E-book Formatting

As most of you know, to accommodate a user's choice of font, font size, margins, and portrait or landscape viewing mode, e-readers automatically adjust text and graphics to fit the available screen space. This fluid layout means that the number of words and their arrangement on a screen might not be the same for every reader.

Formatting with Templates

So, when self-publishing an e-book, I use templates with custom formatting styles to accommodate this fluid layout for every type of e-book I plan to write. Templates help me minimize the number of times I must set a style manually as I type to differentiate one type of text or graphic from another.

My word processor's default styles work for some types of e-books (narrative prose and short-line poetry), but I use custom styles to accommodate poetry with long lines and how-to guides with topics, subtopics, procedural steps and illustrations.

I'd be happy to make my templates available to AW members for free. Send me a PM.

Formatting for Poetry

Here are four suggestions to make it less likely that a line of poetry you intended to be one line on an e-reader's screen becomes two lines instead. These suggestions are based on my opinion that...

Line length is a vital, visual aspect of poetry;
What a poem means is inextricably meshed with how it means;
Don't assume none of your lines will exceed the screen width of any device.

1- Break long lines to suit your intentions rather than have them wrapped arbitrarily by reader preferences.

2- In your Introduction, show the longest line, and ask readers to adjust their font size so it fits their screen;

3- In your Introduction, ask your readers to rotate their display from Portrait to Landscape.

4- Wrap long lines with a hanging indent style so readers know you intended them to be single lines. Microsoft Word's hanging indent is selectable. In Open Office, you can create a hanging indent style with a positive Before Text Indent and a negative First Line Indent. In Atlantis, you can create a hanging indent style with a zero Left Indent and a positive First Line Outdent.

Formatting with HTML

If your e-book requires formatting that cannot be accomplished with style settings in your word processor, and you know HTML, the following will help you understand the relationship between e-books and HTML and introduce you to the basics steps for editing an e-book with HTML.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a set of characters and symbols called tags that web browsers and e-readers use to control what is displayed (text, graphic, link), where it's displayed (horizontal/vertical screen position) and how it's displayed (color, bold, italic).

The HTML used by most e-readers is a collection of files zipped together in a special format called EPUB, an abbreviation for Electronic Publication. The EPUB format makes content reflowable so text and graphics can be adjusted to fit available screen space. This is that liquid, flexible feature we discussed earlier.

You can view the files that result by converting your DOC file to EPUB. Let's pretend your e-book is mypoetry.epub. Rename it mypoetry.zip, unzip it, and there's all the files that make up your e-book. Page content would be in 001.html, 002.html and so on. Styles that control layout would be in styles.css.

Please note that some distributors, including Amazon, allow you to upload your e-book in EPUB format, and some require uploads in DOC format so they can convert it to EPUB. Uploading in EPUB gives you control of content and styling. But your EPUB files might not be as compatible with all e-book devices as would an EPUB file created by a distributor's specialized software--especially if you have edited the content and layout files yourself. Here are the basic steps:

Create your source document in Word DOC format;
Convert your DOC file to EPUB with Open Office (not MS Word)
Open your EPUB file in Calibre (open source and thus free)
Open styles.css and add formatting your word processor can't;
Open 001.html, 002.html... to verify they reflect style.css changes;
Save your revised file, and preview for Kindle, Nook, Sony, iPad;

Hope this helps you folks with your self publishing efforts.
~Bill

Yes. Send me a PM and I'll attach my Word Doc templates to an email. If that won't work for you, I'll FTP them up to a website I maintain. It's not my website but I use it every now and then to make guides and other stuff available to people who would rather avoid getting things as attachments by email.

Several years ago, when I began writing how-to guides, I quickly realized that simple formatting like you'd do in a novel wasn't adequate for headings, sub-headings, procedural steps and in-book illustrations. You could also buy my Writers Guide to E-books. It might be more detailed and comprehensive than you'd prefer, but it's only $3.99 at Amazon and covers pretty much every type of formatting you might run in to, except using HTML to format an e-book.

Bill

One of the reasons I have not posted an article with descriptions of how to create styles is because my templates are in DOC format so users can just start using them instead of having to build their own template from my descriptions. But if I get enough requests to post an article like that, I guess I could. I'm new here so I'm not allowed to attach files.

Maybe This Will Help

Even if you are not a beginner with e-books or computers, formatting a source document for e-books isn't as straight forward as the "experts" would have us believe. But it's like everything else in life: that first plunge into the cold water can take your breath away, but you swim around, find your stroke, and discover.. OMG, is that a shark over there? Just kidding, but everything gets easier as you learn the ropes. Yikes, I'm mixing my metaphors again. Somebody stop me! Kidding aside, here's a text-only version of my template for narrative fiction and non-fiction. With any luck at all, it should ease your mind a bit.

The MAIN PAGES are all caps. Under each is a description of the styles. Those are only my preferences, but they'll give you an idea of the decisions you must make BEFORE you start typing.

I use Atlantis to create my source documents. Even Open Office is better than Microsoft Word. Why? Because Atlantis is specifically aimed at e-books. MS Word just has too many bells and whistles for my taste. Keep in mind that Microsoft Word and Open Office identify TOC as Contents and Normal as Default.

COVER...

Size your cover graphic to 1660 X 2400 pixels
Don't center it manually--use a "Text Centered" style.

TITLE PAGE...

Title of Your E-Book (Heading: 16pt, bold, centered, page break before, spacing before:0pt, spacing after:8pt, not nested under Normal)

Your Sub-Title (Text Centered: bold, centered, spacing after:6pt, not nested under Normal)

Your Name (Text Centered)

Date of Publication (Text Centered)

TABLE OF CONTENTS (Heading 1: 14pt, bold, page break before, not nested under Normal)

Chapter 1 ~ Toss Your Character Overboard (TOC-1: no indent, not nested under Normal)
Chapter 2 ~ Get Hungry Sharks to Circle Him (TOC-1)
Chapter 3 ~ He Saves Himself with Courage & Cleverness (TOC-1)
Other Books by this Author

Note => hyperlink each chapter title to the bookmark for that chapter, and since your Normal style has a first-line indent, don't nest your TOC-1 style under Normal.

CHAPTER 1 TITLE (Heading 1: bold, centered, page break before, spacing before:0pt, spacing after:6pt, not nested under Normal, bookmarked so readers can jump from TOC to each chapter.

Chapter text (Normal, indent:0.24, spacing before and after: 0.0 points)

The piano player made the mistake of standing up when the gunfire began. Jack watched his body, riddled with holes, fall to the marbled floor.