Kindle Create Add-In Beta for Word

Kindle Create Add-In Beta for Word

L. J. Gummow, Ph.D.

Kindle Create Add-In Beta for Word © 2019 by Linda J. Gummow, Ph.D.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. 

Cover designed by Robin Ludlow

https://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/ 

L. J. Gummow, Ph.D.

Visit my website at

https://www.carbohydrateconfessions.com

Send e-mail to gummowljg@gmail.com. 

Printed in the United States of America 

First Printing:2019

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Should You Read This Book?

Chapter 2

Why I Wrote This Book

Chapter 3

Microsoft Word Sucks as a Self-publishing Tool

Chapter 4

Getting Started

Chapter 5

Kindle Create, Kindle Previewer, and Kindle Create Add-In Beta

Program Downloads and Manuals

Chapter 6

Setting Up Word

Set PDF Save As Settings

Set Smart Quotes

Show Formatting

Setting Image Compression

Enabling the Kindle Create Add-In

What Happened to Windows Explorer?

Creating a File Structure for Your Manuscript

Chapter 7

Clean Up Your Manuscript

Tab stops

Smart Quotes

Clearing Extra Paragraphs

Clear Headers and Footers

Remove Extra Spaces

Textboxes

Charts and Tables

Miscellaneous Formatting Types

Those Nasty Hyphens, Emdashes, and Ellipses

Chapter 8

Unsnarling Page Numbers

Page Number Blues

Radical Fix for Terminally Mixed Up Page Numbers

Helpful Tips About Page Numbering, Headers, and Footers

Headers

Chapter 9

The Master Style Template for Kindle Create and Kindle Create Add-In

Developing Your Master Style Template

The Styles Menu

Finalizing and Saving the Manuscript Style Template

Opening Your Master Style Template

Moving Your Manuscript into the Master Style Template

Copying Separate Files to Create a Master Document

Adding Section Breaks

Saving Your Newly Formatted Master

Chapter 10

Headings, Navigation Pane, OneDrive, and Hyperlinks

Images, Lists, Charts, and Quotations

Navigation Pane

OneDrive

Hyperlinks

Maximizing Hyperlinks

Final Steps

Chapter 11

Kindle Previewer 3.0

Enhanced Typesetting

See Your E-book as the Reader Will See It.

Search and Export

Reloading Your Book into Previewer

Chapter 12

Editing Your Document

Text Read Back

Editing Your Document

Marking Up Your Manuscript

Combine and Compare Documents

Chapter 13

Getting Acquainted with Kindle Direct Publishing

Chapter 14

Using the Kindle Create Add-In to Build a Digital Book

Kindle Create Add-In Beta Menu

Mirrored Margins

Page Templates

Create a Title Page

Insert a Copyright Page

Preparing to Create an Interactive Table of Contents

Applying Book Elements to Your headings

Inserting a Table of Contents

Format and Preview Your Table of Contents

Updating Your Table of Contents

Insert Acknowledgements, Dedication, About the Author, and Other Pages

Prep for Publish

Review Menu

Chapter 15

Polishing and Editing Your E-Book

Previewing Your E-Book Images

View Images in All Platforms

Testing Your Links

Uploading Your E-Books with Calibre to iPad or Kindle Reading Devices

Distributing Copies of Your Book

Chapter 16

Getting Your Versions Straight

Understanding Versions

Restore Your Document

Simultaneous Views of Two Manuscripts

Chapter 17

Book Templates and the Kindle Create Add-In

Download Document Template

Bleed

Comparing the Layouts of Templates of Different Trim Sizes

Reset Margins and Paper Size of Your Manuscript

Chapter 18

Formatting the Paperback Manuscript

Kindle Create Add-In Beta Menu

Applying Book Elements to Your headings

Add Front and Back Pages

Create a Title Page

Insert Copyright Page

Insert Dedication Page

Insert a Table of Contents Page with Right Justified Page Numbers

Insert Acknowledgements, Dedication, About the Author, and Other Pages

Textboxes

Images in E-Books Versus Paperback Books

How to Insert an Image

Formatting an Image

Prep for Publish Headers

Understanding Headers

Turning Off First Page Headers

Prep for Publish Page Numbers

Review Menu

Chapter 19

Adding a Table of Contents to a Paperback

Format and Preview Your Table of Contents

Update Your Table of Contents

Chapter 20

Using Kindle Create

Transitioning from this Book to Kindle Create

Using Kindle Create

Table of Contents, Insertion Point for Table of Contents, and Page Numbering.

Select Your Theme and Add Front Matter

Format the Body of the Manuscript

Comic Books, Cookbooks, etc.

Chapter 21

More About Images

Image Quality

Chapter 22

Uploading Your Manuscript to KDP

Problems and Solutions

Video Tutorials

Chapter 23

Who’s Driving This Bus?

Owning Your Formatting

Your Unformatted Manuscript Is Your Treasure

About the Author

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Pablo Picasso

Chapter 1

Should You Read This Book?

Kindle Create Add-In Beta and Kindle Create are powerful new authoring tools which are offered to you at no cost by Kindle Direct Press. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misleading information about these self-publishing tools being circulated at writing workshops and on the internet. Some experts advise that using the Kindle Direct Publishing tools is a snap—just a few button clicks, and presto, your book is published onto the internet Marketplace. To this magical pulling of the rabbit out of the hat, I say, Ha! Maybe two button clicks work for that guy, but they didn’t work for me. Others tell you that self-publishing is harder and more time consuming than the writing of your book. In fact, these experts seem to be saying that the best thing to do is spare yourself the agony and pay somebody to make your book publication ready. To that argument, I also say, Ha! The truth, as is often the case, lies somewhere in between.

To decide if this book can help you reach your self-publishing goals on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform (KDP), please ask yourself the following questions:

I can afford to pay to have my book formatted by someone else. (YES/NO)

I write in a language other than English. YES/NO

I write using Microsoft Word on a Macintosh computer. YES/NO

I’m not willing to buy the latest version of Microsoft Office. YES/NO

I have compiled, uploaded, and published a book using Kindle Direct Publishing. YES/NO

I have mastered the elements of Microsoft Word which are essential to self-publishing. YES/NO

I can honestly say that, for me, self-publishing on the KDP platform is easy and quick. YES/NO

My book is light on text and heavy on graphics, i.e., comic books, cookbooks, children’s books. YES/NO

I don’t mind if Kindle Direct Publishing has proprietary control of my book’s formatting. (YES/NO)

If you answered Yes to all these questions, don’t read this book. You’ll learn nothing helpful.

If money is no object for you, congratulations. Go right to BookBaby Publishing or a comparable business, and they’ll format your manuscript, upload your book to KDP, advertise your book, and distribute your book.

If your manuscript will be written in a language other than English, the procedures laid forth in this book won’t help you get your book uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing.

If you’re using Microsoft Word (MS Word) on a Macintosh platform, the Kindle Create Add-In Beta is not available to you as of this writing. The information on formatting your document in Microsoft Word to make it publication ready is relevant. I’ve included a chapter on using Kindle Create.

Marketing For those unfamiliar with the term beta version as applied to software, a beta version is a complete version of a program or application that is released to interested users before the last version has a world-wide release.

This book is designed for writers who use or who are willing to purchase Microsoft Office 365 or Microsoft Word 2019. The newer versions of Microsoft Word have many fabulous features. If you used Microsoft Word years ago and abandoned it for word processing freeware, think again. Word’s bigger and better. If you abandoned Microsoft Word for a writing program such as Scrivener, think again. More about Scrivener later.

This book is intended for authors with text heavy books, not text light books such as children’s books or cartoons. For these-books, use the Kindle Create application. The Kindle Create application uses the same logic and has the same basic features (plus a few) as the Kindle Create Add-In Beta. The information on setting up your manuscript in Microsoft Word will help you reach your self-publishing goals using either the freestanding or the add-in Create program.

If you hate giving up even a degree of control to Kindle Direct Publishing, you should look to methods other than the Kindle Create Add-In to format your manuscript for uploading to KDP. You might benefit from the basic manuscript formatting material in the early chapters of this book. All self-publishing efforts require the production of a simply, but consistently, formatted working manuscript.

If you answered No to the above questions, you’re probably struggling to publish your first or second book. I’ll teach you what I’ve learned through time consuming trial and error. I’ll walk you through the KDP uploading process in a step by step non-technical fashion beginning with getting your manuscript in a form which the KDP publishing platform can deal with.

The specific benefits you’ll derive from using the Kindle Create Add-In or the Kindle Create tools for Microsoft Word are several. First, you won’t have your name associated with an ugly digital book. Believe me, there are a lot of ugly books out there. Better still, you won’t print copies of your ugly book. Several professional book layouts are available. These can be used to build digital books and print books of many sizes and types.

Even if you hate formatting a manuscript, you can streamline your editing and formatting process. This keeps you in control of your manuscript, and you won’t spend endless hours trying to get the page numbers or the headers and footers to come out as they should. You won’t have to figure out how to get the required interactive table of contents. You won’t have to pay someone to correct your mistakes. (That’s if, and it’s a big if, the consultant you select has kept up with changing KDP standards.)

You’ll learn the mysteries of the Microsoft Word menus which are relevant to self-publishing. Most of us learn those aspects of Word which we’ll need for the immediate project, never crack a manual or book, and don’t know how to integrate Word functions with self-publishing software. I can’t make you a Microsoft Word expert. Microsoft has already produced excellent reference books. What I will do is take a 1, 2, 3 step approach to self-publishing using the Kindle Create Add-In.

This book is designed to help visual learners. Most of us comprehend better when we see a program function demonstrated rather than described on a written page. In other words, when learning computer programs, showing is better than telling. In addition to listing the necessary steps, I’ve relied heavily on the excellent tutorials on YouTube. I’ll provide links you can follow to hasten your learning experience.

The steps in this book have been kitchen tested. As I wrote this book, I did each one of these steps as written. I also had someone who answered all the test questions No follow these steps. I didn’t pull this book out of my hat!

Hardware Requirements

Kindle Create requires a computer system with 4 or more gigabytes of RAM and a Windows version 7 or later for PC and MacOs10.9 or better for Mac. Kindle Create supports the following languages, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Malayalam, Marathi, Portuguese, Spanish, and Tamil. The Kindle Create Add-In supports only English.

The Kindle Create Add-In has the same hardware requirements, but it is only compatible with the Windows Operating System at this writing.

Microsoft Office 365has the following hardware requirements:

1 Gigahertz or faster x86=bit or x64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set, 2 GB RAM, 3.0 GB available disk space, 1280x800 screen resolution.

Graphics hardware acceleration requires a DirectX 10 graphics card.

Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 10 Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2008 R2. For the best experience, use the latest version of any operating system.

The current or immediately previous version of Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge.

.NET 3.5 or better.

Chapter 2

Why I Wrote This Book

A recent writers’ workshop experience illustrates one of my motives for writing this book. At a presentation introducing a freeware publishing layout program, the speaker asked, Who knows how to use the Word Styles menu? He wanted to gauge our knowledge base before starting his presentation. Only a few of the fifty attendees had mastered this skill. As a result, the room was filled with blank and confused faces for the remainder of the presentation as he spoke of gutters and mirrored margins. Only a few of us were able to follow the presentation and ask questions making this a wasted hour for many of us. Later, I thanked the presenter for the helpful information. He said I was one of the few who’d enjoyed his talk. He’d received many poor reviews because