A Simple, Cheap, Illustrated Guide
to Converting a Word Doc to Kindle & Nook
Lisa Nowak
Published by Webfoot Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Lisa Nowak
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share it with others, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under the International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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Table of Contents
A Simple, Cheap, Illustrated Guide
to Converting Word Doc to Kindle & Nook
When I was formatting my first ebook, I found almost everything I needed in Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author by Zoe Winters, and the Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Coker (both of which I highly recommend). But there were a few missing pieces when it came to creating the Kindle and Nook versions. I did a lot of searching on the Internet and bought a couple of ebooks that were supposed to provide the answers. They didn’t, so I decided to write my own.
The instructions I developed for converting a Smashwords Style Guide-formatted Word document to Mobi and ePub work well for me, but they might not work for you, particularly if you’re using a Mac. That’s why I priced this book at only 99 cents. Should you have a positive experience using this guide, please consider buying one of my other affordably priced ebooks. I’ve included free excerpts at the end of this manual.
The ePub conversion process is fairly time consuming. If you have an easier method of creating an ePub, let me know so I can test it out and publish an update, however please understand that I have not had good results with Calibre.
If you’d like a PDF of this book, formatted in a manner more user-friendly than the Smashwords Meatgrinder can produce, email me at webfootracer at comcast dot net and I’ll send it to you.
If you’re having trouble with any aspect of formatting your ebook or POD book, I offer coaching by email at a rate of $25 per hour. Email me for details.
Download the Smashwords Style Guide from Smashwords.com and use it to format your book. Mark Coker did an awesome job with this instruction manual, and if you follow it you should have no problems. If it’s too complicated for you, you’re better off paying someone else to do your formatting.
Still with me? Good. Go download the programs OpenOffice, Kindle for PC, Mobipocket Creator, and Mobipocket Reader. (Google the names to find them.) Install them on your computer. These programs are all either free or donationware.
Create a new copy of your book by re-saving the version you created with the Smashwords Style Guide. The new version should just be the title and nothing else. (Ex: My Book.doc)
On your copyright page, change both “Smashwords” references to “Amazon” and the words “Smashwords edition” to “Kindle edition.”
Launch OpenOffice.
Open the your new file with OpenOffice by clicking the “Open” tab, navigating to your file, and selecting it.
Save the file as HTML by going to “File” in the tool bar and clicking on “Save As.” In the box that pops up, select “HTML Document (OpenOffice.orgWriter).html” from the “Save as Type” menu.
OpenOffice will give you a notice asking if you want to keep the current format or save in ODF format. Choose “Current Format.”
Close OpenOffice. (Note: In case you think you can skip this step, save your file as HTML in Word, and import directly to Mobipocket Creator, guess again. Word has gremlins that won’t allow it to import properly. Just save yourself some grief and use OpenOffice.)
Launch Mobipocket Creator. Open the HTML file with Mobipocket Creator by clicking “HTML Document” under the heading “Import From Existing File.”
