Notjohn's Guide to Ebook Formatting: Ten Steps To Getting Your Book Ready To Sell Online, Digital and Paperback

by N.J. Notjohn

The self-publisher's bible! In this clear and entertaining ten-step guide, a prolific American author reveals how he formats his books for sale throughout the world. The secret, he explains, is to use the universal "epub" format to create a single e-book file that will be accepted by every digital retailer, from Amazon.com through Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, and smaller booksellers like the Canada-based Kobo."Most beginners write their books in Word or Open Office," he explains, "and they expect the same document to convert easily to an e-book and a paperback. Sometimes that happens, but more often it doesn't, because word processors litter the book file with hidden formatting. The result can be a disaster."Instead, the book should be converted to clean HTML, the markup language used to create a web page. (All e-books are web pages at heart, and the Kindle and other e-book readers are just special-purpose web browsers.) The conversion takes seconds and costs nothing. It can then be plugged into a simple template that Notjohn includes in this Guide and makes available on his blog for anyone to use.If all else fails, there's Plan B: a stripped-down template for books that consists mostly of text. He concludes with a chapter on how best to present your e-book on the Kindle platform, with hints on encrypting the book, copyrighting it, and pricing it for the greatest return.Revised and updated November 2021 edition.

Genres: Writing

147 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 2, 2013

Reviews

[Cat McMahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can do it! Because of Mr. Notjohn's terrific and complete information, in his book and on his website, I was able to HTML tag my book for upload to KDP Select without a hitch. And this from someone who knew nothing about HTML and CSS! I can't thank him enough for helping me make a successful leap into the unknown.

Merged review:

I can't thank N.J. Notjohn enough for his excellent instructions about how to convert my MS Word file into an ePub file so I can upload my books to self-publishing platforms. He walks his audience through each step and gives professional advice along the way. Without this book, I could not have successfully self-published!

[Mick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on do it yourself formatting of an eBook. This brings it back to the lowest level, working with the HTML yourself and provides you templates and everything you need. I bought it not knowing that, as I already know HTML and am very familiar with Sigil. Even so this book has a lot of good advice about the home self-publishing process, not just the formatting.

Recommended!

[Duane Dipert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why I decided not to e-publish

I thought I could pick up some easy way to format my book for e-publishing. I'm too old to learn a whole new format. Author goes through a long long explanation of converting to HTML then going to Sigal and making corrections there. I think I'll stick with what I know--Word (which took years to master) then convert to .pdf then find a printer.

[Karen Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keeping It Simple With Notjohn

Notjohn blasted my publishing nightmare into manageable pieces. Though I published two Kindle books before finding this book, I dread the process. Notjohn explains the complicated process simply. Many thanks.

[Bill Hines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff

A lot of great material and a few tips I wouldn’t recommend, such as changing your book description in Amazon author central. If you do that, it gets overlaid the next time you make a change to the book in KDP.

[A.R. Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive and clear, step-by-step description of e-book formatting. Beginners can easily understand the process. More experienced indie authors can still find important tips to improve their own process.

[Cesare Coochie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad but very old book

[Bruce Dinsman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot more from this book than many others about Kindle publishing. KUDOS to the writer

[Anne Skyvington · Rating 4 out of 5]

KDP and how to...

This taught me stuff I never would’ve believed I could understand, even about beginning to do text! It’s possible now.

[Susan Feltman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glad I Bought This Book

Step-by-step instructions provide a welcome roadmap for the first-time self-publisher. This book is an essential tool which was very helpful.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very accessible guide for beginners

Really useful guide for anyone new to ePub formatting and uploading to KDP etc. Friendly,approachable tone and straightforward step-by-step info.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are publishing a eBook, I strongly recommend that you read this book. Before I read this book, I formatted my story in Word. This worked fine until recently, when I noticed that when I read my book on my iPhone and other IOS devices using the Kindle reading software, much of the formatting did not display properly. Nothing I did in Word solved the problem - even taking out all of the formatting and reformatting the entire book from scratch (using Word "Styles"). Then I found this book, followed the instructions, and now it works perfectly on every device I've tested. I've also noticed that, when I click on a link to a chapter from the table of contents page, the page loads much more quickly than it did with a book formatted in Word. Another benefit is that, because his process produces an Epub file, I have been able to upload my book to iBooks and Nook as well as Kindle.

I wish the author had put more in the book about images, because there are images in my book that appear alongside text, and I had to do some Google searches to figure out how to handle those. Also, the author omits an important sentence from step 9 Building the Epub. He explains that, to create chapters in your book, you have to place the cursor at the place in the text where the new chapter is to begin. He should also explain that you then have to click on the "split at cursor" icon in the top row. But this is a minor omission and one easily figured out. The one real problem I had is that when I took the word formatting out of my book and opened it as an HTML file, all the paragraph separations were missing. I still don't know why that happened - I don't think it's supposed to happen, but it meant that I had to manually enter paragraph markers for every paragraph. That was tedious!

The genius of the book is the html templates he provides, which make it possible for someone like myself, who previously knew nothing about HTML, to follow his 10 steps and get a beautifully formatted eBook in a matter of several hours. Including the above mentioned paragraph separation problem, I think the whole process took me about ten or twelve hours, and my book is 30,000 words. Here's the finished product if you want to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Back-Christmas-...

[Fred Fanning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides good information I didn't know about formatting books in html for Kindle. The author provides easy to use templates to make the transition from a word processor to html easier.