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Software to Produce Kindle-friendly books

I don't really want to pay $100 to $200 for someone to do the Kindle coding for my book unless I absolutely have to. Is there any software that will do it easily - but accurately - for me? It's cheaper to pay the one-time fee to install a program than to pay every time I need a book formatted for me. I do know a bit of HTML, so it shouldn't be too hard.
HELP!!!
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
You don't need to know HTML. Do it in MSWord. Use styles or the ruler instead of tabs to make indents, and insert manual page breaks instead of hitting return. Apart from that, Amazon KDP should be able to convert the word file with little or no difficulty. If you know HTML, you can go in and strip out code or add some in, but Amazon's KDP service actually does a really nice job these days (whereas when it first launched, I found I had to go in and do some manipulation of the HTML to get it to come out right).
 
And it does a good job formatting it? I want it to be beautifully done, not just kind of slapped together like MS Word tends to do. I've got a JPEG I want to use for my page breaks. I haven't tried doing it with MS Word yet.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I've used Calibre to do my kindle versions. There are guides for how to use it available on the web if you want to get into the details, but even without them it's fairly simple.
I tend to just save my document as an HTML file, import it into Calibre and export it as a MOBI file.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Word only slaps things together to the extent the user does. It only does what you tell it. So far, the books look the way they are set up in the .doc file. I haven't tried images for page breaks, but other images have worked. I'll have to try Calibre again. When I used it for this a few years ago the Kindle book didn't look right on my reader. There is also software you can buy that will export to these formats.
 
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