The Self Publishing DIY Group discussion
The challenge of publishing poetry on Kindle
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sorry about that - putting in the <> instructions actually carried them out so you won't see what I typed. I'll lead you to an easy HTML explanation tomorrow.
Sounding, so far so straightforward! Ziggy.
No 1: Invest £2.65 in Your Poetry eBook: Quick & Easy Formatting for Kindle [Kindle Edition] by D. L. Lang. It's a short, well-written, clear set of instructions, with examples, which will soon have you publishing your poems. At some stage you will have to plunge headfirst into HTML coding (in the book the author gives you a 10-minute break to 'freak-out' at this). All I can say is that when I published both of my books I found quite quickly that there is very little way of avoiding this arcane, dark and frightening area. So, with considerable trepidation, I set off into that darkness - only to find that its terrors are vastly magnified by our fears. There are a few basic rules, a little like grammar, for beginning and ending sentences, paragraphs, etc., all enclosed in nice little <> brackets (
means new para;
means end new para; means begin to underline; means end underlining, that sort of thing...)Simples, tsssk.
D.L. Lang takes your hand and leads you through the thickets with admirable clarity - right up until the point of publication. You could use her instructions to publish short stories, novels, as well. Try it.
No 2: This involves the use of the Kindle Comic Creator (available on the Amazon website) and an investment of £5.45 (I'm not getting a kickback here, honest...) in How To Make Kindle Comics & Children's Books [Kindle Edition] by R. Scot Johns. This book contains all you need to now about what it says on the cover. However, the Comic Creator can also be used to publish books of photos, graphic novels, and, oh yes, poetry on Kindle.
As we're dealing with poetry here, what is basically involved is as follows:
A poem tends to have its own visual structure, with line breaks, odd spacing, etc. Kindle is not good at this. It was set up as a reading device. It does not have pages with numbers, an index (you can do a search for anything you want to find). If you want to have each page with its poem appearing separately then you either follow D.L Lang's instructions above, or you plunge into Comic Creator.
The major challenge here is that you will have to learn how to set out your poem the way you want it to look in something like Word - and then how to convert this page into a Jpeg image. In case you're freaking out - don't. I haven't got 10 minutes to give you, as I am feeling my afternoonly coffee withdrawal symptoms coming on and need to leave....
If you have Word - from about 2007 on to 2010 - then you will be able to use the wonderful Snipping Tool. This will allow you to select your page as you want it to look, and then save it, which it will do as a Jpeg! Result! Then you import it into Comic Creator as its own page.
This is the simplified version. Read R. Scot John's book, which covers the whole process in detail.
OK - time for my latte.
More tomorrow.