The greyscale display of the Kindle and some other e-ink readers, with their somewhat primitive formatting options, present somewhat of a challenge for book designers, publishers and authors.
There are however a few simple things we can do to create much fancier-looking, eye-catching and more readable books.
Note that I am no graphic designer and these tips won’t generate anything like a carefully crafted print book but they will make the book reading process more enjoyable for the reader.
Note too that the screenshots here are blatantly self-promotional from my own books – I am just practicing what I preach!
1. Judging a book by its cover
The book cover is the first thing that registers with our unconscious mind. Getting it right is key and both an art and a science. There has to be good contrast between any graphics or text and the title and author name has to be legible in a range of sizes.
Tip 1 : make sure your cover works equally well on greyscale and colour devices – and in thumbnail
2. Table your contents
With no pages to thumb through, we have to give the reader an easy way to navigate around their books. Including a hyperlinked table of contents is not a nice-to-have or option but a given.
Tip 2 : get a copy of Scrivener which not only generates all ebook formats but also generates hyperlinked tables of contents
3. Use graphics for chapter titles
Use a graphic for each chapter title (and any quotes)
Tip 3 : if you don’t know how to generate graphics, sub it out to someone on www.fivesquids.co.uk or www.fiverr.com
4. A picture tells a thousand words
Use an image and graphics to tell part of the story and augment the text, making sure that you follow guidelines for image resolution. Use colour where possible than renders well in greyscale. Also make sure you check copyright and I’ve listed the photo libraries I mainly use below.
Tip 4 : use the free Kindle Previewer to check your graphics in colour and greyscale and on a range of devices
5. Keep it short and consistent
Make chapters roughly the same length and use sub-headings to break long chapters into chunks. This works best for non-fiction but can apply to some fiction too.
Tip 5 : read your book to yourself out loud. If you find you are pausing for breath at any point or get lost or bored, the reader will too!
Useful Links
www.fiverr.com
www.fivesquids.co.uk
Scrivener
Free Kindle Previewer
iStockphoto
Fotolia
Shutterstock
Screenshots for this blog taken from:
This We Know
100 Years of Ermintrude
Planes of Being
Also see my my Author Page to download and read other examples
Brilliant thank you Tom. Very useful information and easy to follow too.
I’ve been wondering about the eBook formatting puzzle. What I do is follow Guido Henkel’s guide. He gives detailed instructions for producing a HTML version of the text, starting from an MS-Word document. Calibre is used to convert the HTML file to a .MOBI for the Kindle. This is quite hard work, but I’ve heard that the various shortcut approaches produce poorly-formatted eBooks. I think I read somewhere that an MS-Word document can be uploaded directly to KDP and KDP will format and convert for you (with unreliable results). I’ve also heard that an MS-Word document can be transferred direct to a Kindle by eMailing it to my Kindle account. I haven’t tried this yet, but I wonder if this might be a way of publishing to KDP.
I tried Calibre but even as a mecha-techie just found it too complex. I find Scrivener is so much easier and also a great tool to use in the creative process.
I should have added that I use Smashwords for all other eReader formats. There is no other way if you live outside USA as I do.
Smashwords is fab and great for non-techies too
There is a free eBook you can download from Kindle called “Formatting Your Book For Kindle” that walks you through the entire formatting steps and uploading. It’s about an hours reading and well worth it
MS Word deals with the Table of Contents too – all explained in the free eBook but basically it’s using H1 tags for Chapter headings and H2 tags for subheadings
I didn’t use graphics for titles as they annoy me being someone who reads Kindle books on an iPhone
I’ve spent ages researching all this stuff though as my book went live for Kindle on Sunday! 🙂
Thanks Veronica – there are so many ways to skin these cats – love that book too