What You Need

There are two directions to go here for what you need to publish your own book using the many online publishing houses.  Each “house” has their own requirements for publishing to their hardware, but the basics are the same.  There are requirements for how you write it, as well as for how you set up your book for publishing.  If you follow the “rules” that are listed on each publishing site, you should have very few problems when you upload your book the them for sale.  Keep in mind these rules as you are writing the book, and the rest should be smooth sailing for you.

Writing Requirements

As I stated above, each publishing house has their own requirements, and some common requirements.  Before you publish your book you will need to check it to make sure it looks and acts like it is supposed to.  Each site has a reader of some type that will read the converted book as it will look after publication.  Just download the reader directly from the publishing sites and run the converted book through it to test it.  This way, you can edit it until you get it right, then upload the final version for sale.  Here are the lists of these requirements for the most popular sites.  If you are using Word to write and edit your book, here are some of teh rules you will need to follow:

• Bold, italic, underline, and strike-through are supported.
• Internal and external links are supported. Customers will not be able to link out to external links while reading on NOOK.
• To decrease the space between your paragraphs when you convert from Word to ePub, you should only include a single return between your paragraphs. Adding extra lines will cause very large spaces between paragraphs.
• To increase the space between your paragraphs, you can use the Word paragraph tool to increase the spaces without creating excessive space. Adding extra lines will cause very large spaces between paragraphs.
• To indent your paragraphs, use the Tab key to create the indents. It is better to set up a first line indent using the Word Paragraph tool.
• To create a bulleted list, use Microsoft Word’s built in bulleted list tool. Do not insert symbols to create bullets-most symbols will translate into a question mark (“?”).
• To create a numbered list or multilevel outline, use Microsoft Word’s built-in numbered list tool.
• Use one of the following fonts: Times New Roman, Arial, or Courtier New.
• Use Caps Lock to type in capital letters if you want text to appear in all capital letters. Do not use the Word format for All Caps.
• If you want small caps, type in all capital letters and change the font size for the text area that you want to appear in small caps. Do not use the Word format for Small Caps
• Do not use columns.
• Using superscripts and subscripts will cause extra leading (space between the lines of text).
• Do not use superscripts and subscripts. They will cause extra leading.
• To indent a large portion of text, for example when creating block quotes, use Word margin controls.
• Images can be formatted flush left, flush right or centered.
• Text wraps should be above and below the images, not around the image.
• Avoid using most symbols.
• Ensure that any fractions are kept as “1/4.” Word will automatically format the fractions to appear as symbols, which will not translate correctly into your ePub.
• Ensure that any ordinal endings are kept in line with the text (“1st”) and not auto-formatted as superscript. Keeping them as superscript will produce added leading.
• Make tables that can be viewed in portrait mode rather than landscape mode to make them fit on the page.

If you are writing in .txt or .html (both will work), there are a few standard rules to follow as well.  You can find them on the sites.  The recommended software to use will always be your word processor though.

You will need to download a copy of ePub.  This is the software conversion program that turns your book into an eReader ready book.  Download it for free and use it for all the publishing sites.  Just convert your book once, save it, and download the same converted copy to all the publishing sites.