The same system does all three. These two manuals contain essentially the same informationonce you have read one, you probably do not need the other. After you have read one of these manuals, you are ready to make eBooks, but you'll probably want to read the third manual, Advanced Mobi and EPUB Machines , eventually. It covers advanced formatting techniques including how to make "camera-ready" PDF files for publishing and selling printed books through CreateSpace and Amazon.
For self-publishers, EPUB Machine hits the sweet spot with the best combination of high quality, low cost, ease of use, and flexibility. What do you need? You need a computer with a web browser, a word processor or text editor, an internet connection, and a Nepo Press book account at nepotism. You don't need to install any software. Format your books on your schedule, not someone else's. No limit to the number of revisions, so fixing typos or changing your list of "Other Books by This Author" can be done whenever you wish. If you are using the Nepo Press service, or planning to use it, this is the "missing manual" to help get you oriented and up to speed quickly.
The result is a professional looking eBook, without the formatting errors so commonly seen in self-published books. Read more Read less. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Product details File Size: Nepo Press; 4th edition April 13, Publication Date: April 13, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Showing of 2 reviews. The trick is this: Simple, easy to understand, but nearly impossible to do in practice.
Filtering Exclude erotica Include mainstream erotica Include all erotica. About Publish Join Sign In. Readers Benefits of registering Where are my ebooks? Describe your issue Have a question not already answered in the links at left or on our main FAQ page? If you use the Nepo Press formatting system for eBooks, this is the user manual you need. It covers everything you need to know to format a Mobi file.
Frank Sergeant
This book focuses on how to make Mobi files eBooks for the Amazon Kindle and Kindle Apps, showing you everything you need to know to get started. If you want to create eBooks for the Kindle, this is the book to start with. Both level one and level two headings will cause their chapters to start on a new page, just as we are used to seeing in printed books. Also, level one and level two headings will appear in the table of contents and in the logical table of contents. The logical table of contents allows the reader to move backward or forward a chapter at a time by pressing the left and right arrow keys, on the Kindles that have arrow keys.
Three asterisks at the left margin indicate a level three heading. This will not cause a page break. Its heading if not blank will appear in the body of the book, but not in the table of contents. So, why are we using a blank level three heading on the title page? It serves two purposes. First, it adds a little vertical space to make the layout more pleasing. By default, the first letter of a chapter is set as a drop cap , but that would look strange on a title page.
It is similar to the title page, but with a few differences:. This is because we do not want any sort of a heading to appear on the copyright page itself and we do not want it listed in the table of contents. However, we do want it to begin on a new page. As with the title page, we use a blank subheading a level six heading this time to provide a little vertical spacing and as an easy way to turn off drop caps. This is the first tag we have used that does not start at the left margin. It is a tag that can be used within a paragraph. It shows how to link to an external website.
It will be turned into an active link so that when the reader clicks on it if connected to the Internet , the Kindle or Kindle App will open that page in a web browser. You can put this line wherever you wish in your manuscript as long as it starts at the left margin and has a blank line before and after it. It is common to put it somewhere near the beginning of your book and that is what Amazon suggests in its guidelines. If you have a particularly long table of contents, some people suggest putting it near the end so that it does not take up valuable space in the downloadable sample else your prospective reader might not get to the meat of your book before reaching the end of the sample.
This is just an ordinary chapter. Its title has a single item of information because we want the same heading to appear both on the acknowledgments page itself and in the table of contents. The acknowledgments page is optional. The only thing to note about the chapter heading is that, since we want the same heading in the body of the book and in the table of contents, we have provided only a single item of information even though it has multiple words and thus we do not need to use quotation marks. This chapter has multiple paragraphs in this case, two paragraphs. A paragraph, like a heading, must have one or more blank lines before and after it.
So far, we have used asterisks at the left margin, followed by a space to indicate headings. But take a look at the last line of text in chapter one. The line starts with an asterisk but is not a heading. Mobi Machine knows this because, although the asterisk happens to start at the left margin, it is not followed by a space.
This is commonly used to give the reader a hint that the location, or time, or viewpoint character has changed by providing a little extra vertical spacing and to reset the indentation so the first line of the next paragraph will not be indented. In fiction, ordinarily, first paragraphs have no indentation, but following paragraphs do. If you would like to show a symbol, such as a tilde or some asterisks, instead of a blank line, you could replace the scene tag in the above example with. They are included just to flesh out the novel.
The last chapter shows how to embed an image in the book and also how to put in a link to a web page. The second "Frank Sergeant" is the caption that will appear under the image. Basic novel formatting is very easy. Other formatting is available and will be covered later in this book and also in the Advanced book. But, the markup we have covered so far is all the markup many novels would ever need. Now that we have a sample novel written, you can skip ahead to Chapter 4 to turn it into an eBook. Alternatively, you can proceed to the next chapter to mark up an existing manuscript first.
N ow that you have a good idea, from the previous chapter, of how to mark up a new manuscript, you are probably ready to mark up one of your existing manuscripts. Throughout this chapter, we will use the name stormynight. Of course, you must substitute the name of your manuscript. It is a good idea to make a backup copy of your manuscript before starting to edit it, so you can fall back if necessary. For example, if your manuscript is named stormynight. As soon as you have marked one or more chapters, you can format it as described in Chapter 4.
Then, you can add more markup and format again. In other words, just follow the example from the previous chapter and apply the markup as appropriate to your own manuscript. Feel free to use the Stormy Night cover as a temporary cover for your book:. Next, go through your manuscript to put an asterisk followed by a space at the start of each chapter, including title page, copyright page, etc.
Mobi Machine (Your Kindle Formatting Butler)
That is no problem—just put the leading asterisk and space as far to the left as you can. You do not need to remove the centering although you could. Just arrow leftward as far as you can and type the asterisk and space. So, if it looked like this before the markup:. Next, look through your manuscript for any words or phrases that are italicized or bolded and insert pairs of single asterisks for italics or double asterisks for bold around them. Depending on your word processor, you may not need to scan for italics visually. Instead, your word processor might be able to search for italics automatically.
Finally, back in the Find and Replace window, just go through your document clicking on Find Next and adding the asterisks.
The above web page mentions the Edit menu. Depending on your version of Microsoft Word , you might not have an Edit menu. In that case, click on the Home tab and look for the Editing pane near the upper right corner. LibreOffice is free and it is easy to install. You can use it to mark the italics, etc. If you add the asterisks manually, by searching for italics visually, rather than letting your word processor search for italics, you may miss a few at this stage. If you have marked all your scene breaks with a tilde, for example,.
Again, if the tilde was centered, you may not be able to move the cursor all the way to the left margin, so just put the tag as far left as it will go. It may wind up looking more like this:. Make sure, as always for such tags, that a blank line comes before and after it so that it is in its own paragraph. The next step is to look for any images within your manuscript. Typically these show up on the screen when you view your manuscript in the word processor. Make a note of the file name of the image. You will need to upload each such image to your Nepo Press book account.
You may need to right click on the image and save it to disk. Look once again at the sample novel in the previous chapter, or at the more extensive example in Appendix F , to see what other markup might be appropriate for your novel. If you have a single level of chapters, make them all level one headings using one asterisk. If you have multiple levels, such as Parts and then Chapters, use a level one heading for each Part and use a level two heading for each Chapter using two asterisks. It is common to center the title page and perhaps the copyright page. Adding the markup to your manuscript does not need to be done all at once, in one sitting.
For example, on the first pass, you could just add an asterisk and space to every chapter title.
Then you produce a Mobi file. Then you go back to mark the italics, and produce a Mobi file again.
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Now that your manuscript is marked up, it is time to format it, as shown in the next chapter. After you see how it turns out, you can touch up the markup as necessary. A fter marking up your manuscript or making changes to it, here is how you will run Mobi Machine on it to create a Mobi file. If there are no errors, the file list will now contain the new Mobi file and also an HTML version of your book. If your manuscript is named stormynight. If your word processor gives you a choice for the file encoding, select UTF This saves a temporary copy of your manuscript as a plain text file, which is what Mobi Machine needs to work its magic.
Note, regardless of the name of the. This name is listed on your book account page. The point of this step is to be able to hand Mobi Machine a file that contains the explicit markup but without the hidden word processor markup. If you are maintaining your manuscript in a text editor, this step will not be necessary, since your manuscript is already a plain text file. This text file name such as stormynight. If you get the name wrong, you will get a message explaining the problem when you try to upload it. Just go back to your word processor and repeat the Save a Copy or Save As step, giving it the correct file name as specified in your book account.
You are probably using their native file format odt. So, your manuscript may be named stormynight. You still need to save your manuscript as a temporary plain text file stormynight. If you had been editing a file named stormynight. If you did accidentally make extensive changes directly to the. Because creating a Mobi file is so easy with Mobi Machine , you do not need to wait until your novel is finished. You can format it early and often.
At the same time Mobi Machine creates the Mobi file such as stormynight. Sometimes you just want a quick idea of how your novel will look. The web browser is perfect for this. Sometimes you want to print a hard copy of your novel for proofreading or for handing to a beta reader. The printed version even respects your chapter page breaks. Other times, you want to see your novel on a real Kindle for proofreading or just the sheer pleasure of it.
In that case, download the Mobi file stormynight. See the YouTube videos at. As soon as you click on the Mobi button on your book account page, the previous versions if any of stormynight. When the formatting is finished, the new versions will be present. When you return to your book account page, if you do not see mobireport.
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It typically takes well under a minute to finish the formatting. If Mobi Machine notices a problem when processing your manuscript, it will show a warning or error message in the mobireport. Here is an example of a warning. These tags are covered in the Mono-spaced Fonts section of chapter 5. That is, you should have written.
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- Mobi Machine (Your Kindle Formatting Butler).
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Go right to the problem by searching your manuscript for the offending paragraph that begins with the context shown in the error message. Later, after you have released your book to the world, you might discover a typo or misspelled word. These later changes are easy; just edit your manuscript, save-as text, upload to your book account page, click the Mobi button, etc.
When you are happy with your revised book, upload the new Mobi file to Amazon. Amazon allows you to upload revisions at any time. W e have now covered the essential markup. But, Mobi Machine can do even more than the basics. This section adds some further details about the markup available and discusses a few other topics that might be of use. I f you want to wrap one or more paragraphs inside a box, use the box tags. This would be useful for emphasizing a note or creating the functional equivalent of a side bar. This causes a visible border to be drawn around the section.
It works on all of the newer Kindles using the KF8 format. On some older Kindles, the border may not be visible, but the extra indentation would still set it off somewhat. Quote tags are discussed in a later section. Each must begin at the left margin, on a line by itself, and have blank lines before and after. They cannot be used within a paragraph. Both box blocks and quote blocks will have their paragraphs wrapped to fit the eReader.
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Y ou can put notes to yourself in your manuscript by writing them on lines that start with a pound sign. Such lines will not appear in your eBook. A line beginning with a pound sign is a comment. A pound sign anywhere but at the start of a line is just a pound sign.
Note that the comments are separated from the previous paragraph and the following paragraph by blank lines. This could be a true drop cap on the newer Kindles using the KF8 format, but because of variations among the different Kindle models, a drop cap that looks great on one of them may look terrible on another. Instead, we use a fake drop cap by making the character larger but not lowering it. We could also turn it red if we wished. All this is adjustable in the style sheet, as described more fully in the Advanced book.
However, the drop cap formatting is applied only if the first character is an ordinary letter or number. If the first character is punctuation or a special character of some sort, then drop cap formatting will not be applied to it automatically. If you want to turn off drop caps just for a chapter or so, turn them off before the chapter and turn them back on afterwards like this.
The automatic drop cap applies to the first character of the first paragraph immediately following a level one or level two heading, that is, the first character in a chapter. If a subheading or certain other things, such as a quote block appears prior to the first paragraph, then no drop cap will be applied.
A quick way to turn off drop caps for, say, the title page or copyright page, is to put a subheading of some sort before any other text. Even a blank subheading will work. T hree dots periods in a row The Chicago Manual of Style suggests three separate dots separated by spaces. If you do it that way, Mobi Machine will not covert them into an ellipsis character. Because this runs the risk of a line breaking in the middle of an ellipsis mark, which looks funny, we suggest using the three dots without spaces which will get converted into a ellipsis character , thus avoiding the line breaking problem.
S everal forms of emphasis can be used in your manuscript:. Usually, the only emphasis you need is italics. All Kindles can render italics. Note that the asterisks are tight against the word or phrase. There must not be a space immediately after the starting asterisk or immediately before the ending asterisk. Again, the asterisks are tight against the word or phrase.
Drop file here.
Also, if you really need it, you can use a pair of triple asterisks to indicate both bold and italics. This is usually overkill. Not all the Kindles necessarily render bold or bold-italics the same way. All this is subject to change as Amazon updates the software in its various Kindles.