Ensuring Your Kindle Ebook Looks Good on Kindle Readers

If you are an author, after you have written your book you have probably had it edited and had a cover created.

Then comes the issue of having the manuscript converted to ebook status.

Click here to read my Miller Mosaic post “Top Tips for Avoiding Errors in Kindle Ebook Conversions.”

This post will also explain why taking the “easy” way of uploading a Word doc directly to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is NOT a wise marketing plan.

Now let’s skip ahead to other tips of having your ebook look good.

On a Facebook group on which I participate, an author announced he had uploaded his first ebook to Kindle and how easy this was to do. I checked out the “Look Inside” feature for his ebook and discovered he had very long paragraphs. In other words, the paragraphs were very dense.

Now on a Kindle reader this may not be a huge problem. But for people reading his ebook on a PC or Mac thanks to a free Kindle app, such long paragraphs can discourage reading.

What to do?

I recommended he break his long paragraphs into shorter paragraphs. At first he thought that, since he had already uploaded his ebook to Kindle, it was too late.

I explained that a great advantage to an ebook that you control yourself is that you can upload new versions whenever you want to do so. In ebooks, nothing is written in stone.

Having said this, though, I did mention the problem with re-uploading a book to KDP now that KDP no longer supports third -party conversion software such as Calibre (the software I previously used). Now KDP requires ebooks be converted via KindleGen.

From the last few weeks of my emailing back and forth to KDP, I THINK that emails converted via Calibre in the past will not be affected UNLESS the ebook is re-uploaded with certain changes that seem to trigger messing up the ebook’s internal functioning.

Because I re-upload my Kindle ebooks frequently (to add the link to a new ebook or to change a cover, for example), I have run afoul of KDP’s changes. My previously published ebooks are now getting mangled (especially on Kindle Fire) and require complicated steps in order to convert well using KindleGen.

After my business partner Yael K. Miller and I spent a great deal of time learning this new method, we are now offering this service to other authors. Here is what we are offering:

NEW KINDLE EBOOk CONVERSION SERVICE from $500: We will convert your Word document to a well-formatted Kindle ebook for all Kindle devices. Includes creating four coded documents that are combined with your provided cover, description and seven keywords via KindleGen and uploaded to your own KDP account.

Email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com for more information.

And if you want to know more about self-publishing, click here to read my BookDaily guest post “First Steps for Self-Publishing Your Fiction or Nonfiction Ebook.”

(P.S. You also might like to read my guest post at BookGoodies “Are You Marketing Your Books Online?”)

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com