats are not changing constantly. They are not a moving target, really, and have been defined pretty well. At least well enough for anyone with the willingness to do good work and learn to be able to do so.
Ultimately it comes down to whether you want to treat formatting like a pro or like an amateur.
Comment by R. Scot Johns on March 10, 2011 at 2:58 pm
I wasn’t talking about hand written manuscripts, but rather the first print editions coming off the early presses in the mid-1500’s, and even up through the mid 18th century. Authors did not then, nor do they now set their own manuscripts for press, so why should they be obligated to do so with electronic texts? And unlike print, there are multiple ebook formats.
Aesthetics have nothing to do with it. My point is that the print industry has had hundreds of years to develop and refine a standard of production value, whereas electronic texts have had just four decades, only the very recent portion of which has been within reach of authors. And while it may be becoming easier to manage your metadata and css encoding, I would argue that it’s still well beyond the average writer’s purvue to learn the additional necessary skills to create and fine-tune even the three or four main digital formats in anything but very basic layout.
I’ve been struggling with it for two years now. And just so you know, I did every aspect of my first self-pubbed book, including inner and outer art, layout, typesetting, editorial, and proofing. I’d love to agree that it’s easy, or even possible, to create an equivalent e-text edition of a print book, but things like custom word wrapping around interior art, or specialized line-integrated fonts in foreign languages, just aren’t possible without some fairly advanced skills (if at all). Calling anyone who can’t do that an “amateur” is like calling any pilot who can’t fly a space shuttle a novice. Honestly, I doubt very many “pro” authors could do format their own ebooks.
Many of my writer friends have completely given up on formatting ebooks with anything but Amazon or B&N’s default settings, and most won’t ever consider doing more than that. But again, I highly appreciate your efforts to change that by informing your readership, and I will do my part by sending mine your way.
Give ebooks another hundred years and then we’ll see where we are.
Comment by R. Scot Johns on March 10, 2011 at 3:22 pm
By the way, through this Saturday on my blog you can download for free the first book in my debut novel series in either ePub or Kindle formats, as well as PDF. Check the PDF out to see how it should look in the other formats, but doesn’t.
Comment by Guido on March 10, 2011 at 4:07 pm
I do understand your point and I don’t necessarily disagree, but to say it as plainly as I can, if someone doesn’t know how to create an eBook then he should be formatting/publishing it in the first place. Instead he should consult someone who does have the experience and knowledge to do it right. Just like we peruse editors and proof readers to whip our writing into shape, just the way we use cover artists to prepare our presentation, all because those are skill sets most writers do not have, authors should peruse professionals to do the job they can’t perform properly themselves.
Just because it might be hard, fraud with issues and needs to be learned is REALLY no excuse to release technically poor eBooks. That is really my main point.
Comment by R. Scot Johns on March 10, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Yeah, I definitely agree on that last point, and well said. I’ve seen far too many crappy ebooks coming out of MAJOR publishers, let alone independents. Shoddy work is definitely not an acceptable option these days.
Another distinction should probably be made here though, which is that ebooks are for many authors, myself included, a secondary outlet, with the print edition taking precedence (though digital is gaining ground). I know a lot of self-pubbed authors are going the digital-only route, in which case there is absolutely no excuse for shoddy work (there never should be). For most authors, however, the manuscript is laid out for print first, then the ebook is made from that, so your “no word processor” criteria is bit more difficult to adhere to.
That said, your advice is well stated, and incredibly valuable in either case.
Comment by Guido on March 10, 2011 at 4:48 pm
I hear ya. On the other hand, with a clean manuscript it is actually fairly easy to convert it to an eBook the way I described because it has been cleaned up. You simply copy and paste it – the way I outlined in one of the steps – and then start marking it up with the necessary HTML tags. With the right tools that is really no more than a few mouse clicks.
It gets a bit more tricky of course, once you start dealing with images, special fonts, etc. and you want to have maybe web links and stuff in it, but for most novelized books even that is usually in manageable measures.
There is an inherent learning curve, naturally, but once you got over the growing pains it is usually a very straight forward process that is virtually the same for each book.
Comment by Ed Robertson on March 11, 2011 at 8:16 am
This is a great guide. I picked up some HTML several years back, but they’ve added a lot since then–and this really helped bring me up to speed. Thanks for putting this up.
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Comment by Allan R. Wallace on July 11, 2011 at 8:37 am
Well said. There are many elements to self-publishing; and each decision made has the potential to limit, expand, or alter readership. The fun part is deciding which readers you want to reach and crafting your art to fit them.
It’s your book.
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Comment by Morris Graham on November 15, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Your series of articles are awesome!
I was able to create styles and tags for every situation I needed but am perplexed about something.
It seems that you can’t get em size over 2em with a paragraph tag.
Using H1 tag, I can get the size to 3em for my book title and for two other headers that I want, but I have to do it unconventionally.
using the following H1 style
h1
{
font size: 3em;
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
}
By itself, this will not honor the center, size or weight attributes.
I found an unusual way to make it work, but I am unsure if it might crash in some device. MOBI PC reader likes it.
I added these two styles with the one above…
p.centered
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
}
span.centered
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
}
Ok, here is the only thing I can get to work…
WARZONE: OPERATION WOLF HUNT
My question is, will this work for all devices? Is there any better way to do this?
second question… I have real curly quotes throughout my document. Am I supposed to replace them with the html code or just leave them as is?
Thanx, Morris
Comment by Morris Graham on November 15, 2011 at 7:12 pm
sorry, when I put the code in there it simply translated it..
So…
I added the centering p tag and span like you showed in your example, but wrapped tags around my title inside of the span. It works great, but certainly there is a better way to manipulate a header to make it center up properly and still be 3em font size.
Morris
Comment by Morris Graham on November 15, 2011 at 7:15 pm
wow! I tried twice to put the header 1 open and close tags and your website tries to translate them or loses them.
Comment by Guido on November 15, 2011 at 7:38 pm
The curly quotes will have to be converted to named entities, just as I describe in part VI of this series. Not converting them at all, or converting them to numeric entities, will inevitably create display problems on certain devices and platforms.
As for the centering, I do all my centering with a p and a span tag, like this
<p class=”centered”><span class=”centered”>This is my text to be centered</span></p>
Just a quick note, you will not have to repeat setting the font to bold in the span style definition. It will automatically be inherited from the p tag that is wrapped around the span.
Comment by Morris Graham on November 19, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Ok, the centering with a p and a span tags work fine, but since you don’t encourage the use of Header tags, I am at a loss for how I would code the following. I need to center a line, make is bold, and 3em, and color: #E36C0A; The only thing that I have seen works in MOBI reader is using your centering with header tags wrapped around the text, inside the span.
The last thing I tried, works except the font size.
I tried…
p.topsecret1
{
font-size: 3em;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
color: #E36C0A;
}
span.topsecret1
{
font-size: 3em;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
text-indent: 0em;
color: #E36C0A;
}
The results was a HUGE font size in IE and Firefox, and no more than 2em in MOBI reader. In fact, I don’t’ see any way to control the size other than wrapping the test in a header tag inside of the centering span. I even tried DIV tags, and that didn’t do anything. Is there a limit to the size MOBI will read a paragraph tag attribute?
I think I have the rest of the novel whooped.
Oh, one more question?
I added a border to the body or my test…IE and firefox love it, but MOBI reader doesn’t even display it. I used…
Any way to add a border for ebooks?
Thanx, Morris
Comment by Guido on November 19, 2011 at 5:00 pm
As I mentioned before, you do not have to repeat all the settings in the span style. The span style could really just consist of a “text-align: center;” setting, like this
span.centered
{
text-align: center;
}
I am not sure I understand what you mean by “Header” tags. The way you would do it is exactly the way you describe. You create a style for your text and then wrap it with the respective tags.
<p class="topsecret1"><span class="centered">This is the text</span></p>
If you don’t see the font larger that 2em, it is a software issue with the reader. I have noticed that the Kindle software does not display fonts larger than 2em, but the device actually does.
As for borders, the MOBI file format does not support borders so, no, it is not possible to create borders in MOBI eBooks. It does work in ePub, though.
Comment by Morris Graham on November 19, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Ok, hopefully last couple of questions…
Can I use non-whole numbers of em, like 2.5em?
I noticed that IE and Foxfire shows some really large sizes when I make it 3em. Is that realistic? What is the largest title em font size you would go with?
Thanx, Morris
Comment by Guido on November 19, 2011 at 11:30 pm
Yes, you can use decimal numbers.
The way IE and Firefox render the text is correct, yes. 3em is a really big font size. I would only use that if you have something like only the number as the chapter heading, like “1”, “2” etc.
If you have text like “Chapter 1” or so, I would not go above 2em for aesthetic reasons.
Comment by Morris Graham on November 23, 2011 at 5:32 am
I am done! All things work, and all I have to do is a final walk-through to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Well, almost time to design the cover, and then I’m through.
Thank you,
Morris
Comment by Guido on November 23, 2011 at 10:38 am
Congratulations, Morris!
Pingback by The Making of High Moor Part 3: Building the Book and the Business of Publishing « Graeme Reynolds's Blog on November 24, 2011 at 11:02 am
[…] am going to point you in the direction of Guido Henkel’s fantastic guide to eBook formatting: HERE. If you follow those steps to the letter, you will end up with a very well formatted eBook file that […]
Pingback by Review: Penguin’s Book Country As A Retail Site | J W Manus on November 26, 2011 at 9:50 pm
[…] service. Authors can also convert manuscripts through Mobipocket (FREE!) (Guido Henkel offers a free how-to guide to formatting) and upload it to Amazon, again for FREE. Publishing on Barnes and Noble is just as easy. Again, […]
Comment by Lisa on December 5, 2011 at 5:29 am
If I purchase “TextMate” does that automatically convert into HTML?
Lisa
Comment by Guido on December 5, 2011 at 7:54 am
No, it does not. TextMate is purely a programming editor. If you are looking for something that can automatically export an HTML file from you manuscript, word processors like Word can do that. Scrivener – the best writing software on the planet – can do it, too, and actually does an amazing job at it. However, you will have to be careful, as the caveats from Part II of my series do apply.
Comment by Serena on December 19, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Hi Guido,
I am making a book that has some special physical exercies in it that i have created. They will be displayed by photographs. However after reading your blog that sasy video can be imbedded that does facinate me. I did think of making a separate dvd and selling that with the video demonstration, however i could make an ebook with embedded short video displays instead, or maybe sell that version at a higher price. What concers me is if I make a video imbedded is it possible to stop it from being completely copied and put up on someones youtube channel. And secondly is that bad for my sales if it is on youtube and everyone can see it there, will they buy my book? Or as some say is that good promotion to spread the word. Maybe people will think there is more in the book that they have not seen? I would appreciate your advice?
Comment by Guido on December 19, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Video will limit you to a small subset of the existing eBook readers, such as the iPad, and the other tablets. In addition, if you embed the video in the book it will bloat the file dramatically. This will mean that it will take a looooong time to download, plus Amazon will charge you a hefty fee for every download, and you will fill up people’s memory really quickly. None of them are desired scenarios.
If you link to a video on the Web, you are assuming that the user has an Internet connection, which is not always true. Not only can people turn off their wireless connection, but depending on their location, additional fees could be incurred, access could be blocked altogether, etc. Even if the user is connected, the download speeds might be prohibitive. Altogether, that is an even less desirable situation.
So all in all, I do not recommend the use of video on eBooks at this time, unless there is a very good reason for it, and if it is small enough so that it can be safely embedded without creating an extreme monetary overhead and memory footprint.
Comment by Serena on December 20, 2011 at 9:22 am
Thanks thats very helpful, food for thought. Cheers
Pingback by Top Ten Indie Writer Discoveries of 2011 | J W Manus on December 20, 2011 at 12:04 pm
[…] very best tips and tricks for making a self-published title look its best, the best in the biz is Guido Henkel. He cares about the details (and it shows in his elegantly produced ebooks). He very generously […]
Pingback by Techie Post: Small Caps / Big Impact « petra & adam on December 20, 2011 at 5:24 pm
[…] I should start by saying that Guido Henkel’s formatting guide was indispensable in getting my Kindle file built. If you plan on coding your own ebook, go read […]
Pingback by Notes Of A Storyteller: The Day Notepad++ Vanquished Sean McGuire | The Kingdom Trilogy on December 24, 2011 at 6:09 pm
[…] I first found I would have to do it. After much googling, David Gaughran, The Creative Penn, and Guido Henkel convinced me to go through and code the whole novel. This meant putting paragraph codes on every […]
Pingback by Self Publishing: Mechanics | dbbaldwin.com on December 29, 2011 at 11:02 am
[…] really interesting thing I found in his book was the pointer to check out Guido Henkel’s articles on eBook formatting. Mr. Henkel walks through the steps needed to go from Word (or the word […]
Pingback by Ebook Reformatting: Game of Sails, Take Two | Where Books Meet Boats by Carol Newman Cronin on January 5, 2012 at 3:46 am
[…] available to indie authors, Guido took the time to put together a step by step guide called “Take Pride in your Ebook Formatting.” Formatting errors are very common with ebooks (from major publishers as well as indies); […]
Comment by Robert on January 6, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Thanks so much for this series of posts. I attempted to self-publish a set of short stories via Create Space and Amazon and was plagued with most of what you mentioned format-wise. Line and paragraph breaks and shifts, abrupt font style changes (seemingly for no reason I could surmise), PDF conversions just plain gone wrong. All lead me to throw up my hands and give up – then! But, here I am again, and thinking that self-publishing may be my only avenue for ANY possbile publishing, I’m giving it another shot. I’ve bookmarked this. Thanks again!
Pingback by Getting My Geek On | J Meyers Official Author Site on January 14, 2012 at 8:11 pm
[…] had already done it, created a tutorial, wrote the code I needed, and posted it online. (Thank you Guido Henkel. I think I love you.) So it’s not like I came up with it all on my own from scratch. THAT […]
Pingback by Manuscript to Book | Making It Up As I Go on January 18, 2012 at 6:40 am
[…] of compiled HTML. Or at the very least, HTML makes the best source material for e-books. I found a great series on e-book formatting that lays out the process step by laborious step. If HTML is Greek to you, then it’s probably […]
Pingback by “Wearing the Publisher’s Hat” — A Conversation Between Jeff Ambrose and David Barron | The Window In The Basement on January 20, 2012 at 7:00 am
[…] then for the “Second Electronic Edition” I boned up on xml, with the help of people like Guido Henkel and, then, Paul Salvette, until I had my own workflow. Finally, not quite satisfied, I picked up […]
Pingback by Produce A Clean Ebook File in Word: Nuke It! | J W Manus on February 21, 2012 at 11:04 am
[…] of HTML coding, I suggest you check out Guido Henkel’s series about formatting your ebook: Take Pride In Your eBook Formatting. (After reading what he has to say, you may decide to forget all this do-it-yourself nonsense and […]
Pingback by Formatting per Guido Henkel « The Novel Corner on March 1, 2012 at 5:16 am
[…] That’s when I stumbled across the excellent formatting advice of Guido Henkel.Henkel’s adbvice is not only clear and easy to follow, but much of it is of the cut and paste variety, which is perfect for people who understand the technical world as little as I do. So without further ado, I’m pleased to introduce you to the formatting instructions of Guido Henkel. […]
Pingback by Creating an ebook: epub and mobi file formats for beginners | John Crawnook on March 9, 2012 at 8:35 am
[…] 1. Do it yourself. Amazon’s step-by-step guide is here. For epub, you can build your file from scratch using Sigil, or, if you’re less techy, with Calibre. If you’re a perfectionist, study Guido Henkel’s guide. […]
Pingback by Epubbing on a budget on March 13, 2012 at 10:35 pm
[…] Guido Henkel’s fab formatting info […]
Pingback by Helpful Resources and HTML with Bernie | How to Disappear Completely on March 20, 2012 at 8:32 pm
[…] and resources for self publishing, including links to a step-by-step guide to HTML formatting by Guido Henkel. I’m planning on using this guide for my formatting, but if it turns out I completely suck […]
Pingback by What I learned from publishing my first title | Summer Grey on April 13, 2012 at 1:27 pm
[…] required file types for Kindle and Nook. For step by step information on this process I followed Guido’s ‘Take pride in your e-book’ guide. I recommend following this guide instead of amazon’s. Guido’s guide will give you the […]
Pingback by Self-Publishing Thoughts and Progress « Weaving Reality on April 27, 2012 at 9:35 am
[…] http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/ […]
Comment by Leigh Arrathoon on April 29, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Hi Guido,
I have read your tutorial two or three times, and, being technologically deficient, I’ve formatted a short story, with the help of a friend, so I am very, very grateful to you. Now it’s time to get serious and do the books! I’m wondering if the devices I will be formatting the books for will be able to view drop initials? I used to be a typesetter in my spare time, so the books have beautiful drop initials in them. If these would show up in e-books, would I just make jpegs of the initials and drop them at so and so many ems in and so and so many ems down. Being a novice at HTML, what would that look like in the style sheet?
I read that you were looking for a way to watch foreign movies in the U.S. I just went down to a discount computer store, bought an HP, and chose the sector I usually watch movies in. I think it was 3 or 5, and it included France, Britain, and something else. Anyway, I just opened up the computer, it asked me what sector I wanted, and voilà! The only problem is that it still wont stream movies from those countries into the U.S., but at least I can play the discs I buy from France.
Thank you for all your help.
Leigh
Pingback by The Joys of Self Publishing (or how to go quietly insane): Part One | on May 18, 2012 at 6:48 am
[…] expert when it comes to HTML and I’ll admit I was terrified of doing it. But actually, with a helpful guide and a book* which gives you a step-by-step guide, it actually wasn’t that hard at all. In […]
Pingback by Link Dump: Advice for Self-Publishing | Sailing the Void on May 20, 2012 at 8:37 pm
[…] E-book Formatting Share this:MoreLike this:LikeOne blogger likes this post. This entry was posted in Link Dumps, Writing and tagged reference, writing advice, writing resources by Dan Harris. Bookmark the permalink. […]
Comment by Shay Brightman on May 22, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Thank you so much for this……i published today on amazon in complete ignorance, and the very first review stripped my book bare…it was hard to read, and I simply wasn’t aware what would happen when my book went on to Kindle. I feel stupid, and the guy who left the review has labelled me as a spammer and given me 1 star, because i inadvertently discussed my book on his amazon thread. What a day; after 6 years teaching myself to write, overcoming my dyslexia, and finally drumming up the courage to put my work out there, this is what happens. Just brilliant. I now need your guidance to sort it out. So thank you for taking the time to help people like me.
Pingback by From manuscript to eBook - a place to start | BWM Books | eBook Publishing, Advice, Marketing on May 27, 2012 at 10:58 pm
[…] particularly useful were David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital blog, Guido Henkel’s series of posts on eBook formatting and the blogs of Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer and Steven Lewis’ […]
Pingback by Claire Ridgway’s SelfPublishing Journey: Formatting the Ebook - Interviews with Indie Authors | Interviews with Indie Authors on June 21, 2012 at 7:27 am
[…] a post on how I did it but I can recommend Guido Henkel’s 9 part series of articles entitled Take Pride in Your Ebook Formatting which talk you through formatting your book step by step. Guido also offers ebook formatting if […]
Pingback by Digital Marketing on June 21, 2012 at 8:26 am
[…] I used Guido Henkel’s nine-part guide to formatting eBooks, I wouldn’t recommend anyone else try it if they have a book with a fair complement of web […]
Pingback by How Much Does it Cost to Self-Publish? « Cristian Mihai on July 6, 2012 at 10:55 am
[…] might also want to check out Guide Henkel’s formatting guide for more insight into the […]
Pingback by Formatting your ebook files |Monica T. Rodriguez on July 6, 2012 at 10:59 am
[…] posted on their website. In the post, you’ll find a link to Guido Henkel’s free nine-part formatting guide for ebooks. His detailed guide not only recommends the best software for the job, he explains why. […]
Pingback by Self-publishing: Lessons Learned #2 « My Rite of Passage on July 9, 2012 at 10:49 am
[…] Guido Henkel is famous in the circle of Indie authors and much respected for his selfless eBook formatting guidelines that you can follow on his 9-part blog post. […]
Comment by Salvatore Pedi on July 9, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Guido…
I’m making some preparations to write my very first ebook for Amazon’s kindle. This is the first step for me as I’ve never written a book before.
My main problem at this stage is to find the proper format (or, word processing) to write my story with. I’m using an Apple iMac…. I currently have “PAGES O9 ” but, I’m not sure if I could use that..
I’d surely appreciate any information you could give me.
Thanks……salvatore pedi
Comment by Guido on July 9, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Personally, I’m a huge fan of Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php). I’ve written all my books using that software can say nothing but good things about it. I don’t think a regular word processor like Pages is really all that great to write books, for the sole reason that it is not possible to organize things such as research, ideas, references, links, etc. The result is always a tedious clutter somewhere on your hard drive. Scrivener helps in that way by keeping it all together, neatly organized and immediately accessible.
Comment by Gabriel Beyers on July 18, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Hello Guido,
Once again, thank you for these informative posts. I hired out my first book’s formatting, but now I find myself a bit short of cash and am looking into formatting my next book. It’s fairly straightforward, so I think I can follow your instructions.
My only problem right now is I would like to have some hyperlinks in the book, like links to my other books, my Facebook page, etc.
Could you explain how to format links? I would really appreciate it.
Comment by Guido on July 18, 2012 at 8:39 pm
It is very easy and straight forward. Just take a closer look here – http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp
Pingback by Top Book Publishing, Marketing & Publicity Info Sources — Phyllis Zimbler Miller on July 20, 2012 at 1:25 pm
[…] Although there are many other online marketers I admire and follow, I wanted to make this a short list so as not to overwhelm people new to these topics. Advanced info: For those of you who are interested in learning how to convert your own books into ebooks, I recommend the blog series starting with this post. […]
Pingback by The Joys of Coding My Own Ebooks — Phyllis Zimbler Miller on August 2, 2012 at 12:00 am
[…] And click here now for the first post in Guido Henkel’s series if you want to consider learning ht… […]
Pingback by Pioneers in Ebook Design: Monica Pierce | J W Manus on August 3, 2012 at 6:44 am
[…] reading Guido Henkel’s excellent blog series on ebook formatting, I tackled the process, making some specific design decisions in order to give […]
Pingback by Formatting a Novel for Amazon « written by a briton on August 14, 2012 at 1:57 am
[…] how do you convert your text to html? Well, you could do a lot worse than follow this excellent guide, which is what I’ve been doing for Snow White. Except I have strayed from it on a couple of […]
Pingback by 7 Money-Saving eBook Formatting Links For the Indie Author | Yesenia VargasYesenia Vargas on August 15, 2012 at 2:10 am
[…] 4. Guido Henkel’s Series on Ebook Formatting: This is the link to the Intro of the long-trusted nine-part series on ebook formatting. Another must-read resource. […]
Comment by Ksenia Anske on August 18, 2012 at 11:31 am
Guido, thank you for the fantastic article. I’m still a few months away from being ready to publish, but have already started looking for a formatting guide to deliver an extraordinary experience to the readers. I’m writing my YA 1st novel that I want to look akin to a hand-written diary. Do you have any tips on how to insert written comments into typed text – as if they were made by hand? Or, should I shelve the idea?
Comment by Guido on August 20, 2012 at 11:50 am
Since most eBook readers do not support font embedding, there’s no good way to do this. You could save the passages as images and insert them, but that will take a lot of storage space.
Pingback by Wherein Isaac cuts me a break and lets me squeeze in a blog post « the glass 'possum on August 30, 2012 at 8:03 am
[…] I had a blast figuring out how to code up the html to turn my words into a .mobi and .epub format. Guido Henkel’s ebook formatting guide was invaluable and once I got the hang of what I was doing, it was a snap. The process turned out […]
Pingback by Self-Publishing Myth #3 - Self-Publishing is Easy • Ryan Casey on September 14, 2012 at 1:35 am
[…] is also not easy, but there are tools out there to make it more bearable. Guido Henkel’s formatting guide, whilst initially overwhelming, is an absolute Bible if you want your book to look professional […]
Pingback by Take pride in your eBook formatting: Guido Henkel on October 2, 2012 at 7:23 am
[…] RSS feed for comments on this post […]
Pingback by Author interview: Ellie Stevenson / Rachel Pictor on October 8, 2012 at 6:51 am
[…] (both professionals and people I knew) and used the instructions from David Gaughran and Guido Henkel (thanks guys, I couldn’t have done it without you!) to prepare the text for Amazon’s website […]
Pingback by Brand New Award « Andrew Toynbee's very own Blog on October 11, 2012 at 5:45 am
[…] Casey – for all his eBooking assistance and for pointing me towards Guido Henkel’s invaluable ‘Take Pride’ […]
Pingback by Formatting eBooks: Final Touches « Speaking to the Eyes on October 12, 2012 at 7:34 am
[…] find the relevant links on my Writers Resources page under formatting. Special thanks to Cameron, Guido and […]
Pingback by October Progress Report: Slow Month for Sales • Ryan Casey on October 24, 2012 at 4:45 am
[…] or so for the proofread, and after that, it’s full steam ahead with formatting. I followed Guido Henkel’s formatting guide for my short stories, so I’ll be taking that route again. For the paperback edition, […]
Pingback by Why Self-publish? A Primer | All about eBooks on October 31, 2012 at 9:58 am
[…] choices here. Scrivener will produce documents suitable for the various eReaders. I prefer to use Guido Henkel’s instructions and Calibre for the Amazon Kindle (.mobi) format. Formatting for eBooks for the Kindle is tricky. […]
Pingback by The Mechanics « kenzie*joy press on November 7, 2012 at 12:06 pm
[…] “Take pride in your ebook formatting” Somewhat long winded treatise on the need to properly format your ebook. I don’t think it particularly applies to children’s books but it was good to get a sense of how detailed the production of these things can be and to decide what my standard of quality will be. […]
Pingback by Where To Self-Publish « One Tired Mama on November 20, 2012 at 7:34 pm
[…] is novella or short story length so I find it very quick to do. There are other guides out there (Guido Henkel comes to mind) to help you. (I see he also formats books for a very reasonable […]
Pingback by Formatting, Formatting, Formatting « The Space Within These Lines on November 26, 2012 at 6:51 am
[…] Digital that I would have to delve into HTML and CSS. As he suggested, I did read Guido Henkel’s tutorial on formatting e-books in HTML and started the process. However, the last step in the formatting process required the use of […]
Comment by Kelly on January 7, 2013 at 6:06 am
How do you use find and replace for quotes, etc in Scrivener?
Pingback by Self-Publishing Costs: What is the Price of Publishing? • Ryan Casey on January 9, 2013 at 6:02 am
[…] on why I don’t spend money on formatting: I taught myself, and so can you. Guido Henkel has a fantastic guide to eBook formatting that admittedly takes several hours to work through, but it saves me hundreds of pounds every time […]
Pingback by Susan Kaye Quinn’s Self-Pub Basics (Part Two of Four): Formatting, The Easy Way on January 13, 2013 at 11:29 pm
[…] it reflects well on you when you take time to format your ebooks well, whether by paying someone else, or doing the hard […]
Pingback by Susan Kaye Quinn’s Self-Pub Basics (Part Three of Four): Formatting, The Hard Way on January 29, 2013 at 11:29 pm
[…] can format your books The Easy Way, but they will have plain fonts and titles, and a prettier book reflects well on you. Plain (text only, plain fonts) and Fancy (images, fancy […]
Pingback by Making Sense of Ebooks | All things editing on February 18, 2013 at 8:54 am
[…] you can manage it if your book’s layout is not complex. A good resource to get you started is Guido Henkel’s “Take pride in your eBook formatting” series of nine blog posts. Guido explains in simple, direct terms the changes you should make to […]
Pingback by Finding Your Brand: My Word Is My Bond by Ron Vitale on March 5, 2013 at 3:52 am
[…] To find that niche, simply search for hashtags that similarly minded people are using and join the conversation. Again, it’s that easy, but hard to execute because of the time commitment. Some writers believe that you can just write books and they’ll magically be found by the all-mighty mystical algorithm oiling Amazon’s engine and you’ll hit the jackpot. I’ve heard from enough writers like me who aren’t having that success. Other writers believe that there needs to be a balance between writing and engaging people on social media. I fall into that camp. Without engaging people online, I would not have met some of my biggest fans or learned how to successfully convert my novels into eBook formats (thank you Guido Henkel). […]
Comment by Lance Foster on March 25, 2013 at 6:15 am
I wrote a bilingual book that uses English and Yoruba. Yoruba uses a particular kind of font. Since you say that most eBook readers do not support font embedding, then it seems the only way I can publish this as an ebook (it is about 26 pages long) is to handle each page as a jpg, including the text, rather than as text (because the Yoruba text uses orthography that needs a particular font)?
Comment by Guido on March 25, 2013 at 7:56 am
More and more eBook readers now support custom font, so you could go that route, but you should be aware that you’d still be cutting out a large portion of the market, namely those with Kindle 1, Kindle 2, original Nooks, etc. You will have to weigh your options, becasue using image files has severe drawbacks as well, not the least of which is their size, of course, and the fact that they don’t scale well.
Pingback by The Big List of Websites for Authors | Mike Spinak on April 6, 2013 at 2:23 pm
[…] eBook formatting series […]
Pingback by How to Publish an E-Book: the Ultimate Guide | Adegoke.Info on April 10, 2013 at 9:22 pm
[…] 1. Do it yourself. A good guide for the tricky little (and big) things to avoid or overcome is US horror writer Guido Henkel’s informative and detailed nine-part series, Take pride in your e-book formatting. […]
Pingback by Kyra’s Self-Publishing How-To | Welcome To My Worlds on April 18, 2013 at 10:26 am
[…] The eBook Design and Development Guide by Paul Salvette and Guido Henckel's blog post series Take Pride In Your eBook Formatting] If you aren’t quite so broke, or don’t want to do it yourself, research ebook formatters. […]
Pingback by How to Publish an E-Book: Resources for Authors | Jane Friedman on May 4, 2013 at 8:42 pm
[…] Take Pride in Your E-Book Formatting (free 9-part guide by Guido Henkel) […]
Comment by J Thomas Beaton on May 13, 2013 at 1:31 pm
Hi Guido – do you know of a good instructional site or blog like this one where creation of a bespoke dictionary is so clearly laid out? i have been searching but only get a few vague references to automatic pgms that I’d rather no use, having seen what they did to my first attempts of my ebooks. Thanks very much.
Pingback by How to format a book (e-book and print) and survive | RocNaNo on May 29, 2013 at 5:29 pm
[…] is a wonderful program, but it does cost money to buy. Guido Henkel has a guide to e-book formatting that uses free programs, including one called Calibre, which I already have, but totally forgot […]
Pingback by Advice on self-publishing, part 4: Cover art | angelahighland.com on June 4, 2013 at 9:41 pm
[…] what happens then? If you read Part 3 of this series of posts, you’ll have seen me mention Guido Henkel’s excellent tutorial on how to build an ebook, and that’ll have included putting your cover art in […]
Comment by Wirral Writer on June 6, 2013 at 5:16 am
Very good post. As a published author on Amazon Kindle (True Ghost Stories series and Horror Stories), I would like some information on how I can make links in ebooks work. I have just saved a Word doc as an ebook PDF. However, I don’t know why the links I created in Word won’t work.
Can you advise?
Comment by Guido on June 6, 2013 at 7:54 am
PDF files are not really eBooks, they are digital documents, which is big difference. But be that as it may, it all depends on the process you are using to actually build eBooks as to why links would be dropped.
Comment by Walter Jensen on June 7, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Thanks for your guide. If i want to hire you to do my formatting for my novel,what do you charge?
Comment by Guido on June 7, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Walter, please feel free to take a look here – http://guidohenkel.com/ebook-services/
Comment by Amber on June 7, 2013 at 3:09 pm
I just wanted to drop a thank you note. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS POST!
Pingback by Free ebook formatting: do it yourself? | What The Hell on June 27, 2013 at 9:21 am
[…] recommends Guido Henkel’s guide, “Take Pride In Your Ebook Formatting,” a free resource on the web, which takes the neophyte through a foolproof formatting protocol that […]
Pingback by New publications, ebook formatting, illustrations, and self-publishing | Michael Sean Gallagher on July 5, 2013 at 2:36 am
[…] have stumbled across this excellent guide for formatting an ebook via HTML (which seems to be the only ‘safe’ way to guarantee the expected results). […]
Comment by Kimberly Schimmel on July 24, 2013 at 4:54 pm
You are so generous to share your experiences. I was afraid of Kindle formatting until I learned it was just html. What a relief to this one-time FORTRAN programmer!
Pingback by Advanced Ebook Formatting Tips And Tools | Blackbird Digital Books on August 1, 2013 at 1:10 pm
[…] links to their words of wisdom: 1.Guido Henkel – you have to read his 9-part series ‘Take pride in your eBook formatting‘ 2.Joshua Tallent – one of the early professional ebook formatters. See – […]
Pingback by Writing is Tough | jimdavidgerard on August 4, 2013 at 8:37 am
[…] to self pubbing: This is formatting guide by Guido Henkel. I’ve also got another tip for the poor writer in need. Fiverr.com. You can get some amazing […]
Pingback by To Hire or Not to Hire? Formatters | Tani Mura's Blog on August 9, 2013 at 10:06 am
[…] it from scratch — in HTML, that is. Guido Henkel has an excellent, detailed, life-saving guide on how to do this. Guido’s arguments against the use of word processors made sense to me, and […]
Pingback by eBook Formatting, Part 1 – Stripping it Down | Chele Cooke on August 13, 2013 at 4:07 am
[…] Let’s Get Digital, I found an absolutely wonderful tutorial on HTML formatting of an eBook. Guido Henkel’s Take Pride in Your eBook Formatting is informative and detailed. However, there are a few elements that I feel were missed. One of […]
Pingback by eBook Formatting, Part 2 – Building it Up Again | Chele Cooke on August 15, 2013 at 3:38 am
[…] free program. If you have another HTML creation program, this will work just as well.) I also used Guido Henkel’s Formatting guide, which is where much of this comes from and I highly recommend checking out. However, I have added […]
Comment by Misty Spears on September 30, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Very good advice! I just finished my first kindle platform book and I think I’ve re-exported into my own Kindle device at least 10 times adjusting things to make it look good. Of course, I have to hope everyone sees it the same way I do.
Pingback by Adventures in Formatting Part 1: The Basics | A World in Words on October 29, 2013 at 9:45 am
[…] has a fantastic series of blog posts out that explain the process in detail, which you can find here; however, I find his guide to be a bit bloated for my tastes (I like things quick and to the […]
Comment by Davey Northcott on January 16, 2014 at 4:22 am
Hi Guido
Can I just say thank’s a lot for this guide, it is proving absolutely invaluable to me as I embark on my first ebook formating experience. No coubt I would have already hurled myself from my 5th floor flat window by now so, you could say you have saved a life … hehe!
Anyway, down to business. Is it neccessary to put commas, full stops, question marks, hyphens, colons and semi-colons into HTML?
The reason being, I can’t find the code for these, at least in the letter form (I’ve found the numerical form but you mentioned these were’nt to be trusted). For the more complicated symbols it hasn’t been a problem but …
If you know these codes it’d be great if you could paste them in here.
Thanks again.
Davey Northcott
Comment by Guido on January 16, 2014 at 10:15 am
Davey, general punctuation does not need to be converted into entities. You can freely use things such as question marks, commas, periods, colons, etc. without having to worry about them.
Comment by Davey Northcott on January 16, 2014 at 1:21 pm
That’s good news. Thanks a lot Guido.
Comment by Davey Northcott on January 18, 2014 at 11:21 am
Hi Guido. My ebook is looking better by the minute, thanks a lot again for the guide.
I have two queries about problems I am facing, however, and cannot figure out why.
There is one section of the book which is in italics and shouldn’t be. I have checked and rechecked the code and symbols that are wrapping it but can’t see anything that would cause this. The section before it is in italics and should be, and after this section I have the symbol. Any ideas as to what may be happening here?
Question number 2 is this: Is there a limit on how much you can indent text? I have some lines where I would like to have every other line indented about 8.5em. However, the maximum that it seems to indent the text is 3.5em, no matter what number I put in. Here is the code I am using:
p.normal-indent-8.5
{
text-indent: 8.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.2em;
}
Any ideas here also?
Thanks a lot.
See more about me and join in some IMAGINATION FUN in The imAgine RooM:
http://daveynorthcottauthorwri…
and
@DaveyNorthcott on Twitter
Comment by Guido on January 18, 2014 at 11:28 am
Davey,
The first problem you describe can’t be diagnosed from afar. Only a look at the actual code would allow me to see what is going on.
As for indentation, no, there are no limits that I know of. It could be that Calibre is limiting it, however, the way it also limits font sizes to avoid excess. There is a switch somewhere, though, to turn that on and off in Calibre.
Having said that, an indentation of 8.5em is HUGE, especially because the Kindle is still not calculating Em spacing properly and will probably make it look like 40em or so.
Comment by Davey Northcott on January 18, 2014 at 12:36 pm
Thanks for the tip. I’ve reduced the indentation but, looking again, the maximum it allows me to indent seems to be 1.5em. It doesn’t indent opening up in the web browser either so I don’t think it’s calibre. What I’ve done in the end is, rather than indent every second line, I’ve put the indent of the other lines to 0em so it creates the same effect and still looks good when opened in calibre.
As for the first problem, I’m currently taking out all of the italic commands before the ‘problem section’ to reinsert them again to see if that makes any difference. Fingers crossed! 🙂
Comment by Davey Northcott on January 19, 2014 at 8:01 am
Hi Guido.
Just to let you know, after doing the above it seems to have solved the problem with the italics. I guess there was a rogue somewhere abouts!
Thanks for the tips anyway.
Davey Northcott
Pingback by Want an ISBN number? Grab a pen and paper… on January 30, 2014 at 7:37 am
[…] which I also bought and downloaded… and with help of the excellent guidance notes of Guido Henkel which I found […]
Comment by Tasha on February 24, 2014 at 10:58 am
Hi Guido
I was wondering what is the disadvantage to embedding a font if you provide a generic fallback font like serif? Reason I ask is that it seems as if Georgia is the default font for a lot of devices (at least from using the kindle previewer) and Georgia causes some numbers to go beneath the line (e.g. 3).Also, I thought the kindle fires had the options to change the font yet in the kindle previewer the only font available is Georgia for the fire line of devices. It seems to be the default for the kindle for Pc software too.
Thanks for your help and this invaluable guide.
Pingback by Ebook Formatting Woes: Remember Trying to Be Compatible With Netscape? Yeah, That. | SL Huang on March 19, 2014 at 10:46 am
[…] that bad, mind you. On the whole, the formatting process was reasonably painless — I used Guido’s excellent guide, and I have good knowledge of HTML and CSS already, which made it much easier. The reason it was […]
Comment by Guido on May 27, 2014 at 2:45 pm
I just wanted to let everyone know, that I have just published a book called “Zen of eBook Formatting” that is now available. It covers the aspects from this tutorial in a lot more detail and also adds a hole lot of additional info, details and advanced techniques to the mix. Here is a link with a bit more info, including a look at the Table of Contents of the book.
http://guidohenkel.com/2014/05/zen-of-ebook-formatting-is-now-available/
Comment by Mobi-ePub on June 30, 2014 at 9:38 am
I agree that the formatting of an eBook is one of the most important aspects. Being very pedantic, formatting errors can really ruin the reading experience for me. Thanks for this article!
Comment by Mari Beth on September 26, 2014 at 12:25 pm
I haven’t read all your posts on ebook formatting – I’m just starting my research on this. I’ve made a children’s book through Bookemon for a story my Dad wrote. I’d like to convert it to an ebook for other formats (Amazon, Kindle, etc.) Do you have any advice specific to children’s books which are full of color and pictures? (You may talk about this in your Zen book) And do you have any advice moving from Bookemon to other outlets? Thanks so much.
Pingback by How to Format an Ebook Video Course on November 19, 2014 at 10:07 am
[…] news? It’s not hard. I just learned it all in a week thanks to Guido Henkel and J Thorn, two gentlemen who have created fine fine guides to formatting ebooks. I […]
Comment by Lovely Jirny on November 20, 2014 at 4:24 pm
Okay. I got your drift. Yet, another milestone in my writing career. I’m on it. I had a great writing instructor, the late, Louis Reyes Rivera. Errors glare at me from traditional books, not often, but glaring when they show up. I know absolutely nothing about eBook formatting. Just want to say thanks for your work, I do take pride in my work and I appreciate your input and guidance. I began studying and tweaking today.
Pingback by Je m'édite – 7 – Le formatage numérique - Guy Morant on November 21, 2014 at 3:03 am
[…] d’une série de billets de blog (en anglais) consacrés au formatage numérique, Take pride in your eBook formatting, repris ensuite sous la forme d’un livre numérique intitulé The Zen of eBook Formatting. […]
Pingback by An Independent Author Flashes Her Geek Card | Writing Wranglers and Warriors on December 3, 2014 at 4:00 am
[…] of a paperback book. Henkel’s Zen of eBook Formatting (an expansion of his 2010 blog series “Take Pride in your eBook formatting”) is an easy-to-follow guide to converting a document file to HTML and from there to various […]
Pingback by Fair and Honest #Marketing Strategies for Indie Authors #indiepub #selfpub | Sever Bronny on December 10, 2014 at 12:49 pm
[…] If you’re self-publishing, make DAMN sure your formatting is spotless. Use Guido Henckel’s guide – Have a physical copy available. It makes your book and brand look professional, and also […]
Comment by Stephen on December 14, 2014 at 11:58 am
Hi Guido,
Thanks so much for your site and its information. It has been encouraging and fun! I am an old guy trying to figure out how to provide the necessary html in order to make a work available as an ebook. However, I seem to be stumped at two big phases, and I can’t seem to get my head around them.
I glanced through some of the threads in your “take pride” series, but nothing I saw seemed to address my questions (probably because they’re so basic that no one even thought to ask them!).
Anyway, my first question is about JEdit. I followed all your steps through chapter VI, but I found myself getting stuck in opening the file in my web browser. I know you use text mate, but would you know how to open a file from JEdit into a web browser?
My second question stems from the first. After being unable to open the file from JEdit, I then transferred it back to MS Word (despite your advice not to do so), with all the html included to account for headings, italics, etc. I saved the file as an .html, but when I opened it in a browser, I continued to see all the html language code included in the text.
From there, I was lost, since I was unable to affect any of the changes to my documented as I should have been able to. Can you help me with these questions? Or are am I overlooking so many things that you can’t even begin to understand them?
At any rate, I am still encouraged by the possibilities out there today, for the individual, and I am in part immensely thankful to you and your site. Thanks so much again, and
All the best,
Steve
Comment by Guido on December 14, 2014 at 12:24 pm
If you save the file with a .html file extension from within JEdit, you should be able to simply double-click the file and it should open in your web browser. If not—which would indicate something is wrong with your computer, really—you could also always right-click the file and select something like “Open with…” and then select your browser.
Saving a HTML file in Word will never work, in fact, it will not only not produce an HTML file, it will most likely also destroy your carefully crafted source code.
Comment by Stephen on December 16, 2014 at 3:46 am
Hi Guido,
Thanks again for this and as a matter of fact my computer is now in the shop, at the time of this writing, so I suspect you were correct about there being something wrong with it…
Thanks again for your reply and also for all your efforts in this wonderful site.
Sincerely,
Steve
Comment by Deborah on December 29, 2014 at 6:37 am
Hi Guido –
Thank you so much for this series. This is so helpful since I have just been contracted to create a series of ebooks for use as Moodle resources and I haven’t found out what formatting they accept that can also be used as separate stand-alone ebooks. I think if I just do the html files as you outline I will solve that problem so thank you! I hope I can contact you with any questions along the way.
Deborah
Pingback by Best e-book formatting process? | CL-UAT on December 29, 2014 at 12:17 pm
[…] am currently using Guido Henkel’s formatting guide for putting together my e-books, but I have modified it slightly. Having an extensive background in […]
Pingback by Best tool to create ebooks? | CL-UAT on December 30, 2014 at 12:52 am
[…] some other suggestions on converting your file to html, I would recommend going to this guide by Guido Henkel. He will walk you through all the details for making sure that your html file is […]
Pingback by Day 12: The Twelve Days of Author Goodies | Dog-ear Book Design on January 6, 2015 at 11:41 am
[…] For those of you who are HTML and CSS savvy, here’s the guide from Guido Henkel. […]
Pingback by Adventures in Self-Pubbing: Opening Up Shop | Gwen Mitchell on February 11, 2015 at 5:50 pm
[…] this. BUT, I followed the incredibly generous advice of Guido Henkel and did this myself too. His blog outlines the process, but for the nitty-gritty, buy his book. That entire process went off […]
Comment by Morris E Graham on April 30, 2015 at 11:17 am
Hi Guido. First of all, I want to thank you for this tutorial. In my credits of my debut novel, “Warzone: Nemesis,” I credited your help.
I have an issue that I can’t seem to quite reolve. I have mastered Microsoft Word’s handling of the thin space even when the text is justified, but not so fortunate with my eBook. I would like to add a thin space between double quote and single quote, but Kindle doesn’t honor the code. It acts as though it is a single space and nothing I’ve tried so far makes any difference.
Best regards, Morris E. Graham
Comment by Guido on April 30, 2015 at 12:01 pm
Thanks for the kind words, Morris. Interesting that you mention this. In American typography this is not commonly done at all—which is most likely the reason why it hasn’t been implemented in devices like the Kindle, iBooks off the bat. What you are referring to is something that is more commonly used in Europe. I remember in my days as a typesetter in Germany, we always inserted a narrow space following quotation marks, and also set apart things, such as exclamation marks with some narrow spacing.
HTML supports the entities  ,   and   as different spacing characters, but as far as I remember, none of them are supported by eBook devices, so to answer your question, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible. I would have to run some test, though, to confirm this.
Pingback by How Some Indie Publishers Got Started Their Way | D J Mills Writer on May 20, 2015 at 8:58 pm
[…] use jEdit to create the html file using the steps outlined by Guido Henkel in Take pride in your eBook formatting or purchase his updated ebook “Zen of EBook Formatting” which helps a fellow […]
Comment by Guido on June 6, 2015 at 12:57 pm
If you haven’t purchased the book yet, make sure to do so now. The new version has been adapted to current developments and expands on various subjects to clarify and to accommodate new developments in eBook devices.
Click here to grab the book on Amazon!
Comment by L.C. McGehee on June 14, 2015 at 5:13 pm
Thank you so much for this tutorial, Guido — you’re a life saver! 🙂
I wasted hours trying to follow Amazon’s directions on the KDP sites, and then messing around with Sigil, and ended up with nothing to show for it. After following the steps described here, I finally have an eBook that looks decent on Amazon’s book previewer. I’ve also purchased “Zen of eBook Formatting” so I have all the information in one place. (And I love the title, BTW!)
However, there are a couple of little issues that I haven’t been able to fix. We started a small press last year, and my sister and I took great pains with the formatting of the print version of our first book, and I really don’t want the eBook version to look any less polished. (I’ve seen lots of sloppy eBooks, even ones put out by major publishers, but I’m far too much of a perfectionist to accept something that looks so unprofessional to me.)
In the print version of our book, there is a dedication and an epigraph (each on a separate page) and I want them to have the same top margin as the chapter headings. I’ve tried a dozen different things (including making the formatting exactly the same as the chapter headings, with the only difference being that there’s no link to the TOC), and nothing works — the previewer still shows those lines right up at the top of the page, while the chapter headings have a much larger top margin. Ironically, the only device (if Amazon’s previewer is accurate) that most of my attempts have worked on is the Kindle DX, which in other respects appears to be rather retarded! On the DX, the preview shows no formatting of the fonts on the title page at all, and then it takes the logo of the press (which is just a small image on all the other devices, as it should be) and makes it huge and puts it onto an entire page by itself…!
Is there any way to make that top margin show on the dedication and epigraph pages? And if the Kindle DX really is that goofy, is there some way to correct for that? I was wondering about the possibility of turning the entire title page into an image instead of text, in order to completely control the fonts and sizes, the way you did with the fancy chapter headings — would that work, or could it create other problems?
Thanks again!
L.C. McGehee 🙂
Comment by Guido on June 14, 2015 at 6:06 pm
Thank you so much for your kind words. Without looking at your actual code, it is hard to say why the top margin does not show in those pages. There’s no real reason why it shouldn’t.
As for the title page, yes, if you want full control, making the entire page an image would solve your problem, most likely.
The DX is beast all of its own and a lot of the issues surrounding it come from the fact that it is a first/second-generation Kindle. These devices use an outdated ebook format that has SEVERE limitations. By that I mean that it is, as an example, not even possible to scale images. Depending on how the image is coded in your HTML, it will either always show up in its original source size or scaled to the size of the full page. Very little can be done about that, but fortunately these early Kindles do not seem to have much of a market penetration any more.
If you found the book helpful, please be so kind and leave a review on Amazon. It would mean a lot to me. 🙂
Pingback by Ebook Reformatting: Game of Sails, Take Two | on June 16, 2015 at 12:34 pm
[…] available to indie authors, Guido took the time to put together a step by step guide called “Take Pride in your Ebook Formatting.” Formatting errors are very common with ebooks (from major publishers as well as indies); […]
Pingback by E-books Are Not Print Books: Why Formatting Matters | Daydreamer Publishing on June 24, 2015 at 1:51 pm
[…] I read Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran, and upon his recommendation I checked out this e-book formatting tutorial by Guido Henkel. That’s when I realized exactly what an e-book is, and why it’s such a terrible idea to […]
Comment by L.C. McGehee on July 4, 2015 at 11:23 am
Hi Guido – I wanted to say thank you for your reply and let you know that I did post a review of the book. 🙂
I’ve found that making the entire title page into an image works quite well. Then I also ‘fixed’ the margin issue by inserting an image that was simply a blank place holder, but that seems to be a rather awkward way to do something that should be simple! So even though I’ve corrected the appearance of those pages in the document, I’d really like to figure out what the problem is and how to make the margin formatting work properly.
If there is no formatting in a document other than the basics that were copied and pasted directly out of your tutorial, how would you recommend putting a larger margin on a single page with something like a dedication? Above the text there is a page break formatted like this: Other than that, there’s nothing that’s been added or changed. (And the page break is working fine.)
Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
Thanks again,
L.C. McGehee 🙂
Comment by L.C. McGehee on July 4, 2015 at 11:28 am
When I submitted the comment, for some reason it took out the line showing how the page break is formatted . . .
Comment by Guido on July 4, 2015 at 12:04 pm
Thank you very much for the review, L.C. I truly appreciate it. Posting code in these comments doesn’t really work, unless you format the respective tags with entities.
To create a separate page for a dedication page. for example, I simply do this.
p.dedication { page-break-before: always; text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; margin-top: 4em; font-size: 1.25em; font-style: italic; }
and then on the page tag it like this…
<p class=”dedication”>This page is dedicated to Bruce Lee for his inspiration.</p>
Does this answer your question?
Comment by L.C. McGehee on July 4, 2015 at 4:46 pm
Thanks, Guido –
That should have answered my question except that it still isn’t working . . . Just as it was with everything I’d tried before, most of the devices (at least according to the previewer) are completely ignoring that top margin and shoving the dedication right up to the top of the page.
The only devices that recognize the top margin (and I changed the ’em’ value a couple of times to be sure) are that goofy Kindle DX and the iPad (and iPhone). All of the other Kindles (and the Android tablet and phone) just ignore it.
Have you ever run into this problem before? I just don’t understand why such a simple instruction would be ignored, when all of the other formatting for that class, such as the centering and the italics, works perfectly fine. 🙁
Comment by Guido on July 4, 2015 at 7:20 pm
Depending on how the HTML document is structured, yes, that can happen. Try padding-top instead of margin-top. That usually does the trick in those cases.
Pingback by Formatting your E-Book on a Budget | Mash Stories on July 8, 2015 at 4:04 pm
[…] Take Pride In Your eBook Formatting […]
Comment by L.C. McGehee on July 11, 2015 at 10:47 am
Hi Guido –
I’m afraid padding-top doesn’t work either. (All of the devices ignore it completely!) Do you have any other suggestions, or am I stuck with having to jury-rig the top margin by inserting the image of a blank space above the text?
It just seem so odd that there would be no way to make it work with the standard formatting codes!
Thanks again,
L.C. McGehee 🙂
P.S. I recommended “Zen of eBook Formatting” on my favorite writers’ forum. 🙂
Comment by Guido on July 11, 2015 at 11:37 am
This should not happen. Something is wrong with your code. Can you send me the HTML file via email, perhaps, and I’ll be happy to take a look.
Comment by Morris E. Graham on August 8, 2015 at 10:35 am
Hey Guido. I’ve asked you questions before. I was wondering if there is any way to use drop cap for a Kindle. This seems to be my white whale. Any code?
Comment by Guido on August 8, 2015 at 11:24 am
Yes, there are ways to do this, but there are some limitations, depending on the Kindle model and firmware the book will be displayed on.
In general there are two ways to do this. Either create a span around the initial character and then adjust the font properties in that span, or to use the first-letter pseudo-element.
Comment by Morris Graham on August 10, 2015 at 5:56 am
Thanks. Can you show both examples of how to apply this code? I tried some that I found on the internet and basically wound up with one oversize letter on the first line and then it indented it to the second line to continue.
Thanks, Morris
Comment by Ski on August 31, 2015 at 1:13 pm
Hi Guido,
I’ve nearly memorized your website and I have purchased your book, Zen of Ebook Publishing, but I still have a question.
I am using sublime text, and am wondering if things like comas, exclamation points and question marks need to be coded like quotes etc. I can’t seem to find out if they should, and so far they appear correctly in both MOBI and EBOOK formats. I sure would appreciate your opinions.
Best Rgds………Ski
Comment by Guido on August 31, 2015 at 1:18 pm
Standard punctuation marks do not need to be encoded specially, they are part of the standard ASCII character set.
Pingback by self publishing | eleanor kos fiction on September 22, 2015 at 5:51 am
[…] use Guido Henkel’s ebook formatting guide. He also has a book called The Zen of Ebook Formatting, which I’ve bought but not yet read. […]
Pingback by So you’ve written the first draft… (Part Two) | Clare Stark on October 9, 2015 at 12:52 pm
[…] you’re doing it yourself, a great resource to use is the FREE guide to eBook formatting from Guido Henkel. It’s absolutely invaluable. And if you’re publishing with Smashwords, make sure to […]
Comment by Storymedic on October 18, 2015 at 11:43 pm
Hello, I just bought your book as a thanks for writing this amazing free guide. The only thing I didn’t see you touch on is front matter. How do I make title pages that look good? Also, this is regarding images: if I use images for some of the fancier stuff, how big should I make them so they look good on all devices?
Comment by Guido on October 24, 2015 at 10:53 pm
@Storymedic, how to make title pages look good is really a matter of personal taste and design. There is little I can say on the subject. It is achieved like everything else in the eBooks using style settings to achieve whichever design you desire.
As for image sizes, there is a chapter on the subject in the book. There is no simple answer for it because of the many factors that play into it and the chapter in the book goes into a lot more detail about what thoughts should go in that particular decision process. It also depends, of course on exactly what it is that you are trying to do. Your explanation was unfortunately not very clear on that. 🙂
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 24, 2015 at 6:42 pm
Hi Guido. I am having trouble with being able to make large letters in my chapter headings and H1. For some reason, saying the size is 2em, or 3em, really doesn’t get it big enough. Can I see the CSS script you use that really works?
Also my client wanted font type Brush Script Std, but it doesn’t show up on my Kindle.
Thanks, Morris
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 25, 2015 at 6:37 am
Okay here is my notepad file from top to end of head…
html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0em; }
p.h1
{
font-size: 4em;
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
}
p.h2
{
font-size: 1.5em;
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
}
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 25, 2015 at 6:41 am
Now, here is my body where the text is:
*******************************************
My Title
***************************************
This doesn’t allow for centering, bold, or size. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for your time.
Morris
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 25, 2015 at 6:43 am
Correction, this is the first file
**********************************************
html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0;
padding: 0em; }
p.h1
{
font-size: 4em;
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
}
p.h2
{
font-size: 1.5em;
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
}
*************************************
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 25, 2015 at 6:45 am
For some reason I can’t show the top, It deletes it, but I have my doc type head and sytle type (CSS)
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 26, 2015 at 10:33 am
Okay to be clear. What I am saying is this: regular text is one size, like the regular paragraph tag with no size definition, presumably whatever the default devise decides. But,,,I don’t want the same size for everything. i want my title page and chapter headings larger. However, when I try to use this code below in my head, it doesn’t make it any larger, or at least not large enough. I’ve tested it on MOBI pocket reader and my new Kindle fire, same thing.
p.h1
{
font-size: 4em;
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
}
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 26, 2015 at 10:39 am
since you can’t put all the code in one post or it screws it up, I follow up: This is the line I apply in the body.
WARZONE: NEMESIS
Now, I think we’ve discuss this before, but with span class “centered”, it doesn’t even get centered, even though in my p.h1 tag, I told it so…
I also used to be able to put a paragraph break in my book to make it look nice when I needed it, by adding the following code below, but it no longer works on new books.
Anyway to sneak past the formatting Nazis and get a paragraph break in there?
Also, any idea what the html color # for the default white they use in Kindle?
Thanks, Morris
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 26, 2015 at 10:41 am
I couldn’t even put the code I used for “WARZONE: NEMESIS,” it wiped it all out when I posted.
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 26, 2015 at 2:33 pm
Forget all the other questions. I bought your book. How do you turn on “Regular Expressions” in WORD 2013? I really want to use that wildcard command to format the paragraphs.
Thanks, Morris
Comment by Morris E. Graham on October 27, 2015 at 1:47 pm
never mind. I see that you were meaning the editor, not word. You can delete all my questions as of late.
Comment by Morris E. Graham on November 1, 2015 at 12:16 pm
Okay. I read your book, and gave it a five-star review on Amazon. I loved it Most of all of my questions were answered. On “Zen of eBook formatting,” I do have one question. On your title page, it appears that you created a picture for the first part of it, and then “Guido Henkel” was in text. Can you show me all of the code you sued to create that page, and also what the size of your picture was?
And another question. Is there any way to vertically align animage to center?
Best regards, Morris
Comment by Guido on November 1, 2015 at 12:39 pm
Morris, vertical alignment is not possible in eBooks. It is really one of the most missed features for book design because it would dramatically help with page layout, even in free flowing books.
There’s really nothing special to the title page. It’s just an image wit text beneath. The code looks like this
<p class="title"><span class="centered"><img src="images/lettering.png" alt="ZEN OF EBOOK FORMATTING" /></span>
<p class="centered"><span class="centered"> </span></p>
<p class="centered"><span class="centered"> </span></p>
<p class="authorname"><span class="centered">Guido Henkel</span></p>
Comment by Morris E. Graham on November 1, 2015 at 1:57 pm
Okay, Ty. What was the CSS for p.title?
Thanks.
Pingback by From Idea to Page|Nick Bryan Guest Post - Music, Books and Tea on December 1, 2015 at 4:02 pm
[…] Convert book into HTML for ebook formats. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. […]
Pingback by How to format your novel for Smashwords in ONE DAY | Publishing with Smashwords on December 15, 2015 at 9:29 am
[…] for files OTHER than those used at Smashwords, let me refer you to ebook god Guido Henkel and his nine part series on crafting the perfect […]
Comment by Dan on January 6, 2016 at 9:04 pm
Wow, just bought your book, “Zen of Ebook Formatting.” Your guide here has been such a help to me, thanks so much!
Pingback by I Self-Published My First Book! – The Faithful Scribe on January 16, 2016 at 9:19 am
[…] of all trades and a master at it all, with crazy knowledge in ebook formatting! Check him out here, if you’re looking for the most effective way to format your book for digital publishing. […]
Comment by Emmanuel on February 16, 2016 at 2:24 am
What about the Reedsy Book Editor? https://reedsy.com/write-a-book It creates professionally designed books in seconds!
Comment by Guido on February 16, 2016 at 1:02 pm
I am not familiar with your software so I really have no opinion on it.
Pingback by Want an ISBN number? Grab a pen and paper… | Andrew Keith Walker on February 18, 2016 at 3:51 am
[…] which I also bought and downloaded… and with help of the excellent guidance notes of Guido Henkel which I found […]
Pingback by Fortunate Finds: Guido Henkel – Bori Praper | The Official Site on February 23, 2016 at 1:14 am
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Pingback by Amazon Takes Aim At Scammers But Hits Authors | David Gaughran on March 11, 2016 at 7:44 am
[…] Calibre could be affected – one of the most popular tools – or anyone who uses Guido Henkel’s formatting method (which I heartily recommend). And anyone that has read Let’s Get Digital or Let’s Get Visible […]
Pingback by I Self-Published My First Book | On Writing Books on March 12, 2016 at 7:07 pm
[…] of all trades and a master at it all, with crazy knowledge in ebook formatting! Check him out here, if you’re looking for the most effective way to format your book for digital publishing. […]
Pingback by How’s that Book Coming? | D. Thomas Minton on March 15, 2016 at 11:12 am
[…] ebook production, Gaughran directs readers to a step-by-step guide by Guido Henkel called “Take pride in your eBook formatting.” I have no idea if Henkel’s guide is still used by writers today, but I found it […]
Comment by Grayson Penney on March 19, 2016 at 1:17 pm
After reading thousands of hard print books and hundreds of ebooks, I finally realized the amount of work in publishing. Your guide should help with formatting. Thanks
Comment by Brian Robben on April 10, 2016 at 4:42 pm
I 100% agree with your message of finishing strong with ebook formatting. Authors, especially new ones, can get tricked into thinking all their work is done after writing and editing their book. That leads to sloppy and rushed formatting—no bueno.
Comment by rebecca humphrys on April 13, 2016 at 12:09 am
I am a beauty therapist not a pro writer at alllll. I have put together a manual of how to add pregnancy beauty services to your salon that can add $1000 to a businesses income. I’ve put it all together in a word doc. Where do I go now to make an ebook I can sell to salons.
Comment by Jennifer Alvarado on April 17, 2016 at 10:18 pm
Definitely, authors make mistakes for publishing their books. But I want to ask if people not get any other option for promoting their content then isn’t this the right thing.
If no, then you should share complete details as what things people need to do for becoming a better author or content creator.
Thanks,
Jennifer
Pingback by April Goals Round-Up 2016 – Storybook Perfect on May 1, 2016 at 6:46 pm
[…] far as goal #8 (learning) I did plenty. I learned how to format an ebook (Guido Henkel’s guide is super handy, but I needed a few other bits and pieces and some special formatting for my […]
Pingback by Polish Before You Publish – Formatting | The Sudden Insight Blog on May 26, 2016 at 6:01 pm
[…] I learned how to hand code eBooks in HTML, thanks to Guido Henkel; his nine-part blog series, “Take Pride In Your eBook Formatting“, walks you step-by-step through the entire process. It’s helpful to know a little bit […]
Comment by Joseph Moran on August 8, 2016 at 1:03 am
Hey guido,
I completely agree and appreciate your hard work..Keep updating 🙂
Comment by Morris E. Graham on August 17, 2016 at 5:57 am
Hi, Guido. Love your “Zen” book. Got a quick question. When you build a book in Calibre, what things do you check, the settings, when you build the book. The user manual didn’t really explain a whole lot. I am getting good book output, but wondering if they can be better. Thank you sir, for your time.
Comment by Charlotte Hyatt on November 1, 2016 at 10:29 am
Hello Guido. I got here from a link Yeshenia Vargas gave to several ebook formatting guides: 7 Money-Saving eBook Formatting Links For the Indie Author.
I believe everything about your ebook should be as close to perfect as possible
and I was feeling pretty low at the fact that I have not been able to do a good job at it. I am disabled and my income does not even allow for the $5 for getting someone on Fiverr to do it for me.
Thank you for this series. I hope it will answer many questions I have, especially how to handle some quotes and footnotes included in my book/memoir.
Pingback by Self-Publishing Basics: Ebook Formatting – The Easy Ways on April 25, 2017 at 12:14 pm
[…] it reflects well on you when you take time to format your ebooks well, whether by paying someone else, or doing the hard […]
Pingback by Bootstrap Publishing: Ebook Formatting – Amy Keeley on September 28, 2018 at 10:00 pm
[…] Take Pride in Your Ebook Formatting (web series) by Guido Henckel. He also has a book called The Zen of eBook Formatting. One final note […]