Seven Things... I didn't know about Microsoft Word meets Amazon Kindle

I recently brought out a new book on Amazon Kindle and, as it is a relatively low cost item, I thought I'd upload the file – a straightforward Word DOCX file directly to Kindle/KDP. And then I saw the result: a total dog's dinner with the text formatting all over the place.

So I called in the assistance of an expert (Faye L. Booth at flbootheditorial@gmail.com) who not only sorted out the formatting for me but also sent me this handy summary of Tips & Trips for future reference...

• The KDP software doesn’t like headers or footers (including page numbers), as these can mess up the formatting and, in the case of page numbers, are irrelevant anyway to a Kindle edition as the ‘pages’ vary depending on the screen size of the device the reader is using and the font size they choose to use. As such, I removed the page numbers from the footers.

• The file format has been changed from docx to doc as the latter is preferred by the Kindle KDP software.

• It’s best to stick to certain commonly used fonts for ebooks in order to avoid issues with either the uploading software or different models or ages of reader device not recognising a more unusual font, so I changed the font of your book to Garamond as it resembles the Georgia you used in the original file.

• The text may look a little ‘cramped’ as KDP prefers single line spacing for an initial upload; neither is the text justified. KDP sorts these kinds of aesthetics out itself on upload, and if a human does them first it can confuse the software.

• More than a couple of subsequent uses of the return key tend to mess up the formatting, so these have been reduced.

• Similarly, the tab key to indent can cause issues, so these have been replaced with indented paragraph styles.

• An odd thing about the KDP software is that it doesn’t seem to understand Word’s instruction ‘no indent’, and will indent text marked as such regardless. Therefore, for ‘no indent’ I’ve used a tiny indent that isn’t noticeable for the reader but keeps the software happy.

As you can see, some of the Kindle/KDP foibles – such as no understanding the <no indent> instruction are frankly incomprehensible while others just leave you scratching your head... KDP prefers the DOC rather than DOCX file format! But DOCX was introduced as long ago as 2007. Thank you Faye or I'd still be faffing about trying to make the system work.