Support for Indie Authors discussion

Has anyone had problems while uploading your book before publishing with the Kindle Previewer? It keeps showing my first page disclaimer as if it were unaligned even though it’s not (I hope). I pulled my hair out over this yesterday. It kept separating the very first line to align it left and the rest of the text aligned center. I thought I had formatted it wrong, so I spent an hour trying to fix it and uploaded the book again and again! I have my own Kindle Previewer App on my laptop that shows it’s aligned all centered. I’m just afraid when people download the book, the first line will really be left aligned.

Does anyone think it’s just a Kindle Previewer glitch? Ugh the little things you can spend a day on!

Do you have a Kindle device or a Kindle app? If yes, try to download the file from where you publish it and open it in the actual e-reader or app and see how it looks there. If it's okay there and only wrong in the previewer, then it might be a bug.

I did upload it on my Kindle Previewer App, and it’s fine there, but I uploaded it directly from my computer not Amazon.

I encountered a formatting issue when viewing in KDP's online previewer. After pulling my hair out for a couple of days, I ultimately downloaded a mobi file (from KDP) to my computer, then transferred it to my Kindle where it viewed correctly. KDP support did get back to me saying that the online viewer was not the readers experience (or something of that nature).
Good Luck!
Nancy

Okay, that’s good to hear! Thank you, Nancy.

If you're uploading a Word file, stop, for two reasons. First, is that—unless they've fixed it in the past year—the resulting deliverable file on Amazon is twice the size it would be had you uploaded a Mobi file. And you pay for the larger file in reduced royalties.

The second reason is that with the Mobi file, what you see is what you get on Amazon as the finished product.

Download the free Calibre app to do the conversion.

Thanks, Jay. I’ll definitely look into Calibre. Word is driving me crazy when it comes to converting it to Kindle. It seems to hate em dashes too, unless they’re formatted a particular way on Word.

When it comes to the paperback, using Word hasn’t given me problems, because I convert it to a PDF anyway.

Leah wrote: "Thanks, Jay. I’ll definitely look into Calibre. Word is driving me crazy when it comes to converting it to Kindle. It seems to hate em dashes too, unless they’re formatted a particular way on Word...."

Hi Leah! Jay is right, you shouldn't use Word for ebook formatting. Too many gremlins under that particular hood :) You really need to use a software dedicated to the creation of ebooks, like Calibre, or Jutoh. Could even use D2D to create the file.

If you're still having trouble with it, I'd be happy to take a look at it for you. Formatting is something I'm quite good at.

Eldon's suggestion of using Draft2Digital is great. (It's free to sign up for and upload your manuscript. If you are going wide, they have quite a few stores including Kobo) The problem is if you want special types of formatting as they only have certain templates for use. You can download the mobi file from there. I found Calibre a hit or miss on two of my books.

If you are using Word...try getting a template you like from Joel Friedlander of BookDesignTemplates. They aren't that difficult to use and you can add and delete things from them. Just check your chapter titles, gutters and headers before finalizing them. It took me a day to get my book the way I wanted and when I uploaded it to KDP using the formatted Word document, it made a beautiful book that I liked and an mobi file that had no issues. If you do use the template, you still need a working knowledge of how to format in Word. (ie: headings, gutters, margins, paragraphs titles, etc. using the MS Word formatting options.) Rule of thumb...do not use enter for centering or r moving things down on the page. You will have trouble finding that gremlin for sure. Because I use the document formatting options, I've had essentially no problems with uploading the KDP using MS Word, even without a template.

B.A. wrote: "Eldon's suggestion of using Draft2Digital is great. (It's free to sign up for and upload your manuscript. If you are going wide, they have quite a few stores including Kobo) The problem is if you w..."

B.A. wrote: "Eldon's suggestion of using Draft2Digital is great. (It's free to sign up for and upload your manuscript. If you are going wide, they have quite a few stores including Kobo) The problem is if you w..."

I've have a problem that seems like it should be simple, however I've spent hours . . . if someone could help I'd appreciate it! When formatting chapter headings, I use "Heading 1" in Word, which is formatted to have space above and below the title heading. When I upload to KDP, either Word or Mobi, the titles are at the top of the page with very little space below. I just tried using Calibre to edit, and placed html code before and after the title. This did correct the problem in the Calibre view, however when I upload to my Kindle the problem remains. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks for the advice and suggestions B.A. and Eldon. I just realized yesterday I have downloaded Calibre before. I don’t remember what it was, but I think I had trouble trying to figure it out. I should spend more time with it. And Eldon, that’s kind of you to offer assistance. For now, the kindle upload does look right in the Look Inside. For the most part, I’ve been able to properly format my ebooks. The sequel looks great. I think Word and Amazon don’t always “stream” the right way.

Nancy, that sounds maddening. I would have no idea how to fix that. The one thing I haven’t learned how to do well is use headings. Sounds like a similar computer glitch issue as mine though!

Nancy, that is a reasonably easy fix.
Go to heading 1 and right click, then modify. Go to the bottom left to format, then Paragraph. Under paragraph, got to spacing and set up how far down you want the heading under top(For print 150 is good) and the spaces after it under bottom (25 is usually good) then check how it looks to you and adjust it

. If you have a subheading, use heading 2. Set heading 1 with 0 at the bottom. Set heading 2 with bottom and top spaces as to what you think looks good. (Usually 10 or 15 on top and 25 on bottom.)

Whoops...something I found with Calibre and forgot to mention. It sometimes doesn't handle scene breaks properly. To prevent that, when you call for conversion, select Heuristic Processing. Then choose enable heuristic processing. Finally, uncheck everything but "ensure scene breaks are consistently formatted." Since I discovered that I've never had a problem.

B.A. wrote: "Nancy, that is a reasonably easy fix.
Go to heading 1 and right click, then modify. Go to the bottom left to format, then Paragraph. Under paragraph, got to spacing and set up how far down you wan..."

I tried that about 1,000 times. Then, just to be sure I wasn't loosing my mind, I tried it again. While the word doc looks correct, when I upload the mobi file or the word doc the spacing is incorrect. Thanks for trying, if you have any other ideas of why it does not work, please let me know :)

Leah wrote: "Thanks for the advice and suggestions B.A. and Eldon. I just realized yesterday I have downloaded Calibre before. I don’t remember what it was, but I think I had trouble trying to figure it out. I ..."

Happy to hear it worked out :)

Hello, how are you all?

I had minor issues with KDP previewer.
Whenever I upload in pdf format, KDP previewer highlights a lot of mistakes.

To solve the problem, I downloaded another free template online and then, it was accepted.