Formatting, formatting, formatting… This post deals with the difference between formatting for a physical book in CreateSpace and formatting for the digital copy in KDP. There may be a bit of ranting. You have been warned.
You design a book for CreateSpace, picturing the physical copy in your hand. There’s a helpful, little option in CS that offers 
to publish the book to Kindle for you using the design from CS. Simple, awesome, great!
Word of advice if anyone is considering self-pubishing with Amazon CS: DO NOT USE THIS OPTION!
Originally, I figured this would be a simple, straightforward way of getting a digital version of The Adventure setup, but then I dug into some of the forums for more details. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, on the forum said not to use it. They advised going directly to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) instead of using CS for the formatting.
Am I ever glad I caught this before publishing the Kindle Version. Here’s why:
- Even Kindle does not recommend using PDF for their publishing. (PDF is CS’s recommendation for the hard copy). When I tried this to see what would happen, it shoved the title page, the table of contents, and the copyright page onto the same screen. Eeek. Not pretty.
- Kindle does not use page numbers. Think about that for a second. There are no pages in a Kindle book. You can change the size of the font for easier reading, thus pages change depending on who is reading and what device you’re using. Imagine my panic when I realized this. For a regular book, this isn’t such a big deal as long as you use page breaks between your chapters. For an Adventure book, where I need to direct readers where to go depending on their choices, this is disastrous. Thank heavens for hyperlinks. I added hyperlinks instead of using page numbers. Now it looks all pretty like and might be even easier to navigate than a physical book. (Kindle readers, let me know what you think after reading the book. I’d love your feedback!)
- Images…um yeah, images within the text shove the text to the next line. This creates a giant space where the text should be. This is again because you can change the size of the font in a reader and the image may or may not line up with the text you originally aligned it with. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t an easy fix for this. So instead, I put all in-text images directly in the middle of the text like I planned it that way. (Cause I did, right?!) In the preview option, this actually turned out looking pretty sharp. Again, feedback from readers is always appreciated. =)
Anyway, thanks for listening to my quasi rant about formatting. Although I rant and rave about such things, figuring all this out is a love/hate relationship for me. Seeing the finished product is totally worth it, loved all the more for the challenge it is to figure out.
Blessings,
Jennifer
P.S. The Kindle version is one of the backing rewards for the Kickstarter. Check it out here!
Formatting is always a major headache. I learned that from trying to format my papers and theses in college. Can’t imagine how much harder it is to format a book! Glad you’re figuring it out, Jennifer! 🙂
Esh. I remember formatting papers for my Bachelors degree. I shudder to think how much more strict the guidelines must be for a thesis paper! I’m definitely taking a lot of notes as I figure things out for the book. =)
What a journey! Keep pressing on, we are behind you!!
Your support means so much to me!