A few months ago, after I finished the first draft of my second novel, I started considering the possibility of joining the ranks of self-published, indie authors. Therefore I decided to educate myself in the matter of indie publishing, which I had previously consciously avoided, primarily due to two concerns:
- problems involved in e-book formatting;
- my utter lack of any useful ideas about how to even begin to (non-invasively) promote my own works in any effective way (I have a long but infamously anonymous career as a composer, musician and producer behind me, spanning back more than 20 years with extraordinarily limited success, to prove my hopelessness in this regard).
While the latter problem has, to date, remained unsolvable for me, the former has not.
Now, I happen to know enough about IT and coding to have been seriously worried about how to even approach e-book formatting properly. I knew enough not to trust any automatic conversion processes, and it turned out I was right. However, due to financial constraints (i.e., zero budget) I wanted to tackle this issue myself. The feat would have been impossible without Guido Henkel’s book, which has been, for me, the definite go-to e-book formatting compendium, and it hasn’t let me down once. In about a week of leisurely reading this book and formatting my first novel at the same time I was happy, confident, and... well, done with my first e-book, which has worked perfectly (at least formatting-wise ;))
It's true that I'd had some pre-existing basic knowledge of html, but I'm sure anyone with just a bit of a knack for computerly hijinks can do it as well, possibly more quickly than I can, because I can really take things easy sometimes. It's really important that you edit your text in a dedicated code editor, though. That's a must: don't attempt to edit your book in a general-purpose text editor, because you'll be sorry. And you'll go nuts, or blind, or both. If you don't have something like Dreamweaver and want to try a code editor for free, I'd recommend giving Sublime Text a shot.
Zen of eBook Formatting is very logically structured, clear and to the point, with ample examples and step-by-step instructions. With the aid of Mr. Henkel's expertise I've been able to overcome my fear of formatting my e-books myself... And I can now do so with the conviction that they’ll display well on all sorts of e-readers, phones and tablets. In fact, I now do it – with quite a bit of pleasure, stemming from the simple fact that I've managed to jump over this hurdle without breaking my neck – for a few fellow authors who are just as abysmally bad at self-promotion as I am and hence equally broke. "Zen" addresses practically every issue I have encountered to date, and I've had quite a few unusual ideas myself as well as requests from others (though things like two-column layouts on Kindle are still off limits, even in the new KF8 format – you hear me, Rick, I'm looking at you! If you’re not Rick, feel free to ignore this remark, it's for a fellow writer, if he ever sees it :))
In conclusion of my ode of eternal gratitude to Zen of eBook Formatting let me also point out that, to boot, Mr. Henkel is a very generous and plain old “nice” guy, who will not shy away from any questions you might have, should you run into any insurmountable problems. If it would make sense to buy two of these books, I would. No, wait: if I ever buy an e-book with horrific (non)formatting again and feel like telling the author they should actually format their book rather than export it from Word and publish it, I'll consider buying a copy of Zen of eBook Formatting for them as well – as a useful gift and a meaningful hint.
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Easy to Follow Instructions for a Perfectly Formatted eBook
Thank you, Guido! Your book was easy to understand and your methods worked perfectly. I was able to format my ebook and load it onto my Kindle from Calibre. That was exciting! My tiered TOC didn't allow for collapse/expand when I created the MOBI file with Calibre, so I went to use KindleGen. That's when I found Kindle Previewer 3. The MOBI file it created fixed the collapse/expand issue and the viewer itself is pretty cool.
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2016
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Top reviews from other countries
- Jorge EscobarReviewed in Mexico on September 17, 2018
I found the answers... Yet I'm disappointed at the way Kindle books works.
Great work, the book contains a lot of code snippets and they are useful. I really think the book would improve if it contained a link to an example book and I mean the full HTML code of an example book, not a real one.Jorge EscobarI found the answers... Yet I'm disappointed at the way Kindle books works.
Reviewed in Mexico on September 17, 2018
I wonder if HTML and CSS comments work and don't mess up the eBook? I guess I'll find out by myself. Great work, thanks for writing it.
I confess that I purchased the book just to see how to apply drop caps on the eBook, yet after reading your case about it, I decided to not apply them or at least not now. If I'm not getting it to look just as intended, I don't think it's worth the hassle.
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- Josh MReviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2014
An excellent guide to creating eBooks professionally.
- petergrayReviewed in Spain on August 28, 2015
SIX MONTHS HEADACHE OVER IN TWELVE HOURS
