Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

Looking for a easy to use kindle document creator, or way to do it.

Amazon.com has a free download of their Kindle Previewer. I convert an .odt doc to HTML, run it through Calibre (free download), and then through the Kindle Previewer for a converted doc to upload to Amazon.

Thanks, Will a kindle pick it up without first uploading it to Amazon?

It should. But I use Calibre to load it onto my Kindle. It's been awhile since I tried any other way.

Are you looking to create a mobi file or make documents available to read on your kindle? Because if you just want to read a document, all you have to do is send it via your kindle's unique email address.

I read the question as how to create an ebook, which is described on the Kindle Direct Publishing website. You create in Word, make an HTML version and upload it, and they convert online. It's a bit more complicated if you have illustrations, but not too bad. The one thing they don't tell you is you'll have to manually embiggen your illustrations in the HTML version in Word, or they'll come out tiny.

Yes, making a book to read in kindle. I have received some files as email attachments made for kindles that the kindle will pick up automatically when I open them. I wanted to make those. Guess they are all mobi format?

When you save word as html, does that add junk code to it, or is just thrown away. By junk I mean stuff that would alter the page format.

I did not know about the unique kindle email address. That will make sending stories I am working on easy to send for comments.

I used Calibre to convert to epub and then uploaded to Amazon.

I used Openoffice as well, and I can't honestly say how that compares to Word overall as far as conversion goes. Pretty happy with the results, though maybe I should have gone with the Georgia font over the Times New Roman.

If it's a single target Kindle, it's easier to make a PDF - the text just doesn't reflow in that case.

In order to generate the goto menu that Amazon likes, I have to run the HTML through the Kindle Previewer for the converted doc. Maybe that's an idiosyncrasy with Calibre's conversion of the HTML doc to EPUB, but it seems to work for me.

I'm using Scrivener. I haven't pressed the button on uploading to Amazon yet but the mobi files I've sent direct to my Kindle are spot on.

I'm getting good feedback from people on how my book functions on Kindles, but I also used an ebook template from the very beginning for chapter breaks, etc and included an interactive table of contents before I converted it to epub with Calibre.

Charles,
Where did you get the ebook template from?

Robert wrote: "Charles,
Where did you get the ebook template from?"

I did a google search for Free Kindle (or ebook) Template. At this point, I don't remember which one I used, but I know I had to wrestle with it because the info is locked. I would be more than happy to send you the reconstructed template I used, if there were a way to share files on here?

The only problem is, in document statistics, I can't get the title to change from Nascent Decay, but that shouldn't be an issue once the ODT is converted to EPUB, MOBI, HTML, or PDF.

So if you go hunting for one, just be careful because some people have the permissions locked, which I find to be shady.

I believe there is also a free guide on how to do a doc to get it ready for epub on Lulu's site.