Support for Indie Authors discussion

I'm fairly sure I saw something about it not being necessary any more to use HTML to upload books to Amazon.

Does anybody know if it is OK to upload straight from Word now?

Thank you.

Thanks, Tim. I have a vague memory of uploading my last one straight from Word but old instructions on 'how to upload' still mention HTML.

This may (or may not) be what you're looking for: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A...

My procedure is to save my doc as HTML, load the result into Calibre for a MOBI (or EPUB) and run that through the Kindle Previewer for a converted doc. I upload that result to Amazon, and it preserves my TOC links and gives me an NCX TOC as well. Both Calibre and the Kindle Previewer can be downloaded free.

My biggest problem now is trying to get a glyph to show properly in the Look Inside feature on my current book. Although the Amazon viewer shows the proper sized glyph, the Look Inside feature displays it vastly oversized.

That link is very helpful, Ken, thank you.

What I have impetuously done before noticing your post is to upload straight from Word and see what happens. I felt comfortable doing this because I realized I could save as a draft rather than simply publishing straight away.

The results are interesting. Across all devices, it looks OK except that only on one device do the chapter headings come out centred as they should. So I decided to leave well alone in case I mess up an HTML version. If it's a disaster when published and I take a look. I can reupload. I hope.

Emboldened by this success, I decided to leap onto the pre-order route. I read the instructions and I think I can handle this. Er, just. I should have read the thread in this group, but Amazon made it all sound so easy...!

I deduce that Amazon accept Word just as a .doc and they cleverly convert it. It did take five minutes or so to finish. Maybe HTML would have centred the headings on all devices.

Regarding your joined together words, Tim. I sent a pdf to someone and she said all the words were joined together. No idea why.

I'm working on Windows 10.

Thanks for your help, Tim and Ken. I'm going to follow that link and maybe bookmark it or make notes.

One thing I noticed when I uploaded just a .doc, was that I had no NCX TOC on the previewer. Maybe it's just me, or maybe they've improved the upload conversion, but I get better results with Calibre and the Kindle Previewer.

If you use a Mac you can upload an ePub document without making it html. It works just dandy.

Back in mid 2014 I uploaded a docx file instead of html and only noticed after the fact because I noted there was no html file in my book folder. I bought the book in question to see what it looked like and it was fine.

Later that same year, I uploaded an html with a tiered table of contents and noticed that it was only displaying the first level. I switched to the docx and they worked fine. I haven't gone back to uploading an html since.

Ken wrote: "One thing I noticed when I uploaded just a .doc, was that I had no NCX TOC on the previewer. Maybe it's just me, or maybe they've improved the upload conversion, but I get better results with Calib..."

You still have to bookmark the toc in order for the device to know where it begins.

Uploading a .doc or .docx work well for me.

I upload an epub (not recommended by KDP!) and it works pretty stellar for me!

Hugs,
Ann

Christina wrote: "You still have to bookmark the toc in order for the device to know where it begins..."

I downloaded my EPUB from Draft2Digital and was going to upload it to Amazon to see if it would fix the oversized glyph in the Look Inside feature. Then I discovered it had an ISBN, so I decided not to do it. I do bookmark the TOC chapter numbers and the chapter heading, but I don't bookmark the TOC heading. I went ahead and did that, and now I'm uploading a .doc to Amazon to see what happens.

It just finished. Still no NCX TOC.

What is NCX, Ken?

It allows you to access a table of contents from anywhere in the book.

EDIT: I uploaded a Calibre-generated EPUB and then the same EPUB converted by the Kindle Previewer; I get the NCX but the glyph is oversized on the Kindle DX view, along with a couple of the others. My best results come from a Calibre-generated MOBI, but the Look Inside feature has a problem with the glyph.

You may have to use HTML in Amazon if you use createspace. When CS uploads PDF to Amazon Kindle it's sometimes all unformatted so you go in and use html to make changes or revise to the proper format.

I never upload from the Createspace PDF. I've heard too many bad things about it. In fact, for a new book I always upload the ebook versions before I even think about the paperback. What I'm thinking about doing is eliminating the glyph in the Amazon ebook version, at least for the title and the chapter endings--anywhere it might show up in the Look Inside feature. Odd that I have no problem with the glyph when I go through Draft2Digital.

Ken wrote: "This may (or may not) be what you're looking for: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A...

Thank you very much for that link, Ken. I am about to start working on a complicated format non-fiction book and I have now downloaded the Kindle text-book creator (with its built-in tester for Kindle devices) by following the link you provided. So this was very timely, indeed, and all of my worries are over!

I prefer to work in a nicely formatted ODT (could be Word in this regard). Import it into Calibre and convert it to epub. The latter is a form of html and Amazon handles it well. I'm yet to see any problems with any epub I uploaded.

pros:
- With minimal additional formatting, exporting the ODT to PDF, I have a print ready version for Createspace.
- Calibre handles epub well which is a well documented format.
- You can also hand edit the epub if you are up to it.
- Amazon handles epub/html well and knows its own format (mobi) better than anyone else and produces it in house.

After a little more experimenting, I've found that I get satisfactory results for uploading to Amazon by converting my .odt document to HTML, and then converting that to a Mobi using Calibre. No problems encountered.

I had to eliminate the glyph for Amazon only because the "Look Inside" feature couldn't seem to display it properly no matter what I uploaded. For chapter endings I substituted the lower-case Greek xi (ξ ξ ξ) because of its obscure reference to "warped time." (don't ask)

I'd welcome any suggestions as to how to upload a file to Amazon that includes a glyph, and make it display at the proper size in the "Look Inside" feature. Or is that just a pipe dream?

Anna wrote: "I'm fairly sure I saw something about it not being necessary any more to use HTML to upload books to Amazon.

Does anybody know if it is OK to upload straight from Word now?

Thank you."

UPDATE:

I uploaded in Word and that was not the best thing to do because the chapter headings were not centred correctly across all the devices. I should have stopped right there and gone back and changed to HTML(which turned out to be so very easy). I can't change it yet because I also took the plunge to go down the pre-ordered route and now it's untouchable. But once it is published, I can unpublish and reload as an HTML one - as my previous books have been.

I hope this helps new authors. Experienced authors wouldn't be as daft and nervous as I am!

I use Jutoh from Jutoh.com to prepare all my books. You can import word documents into it or start you write up from within Jutoh.

Just like work processor. At the end, you can use the TTS text to speech to read your work back to yourself and then compile to Epub, or Mobi pocket, and any other format. It costs about £24.00 for all your writing needs.
Do not worry yourself about HTML. For your print book, you can export the Epub version and prepare you CS print book pdf.
With Jutoh, What you see is what you get.

Anna - You are NOT daft. I will be doing this in the future and am quite nervous. Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish you the best of success. : )

I uploaded in word last week and it went great. its called: The Lodge at Bristlecone Pines, By Thomas Bruce.

Good luck to you.

Sue (Dog Mom) wrote: "Anna - You are NOT daft. I will be doing this in the future and am quite nervous. Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish you the best of success. : )"

Thank you, Sue! I always put off getting them uploaded and find urgent and important jobs (like dusting) to do just because I remember the nightmare of the first time. I quite enjoy the formatting and uploading now that I've done it a couple of times and have a plan to follow, so I hope you will too. It's just so annoying knowing that I could have got it right if I hadn't thought I'd see how... ah well.

Give your doggies a big hug and cuddle from me, Sue. Lovely to see the work you're doing for them.

Thomas wrote: "I uploaded in word last week and it went great. its called: The Lodge at Bristlecone Pines, By Thomas Bruce.

Good luck to you."

Hi Thomas, All the very best for your first book. I think it's fine to upload just in Word but mine showed some inconsistencies across different devices. Now I'm on my third book, I feel I ought to get it perfect.

Your book looks interesting and worthwhile. I hope you will upload your book to Goodreads. I found it on Amazon but it's not yet on GR.

Hi Anna - All doggies cuddled and hugged. Thank you. : )

Well, I had a converted mess from Google Docs over to Word, in a Win10 OS, for my first novel. Took ages to go through 822 Kindle pages and I had a couple of spots that I could NOT get the formatting to line up.

Since then, rather than save as HTML and convert the file, hoping the chapter headings and such line up and space correctly, I have been switching to Web Layout in Word, to save the final file. I even write in that layout, now, to save time. After some adjustments to paragraph settings and using indent correctly (manually, not TAB) I have found that I can upload the doc file to the previewer, and have everything line up. That seems to be where the breakdown is, viewing in Word in standard page format uses some form of wordwrap that Amazon Kindle does not like. Maybe because they already use Wordwrap. Good info here all, thanks, it all adds to the knowledge base.

I converted .odt (Open Document, Libre Office format) to .mobi with calibre and uploaded that. I ran calibre on the command line so that I could set a lot of options.

I use the new Pages epub export and it worked marvelously. Don't even touch it with Sigil anymore. But that is if you are on a Mac...

Hi Anna, I'm new to GR but when I search for The Lodge at Bristlecone Pines it shows up for me. I'll have to look into uploading it to GR.

Thank you,

Thomas

Yes, I can find it if I search for the book, Thomas, but I can't see at the moment that it is on your profile. It will be good to get it on there as people will check your profile out when you are chatting in the groups.