When I first decided to turn my books into kindle books, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t own a kindle, or anything else that could read a kindle, so I didn’t know what they were supposed to look like. At the time I was publishing my books using CreateSpace (now part of Kindle Direct Publishing), and they offered an easy way to turn my books into kindles. All I had to do was push a button. I did.

Only, I didn’t find out until later that they really didn’t look good. And they certainly didn’t look professional.

So I set about learning how to format a kindle book. After some trial and error, I learned! And now it’s so easy. (But then so is formatting for paperback.)

Are you ready to learn how to format your short story into a professional looking kindle book?

We’re going to do a simple story that has no chapters. While chapters aren’t hard, they do take more time.

Step 1

Your story needs to have a title page, a copyright page, and the story. You can add a dedication page, acknowledgement page, or any other page you want. Once your story is ready and in one document, move on to step 2.

Step 2

Click the button (circled in red below) to make the invisible parts of your document visible.

Like . . .

Step 3

Now go to the Layout setting and click in your document right after the title. I usually make sure there is a return (backward P) after the title instead of the Page Break that most people put in. Then go up and click on the Breaks section. This will pull up a drop down menu and you want to click on the Next Page. If you click on Page or Page Break, it won’t make the new page where you want it.

It should then look something like this . . .

You will want to do this any time you want there to be an actual page break in the finished story. Make sure you get that …Section Break (Next Page)… at the end of each page. Don’t do anything about page breaks in your actual story (unless you have chapters) because kindles change the page size depending on what device you are using and the size of font the reader wants.

Step 4

If you want your story to look professional, make sure you select all the body of your story and click the Justify (the 4th button with the even lines). This will NOT make your words divided up strangely. It will simply make all the paragraphs even.

If you have scene breaks and you don’t want them bumped right up to the words, try putting a return before it and two after it. Like this . . .

Step 5

Once you have put in all those page breaks, save your document, turn off the invisibles, and you are ready to upload your story to create a mobi or ePub book for your readers. It’s always a good idea to check the mobi or ePub version to make sure you didn’t miss a page break, or something like that. If you find a mistake, fix it, upload it again, and check it.

Have you ever formatted a kindle story before? Did you have trouble? Does this sound easy enough for you to handle?