Amazon Kindle Poetry

Perscribo · Jul 31, 2011

Hello Poets!

I'm hoping I'm putting this in the right area, but I'm curious if there are any others who might be interested in a thread/FAQ for formatting your poetry on Amazon Kindle. This might be especially useful if you use non-traditional type constructs.

As many already know, the portal to publishing your own Kindle eBook for free is here.

The HTML code for one eBook I have developed is here.

Feel free to use or abuse at will.

Having extensively sampled (and sadly, in some cases wasted precious dollars on) all the sub-sections and genres of poetry in the Kindle Store, it appears that 99 percent of the publishers (Amazon and big houses included) are not formatting their Kindle poetry the right way. I am 99% sure (alas, evil hubris!) this code is the code that works best.

So, whether you're a brilliant publisher/programmer looking to hack this (please reference actual lines if you want to get technical) or debate, or just a poet looking for pointers on how to get your poetry correctly built and placed onto the shoulders of Amazon (aka "the 800 pound gorilla")--this is the place to ask.

poetinahat · Jul 31, 2011

Hey, thank you, Jen, for posting here. I'd had this in the back of my mind for a previous self-pub project, and I'm keen to look into this.

Blarg · Aug 1, 2011

Very interesting subject. Will enjoy learning more about it. Thanks.

Sheryl Nantus · Aug 1, 2011

I remember seeing some articles on Publisher's Weekly bemoaning the trouble of formatting ebooks for poetry - thanks for the info!!!

Perscribo · Aug 1, 2011

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. I also hope to encourage discussions here on how to market Kindle poetry: from the Amazon boards (which, in my opinion, are a little unfriendly) to social networks to your own web site. What I want to push, overall, is helping poets feel less encumbered by their lack of technical ability (myself included) or bullying from gorillas.

Blarg · Aug 2, 2011

Wow really continually interesting. The plot thickens!

This will sound really ignorant, because of course it is -- but what time limits or other considerations make for a work being public domain?

Another question -- now that you have formatted works for Kindle, do you want to reformat them for the Nook? Or any other readers? Surely with a proven seller, you have proof that a market is waiting ...

As an aside -- Magdalen, oh She Of The French Poetry Translators, perhaps this might be up your alley? A little Baudelaire? Maybe with an added essay or such?

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

Perscribo said:
stick to the eBooks that are actual PDFs/scans of the original ... and not anyone else's eBook or web site (which, unless you have permission, is stealing the design, and does not fall under public domain).

I wanted to clarify this a bit. Obviously I am at the same time encouraging the use of my own design; but that's because I believe it do be the lowest-common-denominator of HTML for Kindle Poetry construction. Pure HTML logic in the context of Kindle readers. No fluff. No banners. No imbedded code or mile-long footers.

Public domain laws vary by country. In the U.S., for the most part, anything published before January 1, 1923, is considered free to use.

Another tip (I'm brimming with them...more to come!): Be certain to actually save these (links) as actual files to be opened in your editor, and don't just cut and paste the code from a viewer...it makes a difference!

Jen

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

Blarg said:
Wow really continually interesting.
Another question -- now that you have formatted works for Kindle, do you want to reformat them for the Nook? Or any other readers? Surely with a proven seller, you have proof that a market is waiting ...

I would...if I knew anything about it. This is not my niche (I own a Kindle, LOL). If there are any Nook experts out there I'm hoping they'll chime in. Does B&N allow anyone to publish freely, too?

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

For all my shouting for Kindle I'm actually pretty ignorant about how Nook books (and Apple eBooks) are designed. Aren't they graphic/PDFs based? One of my favorite things about Kindle is the ability to search, earmark, and enter comments into the eBook itself. The eBook files are, generally, much smaller, too, so you can fit more onto whatever device you are using.

Blarg · Aug 2, 2011

Text takes up so little storage space that I'd hope e-readers would allow for vast libraries without worrying about space. Or is there all that much more space involved?

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

More tips...

Don't append supplemental information (i.e., reviews, etc., that highlight an author's life or style) at the front of your eBook. Although this goes against the grain of conventional introductions and prefaces in regular books, Kindle "samples" are only comprised of the first 10% or so of the eBook; preventing customers from perusing the whole thing. Customers don't want to see the salad (honestly, it's easy enough to find embellishments of the literary sort across the internet). They want a cut of the actual entree: the author's poetry. Whatever you put in that first 10% is going to be what's going to lure the customer to buy. Give them a sample of the best, in immaculate form. That way they can compare for free, see yours is the best, and they will buy it.

If you build it right, they will come…LOL.

Also, don't use the KDP tool to do your proofing/previewing, other than a cursory view in the final step. This preview is a (slow) web interface that doesn't really give a true representation of how the book will look on a Kindle. If you have a Kindle, the best way to proof is to e-mail the .html file to the @Kindle.com address that was given to you when you registered your Kindle. Amazon will charge you for this (I think it's about 5 cents), but it is well worth it, no matter how many times you have to resend the file to yourself.

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

Blarg said:
Text takes up so little storage space that I'd hope e-readers would allow for vast libraries without worrying about space. Or is there all that much more space involved?

It depends on how much you want to put into your book. If I had to guess I would say 1 MB of space can hold about 400 pages of text on a Kindle. Anything over 1 MB, in my opinion, is too large for an eBook. Sounds conservative, but I stand by it. If you throw in illustrations it gets larger, but there are clear rules of logic for Kindles on how to format graphics so they are lean and still don't sacrifice quality.

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

Perscribo said:
More tips...

Also, don't use the KDP tool to do your proofing/previewing, other than a cursory view in the final step. This preview is a (slow) web interface that doesn't really give a true representation of how the book will look on a Kindle. If you have a Kindle, the best way to proof is to e-mail the .html file to the @Kindle.com address that was given to you when you registered your Kindle. Amazon will charge you for this (I think it's about 5 cents), but it is well worth it, no many how many times you have to resend the file to yourself.

BTW, you won't be able to preview the book with graphics in this manner (since the Kindle email will only interepret .html, .PDFs, and the like...not bundled .zip files). Nonetheless, it saves a ton of time to get the text alone edited this way.

Perscribo · Aug 2, 2011

One last thought for today (because I have to start getting dinner ready!):

I don't condone pricing public domain collections any more than the minimal Amazon price: 99 cents. No matter how much work you've put into them, they're still public domain. I don't think it's ethical to charge more.

Perscribo · Aug 7, 2011

Are you a poet in this Cooler who's got a Kindle poetry book going and would like another pair of eyes for review (if not on the content, at least on the Kindle format)? If so, I would be delighted to provide mine (all confidentiality applying, of course). Just send the .html file (I prefer < 1 MB) to [email protected] from the email address you would like me to respond to. If you've got graphics in your books I won't get these but, to be honest, that's just fluff.

Jen

LawlessLara · Aug 7, 2011

Hey think I might take you up on the offer.

I will email it over now
(My email is [email protected]) just as a heads up

Cheers

LawlessLara · Aug 7, 2011

OK I dont have a html file for my ebook that I can send so not sure how you want us to send them but it is available on Smashwords and Amazon.

I can send you a code to get the book for free.

Perscribo · Aug 7, 2011

LawlessLara said:
OK I dont have a html file for my ebook that I can send so not sure how you want us to send them but it is available on Smashwords and Amazon.

I can send you a code to get the book for free.

Hi Lara.

Go ahead and send the code to me in a rep comment and I'll take a look.

A few Qs: What is the name of your book? Did you have someone else publish it for you or did you use the KDP tool yourself? What format, if not HTML, did you upload the file in?

Happy to help!

Blarg · Aug 10, 2011

Feeling your creative juices flowing is probably a lot more fun.

LawlessLara · Aug 16, 2011

perscribo halllllo sorry I have been away.
No I didn't actually write the book. I helped publish it. It is available on Amazon Kindle and Smashwords
The life and times of Mr Grimez
That's the smashwords link so you can access it for free the coupon code is PC36A

Perscribo · Aug 16, 2011

LawlessLara said:
The life and times of Mr Grimez
That's the smashwords link so you can access it for free the coupon code is PC36A

Thanks. I'll take a look at it and send you an email (hopefully in the next few days).

Jen

Perscribo · Aug 19, 2011

Lara,

Could you give me any more background as to how this eBook was created? I.e., did you use Microsoft Word and upload it? If I knew this I could give you a bit more than just this generalized feedback.

First thing I noticed was there was no Table of Contents. Was this intended? Since any sort of automatic index is a major selling point for eBooks, I highly recommend incorporating one. Some simple code you could drop in/replicate to produce this is:

<a name="TOC"></a>
<h3>CONTENTS</h3><br>
<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem1Title">Title Poem 1</a></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem2Title">Title Poem 2</a></p>

You'll notice these paragraphs are styled to create 1) a hanging-indent; should the poem title be too long for the screen/font width; and 2) 0 point bottom and top margins. This second attribute is necessary because the default for paragraph <p> tags is to create a hard return and an extra space (similar to two <br>s) before the next paragraph. This is the same style used for the actual lines of poetry, which brings me to my second observation: because the <p>'s are not styled your lines appear to have double-spacing. I recommend using the same format for composing the lines:

<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a name="Poem1Title"></a><h3>Title Poem 1</h3></p><br>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Line 1</p>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Line 2</p>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Line 3</p>

...and so on.

Lastly, one bit of information it took me some time to discover is a (very short) list of non-standard, "custom" tags supported by Kindle Direct Publishing. If you are uploading any other format (.doc, .txt, .rtf) besides customized (.htm/l) into the KDP converter, it's not going to register the most important of these tags, the (standalone) page break:

<mbp

agebreak />

As you may guess, this tag goes at the very end of any content/tags you have for your title page, TOC, individual poems, etc. A division marker that forces a new page for the next section.

Hope this information helps!

Jen

Blarg · Aug 19, 2011

Not a coder so I have no idea what any of that means or what the ordinary joe (is it still ordinary not to be a programmer?) would do with it. But it's nice to see your continuing to help with what looks like it should be very useful to people.

Perscribo · Aug 19, 2011

If hypertext-markup is a completely foreign language, it doesn't hurt to bone-up on the very basics. After all, this is what the KDP converter is outputting all those other file formats into. I think some folks are intimidated because it is deemed "programming" when, in reality, you're just layering and nesting formats. [Some of us old 'smiths (like me) might remember the "Reveal Codes" function in DOS WordPerfect 1.x. It's very similar to that.]

The rule of K.I.S.S. applies here more than anywhere, and is especially useful for editing down the road. I start out all my .html files in Notepad between two

HTML:

tags. The minute my eyes start to go buggy I'll switch to my editor, of which there are plenty of free ones out there (HTML-Kit is my favorite) which--for the purpose of keeping eLibraries current--will serve you way better than any word processing application.

Blarg · Aug 19, 2011

I used to do a lot of that sort of thing in Wordperfect and other word-processing systems. If it's pretty much like that, then a bit of concerted effort should make one comfortable and productive before too long. I've kinda always wanted to learn more about working with the web. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to start out. Thanks for the links.

Amazon Kindle Poetry

Pound cake.

Numbers are beautiful

Holding out for a Superhero...

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

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South the river this time of night!

South the river this time of night!

Pound cake.

South the river this time of night!

Pound cake.

Pound cake.

Pound cake.