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A Kindle formatting question

by specialized
2 replies
I have a Kindle book that I'm getting ready to publish, but it's unclear to me how to handle formatting regarding chapters, because I have kind of a unique case with this book.

The issue is that its main subject/content involves the profiling of 25 different, consecutive items within a particular category, and many of these 25 "profiles" are very short (though they vary, and some are much longer); in some cases there are several of them to a page (per .doc page, anyway). So if I were to make each one its own chapter, there would be quite a few ridiculously short "chapters" of, in some cases, only a few lines. For this reason it doesn't seem a very good idea for me to make these into linked chapters. Doing so would also make the book have well over 25 chapters.

The book does have a few normal chapters as well as a preface and introduction. I can see that those should be linked chapters (linked in the TOC), but what should I do about the 25 profiles?

thanks for any insight,
A.C.
#formatting #kindle #question
  • Profile picture of the author jzgirl
    Originally Posted by specialized View Post

    I have a Kindle book that I'm getting ready to publish, but it's unclear to me how to handle formatting regarding chapters, because I have kind of a unique case with this book.

    thanks for any insight,
    A.C.
    A.C.,

    I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for, but let me give you two links that may help (BTW, they're *not* affiliate links).

    The first one is the Smashwords Style Guide (Smashwords — Smashwords Style Guide — A book by Mark Coker), and it's free. True, it's written by the guy who started up Smashwords (Mark Coker) and is somewhat specific to that site, but you may find something in there. His "nuclear option" to get rid of Word's formatting crap has helped me upload esp. clean versions of my books.

    The other is to an ebook that will help you to format using Open Office (or Libre Office, which is the supported version of the Open Office). The ebook is here: Smashwords — Formatting eBooks with Open Office Writer — A book by Dr. Kerry R. Bunn. This little gem of a book has helped me automate parts of the formatting process. He goes into two different types of formats, and talks about both fiction and non fiction. I highly recommend it, and it's only US$2.99. Quite a bargain as far as I'm concerned. :-)

    Good luck!

    Nancy
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  • Profile picture of the author jacktackett
    A.C.
    not knowing your topic makes specific suggestions hard, but I would definitely recommend Nancy's advice and read the guides she mentioned - both are excellent resources.
    Otherwise, I would create a chapter, or chapters, and combine several of the items together in an order that makes sense - which each item being a sub-heading (H2) rather than a new chapter (H1) in Kindle. How to break the sub headings up depends on the topic - and if they can't be broken into groups - one chapter with 25 sub headings may be acceptable as well.
    Good luck,
    --Jack
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