Creating Ebooks for the Kindle

Take an existing ebook from Word, Pages, InDesign, or even a plain text editor, and convert it to a Kindle format.

Introduction

• Welcome
• What you should know before watching this course
• Using the exercise files

1. Formats and Tools

• IDPF, AZW, and other formats
• Why so many formats?
• calibre and Sigil (where to get them and what they do)
• Kindle Previewer

2. InDesign Workflows

• InDesign CS4 to CC
• The Kindle Plugin for InDesign

3. Word, Text, and HTML

• From Word to EPUB
• From Pages to EPUB
• From plain text to EPUB
• Adding images to plain-text conversions
• From HTML or XHTML to EPUB

4. Tools of Choice

• What tools are out there?
• KindleGen
• What can Sigil do?
• A tour of calibre
• A brief XHTML primer
• A brief CSS primer

5. Editing Your EPUB with calibre

• Adding a cover
• Adding or editing metadata
• One file per chapter
• Renaming files
• Building the table of contents
• Adding or editing links
• Loading a dictionary
• Checking spelling
• Validating your EPUB

6. Editing Your EPUB with Sigil

• Adding a cover
• Adding or editing metadata
• One file per chapter
• Renaming files
• Building the table of contents
• Adding or editing links
• Loading a dictionary
• Checking spelling
• Validating your EPUB

7. Publishing to Amazon

• Converting with calibre
• Converting with KindleGen
• Kindle Previewer
• Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
• Amazon's lending options
• Looking inside
• Forums

Conclusion

• Where to go from here