About the Author
![[frank.jpg]](frank.jpg)
Frank Sergeant
For a list of Frank’s other books published by Nepo Press, please visit http://nepotism.net.
copyright © 2012-2014 Frank Sergeant
all rights reserved
published by Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net)
4th Edition, April, 2014
(formatted May 07, 2014 at 02:06 PM)
cover image credits:
Mobi Machine (Your Kindle Formatting Butler) is the first of the three user manuals for Mobi Machine (the Nepo Press web-based book formatting system). 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.
For making EPUB books (B&N, Kobo, Apple, etc.), start with EPUB Machine (Your EPUB Formatting Butler). These two manuals contain essentially the same information—once you have read one, you probably do not need the other. Pick based on whether your primary interest is Mobi or EPUB.
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 printed books through CreateSpace.
For self-publishers, Mobi 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 and a word processor or text editor and an internet connection and a Nepo Press book account at nepotism.net/formatting (you can start with a free trial account). You don’t need to install any software. Your same manuscript will work for Mobi files, EPUB files, and PDF files, giving you “one-stop” formatting with nearly instant turn-around. 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 trick is to add simple, visible markup to your manuscript then feed that to the Mobi Machine. The result is a professional looking eBook, without the formatting errors so commonly seen in self-published books.
The Mobi Machine has gone through several stages of evolution.
The first generation required an author to (a) download, install, and configure several pieces of software, and (b) switch from a word processor to a text editor.
Gentle (and not so gentle) feedback suggested that authors did not enjoy either requirement, although there were exceptions.
In the next generation, we eliminated the need to switch from a word processor to a text editor. Although using a text editor was optional, the burden of installing the software remained.
Finally, in the current generation, that burden has been lifted. Instead of every author installing the software on his local machine, we install the software on the Nepo Press server. Now an author uploads his manuscript through a web browser, clicks a button, and downloads the resulting Mobi file.
This has the additional advantage that the author never needs to re-install software to upgrade the system. We do all of that in a central location. The next time the author connects to the web site, the new software is available automatically.
We wanted to make the Nepo Press formatting service as close to “one-stop formatting” as possible. Previously, an author could make both Mobi files (Amazon Kindle) and EPUB files (B&N, Apple, Kobo, etc.), but what about paperback books? The current generation solves that problem also. The touch of a PDF button now produces a “camera-ready” PDF for publishing paperback books through CreateSpace.
So, the Mobi Machine is also an EPUB Machine and a PDF Machine, but the focus of this book is on making eBooks for the Amazon Kindle eReaders and Kindle Apps.
This is the very system Nepo Press uses to format its own books and we look forward to sharing it with you.
You will need a Nepo Press book account to use with this book. If you don’t have a book account yet, you can set up a two-week trial account for free. Email frank@nepotism.net with the exact title of your book and the author name (pen name or multiple authors are OK.)
First, thank you! I appreciate your taking the time to consider the Mobi Machine system for creating an eBook for the Kindle.
The Mobi Machine is a dedicated Mobi file maker. It turns your manuscript into a Mobi file suitable for reading on an Amazon Kindle or for publishing and selling on Amazon. As a by-product, it also makes an HTML version for reading in a web browser.
It is simple to use and produces great looking eBooks.
This is the system we use to format books for Nepo Press.
The secret is simple, explicit markup.
This book contains the manuscript for the fake mystery novel Stormy Night as an example in Appendix F. More examples, FAQs, getting started guides, and videos are available at Nepo Press. In particular, you might like to look at the Sam Speedo (Bathing Suit Detective) example which shows the before (marked up manuscript) and the after (the eBook as a Mobi file, an EPUB file, an HTML file, and a camera-ready PDF for printed books).
See http://nepotism.net/formatting.
The main (e)Book formats are
This book, Mobi Machine, focuses on making Mobi files for Kindle. It also makes HTML files (handy for quick proofreading in a web browser).
For making EPUB files, see the book EPUB Machine (Your EPUB Formatting Butler).
Once you have read one those books, you are ready for Advanced Mobi and EPUB Machines. It covers additional formatting techniques useful for Mobi and EPUB files and it also covers how to make “camera-ready” PDF files for publishing and selling printed books through CreateSpace and Amazon.
For printed books, the easiest, cheapest way for almost all authors is to submit a “camera-ready” PDF to CreateSpace. CreateSpace charges nothing at all for you to set up your book and then charges a reasonable fee per book (the books are printed one at a time “on demand”). “Camera-ready” is in quotes because no actual cameras are involved these days—it is straight from PDF to press.
See https://www.createspace.com/.
Why do we mention EPUB and PDF in a book about making Mobi files? Because your same manuscript can be used for all three purposes.
To see the quality of work this system produces, you can look at this book on your Kindle or NOOK or iPad, or you can look for the following Nepo Press titles at Apple, B&N, Kobo, Amazon:
All of them were formatted by this system. See http://nepotism.net for a list of all the Nepo Press titles.
You can try out the system on the included sample novel Stormy Night or you can start with a small excerpt—perhaps just a few chapters—from your own manuscript. Once you see how simple it is, you can then move on to your full manuscript. It doesn’t have to be a completed book. A rough draft is fine. If you don’t have an eBook cover image yet, feel free to use the one for Stormy Night until your real cover image is available:
We hope all questions (related to book formatting with Nepo Press) are answered in the three user manuals (Mobi Machine, EPUB Machine, and Advanced) plus the getting started guides, examples, and FAQ at http://nepotism.net and the videos at http://nepotism.net/videos. So, that is where to start. If we missed something, please email frank@nepotism.net so we can answer your question and also add it to the documentation so others can benefit.
Suppose Bertie Wooster were to write a book. Do you think he would format it himself? No! He would get his butler Jeeves to do it for him.
The Mobi Machine is your Kindle Butler, and specializes in one task: converting your manuscript into an eBook readable on the Amazon Kindle.
The end result, the eBook, is a Mobi file that you can publish on Amazon (or view on your own Kindle without publishing).
You can email the eBook to friends, beta readers, and reviewers.
Mobi Machine works fast, converting your manuscript into an eBook, typically in under one minute.
“Jeeves, here’s my manuscript. Format it for me, please.”
Mobi Machine is patient and will happily format your manuscript again (and again and again), whenever you wish, if you discover typos or if you improve your manuscript in other ways.
Mobi Machine is not really human. It is a software system that runs on the Nepo Press server.
Here are some of the things it does automatically:
Mobi Machine is very good at formatting conventional manuscripts such as:
This book focuses on the simpler formatting styles. If you are writing a textbook or how-to guide that needs a more complicated formatting style, you’ll also probably want to read Advanced Mobi and EPUB Machines.
Mobi Machine is not well suited for fixed format books such as graphic novels and children’s books, or books that need lots of numbered lists. It doesn’t do tables (but that can be worked around using images or lists).
This book, Mobi Machine (Your Kindle Formatting
Butler), was itself formatted for the Kindle entirely by Mobi
Machine, so it should give you a good idea of how well it can
handle a non-fiction book. To see examples of how it formats fiction,
you can look at the three, short, example “novels” available
from
http://nepotism.net:
The above are not real novels, just very short examples. The first two show the fake novel in the body of the book, along with the manuscript markup used to create it in an appendix. For the third, the manuscript is available for download as a template for use with your own book.
For various longer examples, see the other Nepo Press books.
However, as you follow along with this book, the very best example will be seeing your own manuscript turned into an eBook (whether finished or just a chapter or two).
Any personal computer with a web browser and a text editor or word processor will work. All the heavy lifting is done by the Nepo Press server.
If you are using a computer to write your manuscripts, you probably know enough already, as the following videos show you exactly how to do the key tasks:
The whole idea is to produce a better result, with less work, by automating the conversion process.
Soon you will be able to produce a well formatted Kindle book at the touch of a button.
The basic formatting can be learned in about five minutes (see the chapter Writing a Novel From Scratch). Additional simple tags are available to give you even more control over the appearance of your book.
Right in your word processor, you mark your chapter headings and any words or phrases that should be in italics, and then add any additional markup. A later chapter walks you through this step by step. It takes no extra time when you start a manuscript from scratch. For an existing manuscript, the initial markup can take about 15 minutes to an hour or so (see our videos for tips on using search and replace to add markup automatically). For a typical novel, this is a simple step.
Unlike other systems, you do not need to use specific word processor “styles”, nor do you need to work directly with HTML.
When you are ready to format, you save a copy of your manuscript as a text file, upload it to Nepo Press using your web browser, then click the Mobi button.
But, that’s not all. In addition to producing a Kindle file, Mobi Machine also produces an HTML version of your book that you can view in a web browser, post to your website, or print out in hard-copy to make proofreading easier.
In the past, formatting a manuscript for the Kindle involved either paying someone to do it (anything up to several hundred dollars) or spending many hours or days doing it manually. Or, you could upload your unconverted word processor document to Amazon and accept a less than great looking eBook.
Mobi Machine gives you the best of both worlds: a great looking eBook with virtually no effort.
Experience keeps a dear school,
but fools will learn in no other — Franklin
The general publishing process starts with your manuscript. In times past, you might have written it in longhand or on a manual or electric typewriter. Then you would send it to your editor or publisher. Eventually, hopefully, it would reach the typesetter who would turn it into a beautifully laid-out book.
As you were writing your manuscript, you would add notes or clues to it to communicate to the typesetter how you wanted different parts of your book formatted. You would underline words the typesetter should set in italics. The underlines would not appear in the printed book; they just served as clues to the typesetter.
Similarly, you would leave a blank line between paragraphs and start each chapter on a new page, centering its heading on a line by itself.
For a figure or diagram or photo, you would draw an arrow and put a note in the margin, “picture of author goes here.”
In this fashion, as you were writing, you would mark up your manuscript to give the typesetter the clues needed to format your book.
Note that this markup was visible to the naked eye. Of course it was; that was the only way to do markup in longhand or on a typewriter.
In our modern electronic era things have changed somewhat though not all that much. You use a computer now instead of a typewriter, but you still mark up your manuscript.
Unfortunately, if you write your manuscript in a word processor, the markup is now hidden rather than visible. The markup is still there, though. You see its effects on the computer screen (words in different font sizes or in different typefaces) but you don’t see the actual markup.
The hidden nature of the markup often causes trouble when you try to convert your manuscript to an eBook. Even though what you see on your word processor screen might look OK, that is not what the conversion program will see when it formats your book. The conversion program sees only the internal, hidden markup—and that might be such a mess that the conversion fails or looks bad on an eReader.
Most of us have seen eBooks that look funny. Their formatting is off somehow. New chapters start in the middle of a page or at the bottom of a page instead of on a new page. Paragraphs break in the middle for no apparent reason. Words that looked separate in the word processor are now run together in the eBook. The “go to” menu doesn’t work right. The logical table of contents doesn’t work. Curly quotes face the wrong direction. Funny line breaks. Fonts hard-coded at the wrong size.
If you haven’t noticed such problems, just download 10 or 20 eBooks at random from Amazon or B&N or Apple. If you don’t want to purchase 10 or 20 titles just for this experiment, you can find free eBooks listed at sites such as
or you can go directly to Amazon, B&N, and Apple and search for them yourself. These books are typically only temporarily free, so I think this is still a valid test. I bet at least a third (and maybe half) will have formatting problems.
Mobi Machine helps make sure that your eBook won’t have such problems.
Mobi Machine, just like the typesetter of old, needs to work from a manuscript that is properly marked up. Furthermore, it needs the markup to be visible. This is better for the formatter and better for you also. With plain, visible markup, you say what you mean. You don’t have to guess what the word processor is doing behind your back.
Later chapters will go into detail about the markup you can use with Mobi Machine, but here is a quick example of the three most used marks:
*like this*). Again, the asterisks
themselves will not appear in the eBook but the word or phrase will
be set in italics (like this).
The bulk of your markup work will consist of blank lines to separate paragraphs, plus asterisks for chapter headings and italics.
The big idea is that you maintain your book (your manuscript) in a format that is easy to work with, using simple, straightforward, visible formatting symbols. Mobi Machine then renders your manuscript into an eBook automatically.
If you are writing your book in a word processor, it will likely already have chapter headings set in a larger font, possibly centered, and will have various words set in italics. You do not need to undo that formatting. Just add the asterisks as described above and in chapter 2. Mobi Machine basically ignores your word processor’s hidden markup and pays attention to your explicit markup.
This chapter shows how to mark up a novel from scratch.
Of course, as an author, you probably are not starting from scratch. You have probably finished (or at least begun) one or more manuscripts. Your main question may be how to mark up those existing manuscripts. We’ll get to that in the next chapter, but it will make it easier to understand the markup if we start from scratch.
So, let’s jump right into creating a manuscript, a very short mystery novel entitled “Stormy Night”. This is not a serious novel; its entire purpose is to illustrate how to format a novel for the Kindle.
First, start your word processor or text editor. We’ll assume you are using a word processor (such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice) but you could also use a text editor (such as gedit or Notepad or Emacs). Mobi Machine works either way.
The first thing to do after starting your word processor, is to turn off various auto-format options (such as automatic smart quotes and automatic lists). This will need to be done only once. Please see Appendix E for instructions on how to do this.
Since we are starting a new file, click on File / New then just start typing.
The lines in the example below are very short on purpose, so they show up clearly on a narrow eReader. The widths of the lines in the example (and in your word processor) have nothing to do with how long the lines will be in the finished eBook. The eReader adjusts the line widths according to the settings chosen by the (human) reader.
As you are typing paragraphs, let the word processor break the lines wherever it wishes, but be sure to put in the blank lines as shown.
Please go ahead and type the following into your word processor
now. Then, save it (File / Save) as stormynight.doc,
then we’ll go over each piece of it.
<publisher> Nepo Press <cover> stormy.jpg #### title page <align> center * "Stormy Night" "" *** by Frank Sergeant #### copyright page * ****** copyright <copy> 2012-2014 Frank Sergeant all rights reserved Published by Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net) <align> default <contents> * Acknowledgments I would like to thank ... <start> * Chapter One It was a dark and stormy night. Bobby and Judy drove up the long, winding driveway. The house was shrouded in fog. No lights were on. *That's strange*, thought Judy. * Chapter Two The protagonists hear some ominous noises, foreshadowing the trouble to come later. * Chapter Three "I'm scared," said Judy as she hugged Bobby. <scene> Later that night ... * Epilogue It all worked out and Judy and Bobby lived happily ever after. * About the Author <image> "frank.jpg" "Frank Sergeant" http://nepotism.net
There you have it, an entire novel. Markup can do a lot more, but this illustrates how simple it can be. Let’s dissect this example to see how the different parts of the markup work.
The manuscript starts with some “boilerplate” tags to specify the publisher and the image file to use for the cover. Each of these tags starts at the left margin and has a blank line before and after it.
Paragraph Separators
The point here is that each of these boilerplate “lines” is really a separate paragraph. In a word processor, you end a paragraph by pressing the Return or Enter key, and the word processor shows what looks like a blank line between paragraphs. In a text editor, you end a paragraph by pressing Return or Enter at least twice, thus explicitly adding a blank line.
The <publisher>
tag is optional.
<publisher> Nepo Press <cover> stormy.jpg
The <cover>
tag tells Mobi Machine which image file should be used for
your cover image. For your own book, you would need to create your
cover image somehow (possibly with the help of Quick and Dirty
eBook Covers from Nepo Press) then upload it to your book account.
If the cover image is missing, you will get a warning message, but the Mobi file will still be created.
If you don’t have a cover image to use yet, you can download
a copy of the file stormy.jpg
to use temporarily. See the YouTube video “How to Download
an Image File to Your Computer” if you need help:
Because I would like both the headings and contents
of the title page and the copyright page to be centered, I put an
<align> center tag before
the title page, like this:
#### title page <align> center * "Stormy Night" ""
The <align> center
tag tells Mobi Machine to switch from the default justification
to center justification. This will remain in effect throughout the
manuscript unless or until another <align>
tag is encountered.
Note the line that begins with a pound sign:
#### title page
A line that begins with a pound sign (or more than one pound sign as in this example) is a comment and will be ignored. You can use this to put notes to yourself that won’t appear in the eBook.
After the copyright page, I want to return to the default justification,
so I put an <align> default
tag after the copyright page, like this:
all rights reserved Published by Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net) <align> default <contents>
Again, note that all these tags start at the left margin and have one or more blank lines both before and after (that is, each tag is in a separate paragraph).
Unless you override it, Kindle’s default is to fully justify
the text (to line up both the left and right margins). As seen above,
we did override it, temporarily, by using the <align>
center tag. The other alignment choices are <align>
left, which left justifies and leaves the right margin ragged,
and <align> right, which
right justifies and leaves the left margin ragged. Paragraph alignment
is discussed further in the Paragraph Alignment
section of chapter 5.
Now let’s look at the title page in more detail:
* "Stormy Night" "" *** by Frank Sergeant
We treat it like a chapter, so the heading must
begin with an asterisk at the left margin, followed by a space.
This is followed by two items of information. The first,
"Stormy Night", is the heading
that will appear at the top of the title page. The second, "", is how it will be listed in the
table of contents. When the second item is empty, as in this example,
it won’t be listed in the table of contents at all. If we
had omitted the second item of information altogether (rather than
specifying it as an empty item), the heading on the title page and
the listing in the table of contents would both say “Stormy
Night”.
Note the role of the quotation marks: they group and separate the two items of information. If the quotation marks were omitted, like this
* Stormy Night
Mobi Machine would treat the whole line
as the chapter heading and put “Stormy Night” both at
the start of the title page and in the table of contents, which is
not what we want. (Note that these quotation marks must be straight
quotes ("like this") and
not curly (“like this”)—that’s
why we turned off the word processor’s option that would otherwise
turn straight quotes into smart quotes (as mentioned above and described
in Appendix E).
Fortunately, most chapter headings are not this complicated. Usually, just the title page requires the two items of information (and thus the quotation marks).
Here is the title page once again:
#### title page * "Stormy Night" "" *** by Frank Sergeant
Notice the three asterisks on a line by themselves. This is another heading (a level three heading).
A heading with a single asterisk is a major heading (a level one heading). This is used for chapters (and things we treat like chapters, such as title pages, copyright pages, acknowledgments). If you divide your book into Parts and Chapters, you would use a level one heading (one asterisk) for the Parts and a level two heading (two asterisks) for the Chapters. If you use only Chapters, you would use a level one heading for the Chapters and would not use level two headings at all.
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. A side effect is that it temporarily turns off drop caps so “b” in “by Frank Sergeant” will not appear as a drop cap. By default, the first letter of a chapter is set as a drop cap, but that would look strange on a title page.
Next, let’s look at the copyright page. It is similar to the title page, but with a few differences:
#### copyright page * ****** copyright <copy> 2012-2014 Frank Sergeant all rights reserved Published by Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net)
and it would look like this
copyright © 2012-2014 Frank Sergeant
all rights reserved
Published by Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net)
First, the heading is a blank level one heading:
*
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.
The next-to-last thing of interest on the copyright page is the
<copy> tag. 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. Mobi Machine
will replace the <copy>
tag with the copyright symbol ©.
Finally, note the last line:
Published by Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net)
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.
After the copyright page and after the optional
<align> default tag, we
indicate to Mobi Machine where we want the table of contents
to appear like this:
<contents>
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).
Then, we have an acknowledgments page that looks like this:
* Acknowledgments I would like to thank ...
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. Thus, we don’t need quotation marks like we did on the title page.
Also, we have not added an empty level three heading because we don’t need any extra vertical space and we are happy for the first paragraph on this page to start with a drop cap.
The acknowledgments page is optional. Similarly, you could add Dedication, Prologue, Foreword, and About the Author chapters if you wish.
We can give a hint to the Kindle as to where the
book should open for the first time by inserting a <start>
tag like this:
<start> * Chapter One
to ask that Kindle start the book at Chapter One when the reader first opens the book.
This tag is optional.
Here is our novel’s chapter one:
* Chapter One It was a dark and stormy night. Bobby and Judy drove up the long, winding driveway. The house was shrouded in fog. No lights were on. *That's strange*, thought Judy.
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 pair of asterisks surrounding “That’s strange” tell Mobi Machine to set that phrase in italics.
*That's strange*, thought Judy.
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.
Of course, italicized words or phrases can appear anywhere in your paragraphs.
The example’s Chapter Three shows how to insert
a vertical space break to separate scenes using the <scene>
tag.
* Chapter Three "I'm scared," said Judy as she hugged Bobby. <scene> Later that night ...
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.)
The above example would be rendered to look like this:
“I’m scared,” said Judy as she hugged Bobby.
Later that night …
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
<scene> ~
or
<scene> ***
The <scene>
tag is discussed further in the Scene Breaks
section of chapter 5.
Keep in mind that if you have lots of scene breaks to mark in an existing manuscript, you should consider using your word processor’s search and replace facility rather than straining your eyes to find them all.
The above examples would look like the following:
“I’m scared,” said Judy as she hugged Bobby.
~
Later that night …
or
“I’m scared,” said Judy as she hugged Bobby.
***
Later that night …
Chapter two and the epilogue don’t introduce anything new. 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.
* About the Author <image> "frank.jpg" "Frank Sergeant" For a list of Frank's other books published by Nepo Press, please visit http://nepotism.net.
The <image>
tag contains two items of information. The first ("frank.jpg")
is the file name for the image. The second ("Frank
Sergeant") is the caption that will appear under the image.
The above example would be rendered like this:
Frank Sergeant
For a list of Frank’s other books published by Nepo Press, please visit http://nepotism.net.
Now we have covered the most important markup. Pretty simple, right? We used
<cover> tag to specify
the cover image;
<publisher> tag;
<copy> tag to insert a
copyright symbol;
<contents> tag for the
Table of Contents;
<align> tags to switch
to centered and then back to the default;
<start> tag to tell the
eReader where to open for the first time;
<scene> tag to mark a scene
break; and
<image> tag to insert
a photo of the author.
Let’s consider, though, what we didn’t need to worry about.
Basic novel formatting is very easy. We’ve even covered things like centering certain paragraphs (as we did for the title page and copyright page) and including an image (the author’s photo or the book cover) and links to web pages. 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.
Now 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.doc
to represent your existing manuscript. 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.doc,
you might use File / Save a Copy (or File / Save As)
in your word processor’s menu to save a copy under a different
name, such as stormy-before-markup.doc.
The rest of this chapter will describe how to add the markup, but keep in mind that you don’t have to do it all right away. 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.
Then, with stormynight.doc open
in your word processor, and the example in
the previous chapter handy, type in the <publisher>
tag and the <cover> tag,
each on a separate line, with blank lines before and after. The
<publisher> is optional.
Even the <cover> tag is
optional.
In other words, just follow the example from the previous chapter and apply the markup as appropriate to your own manuscript.
If you don’t want to list a publisher, just omit the <publisher> tag. Even if you
don’t have a cover image yet, you probably will eventually,
so you might as well put in the <cover>
tag now. 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.
If your existing chapter headings have been centered by your word processor, then you won’t be able to arrow leftward to the first column. 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:
Chapter One
then it would look like this afterwards
* Chapter One
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. Note: since not all Kindles will display in bold, it is probably better to stick with italics for emphasis.
Tip
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. For example, I did a Google search for the phrase “Microsoft Word how to search for words marked in italics”.
The first link it turned up was
which explained how to search for italicized words and phrases. Basically, you click on Replace then the Find tab, click in the “Find what” field, click on the Format button (you may need to click on the More button in order to see the Format button) then choose Font. From the Find Font window, in the “Font style:” list, choose “Italic”, then click OK. 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. If you don’t see the Editing pane, you may need to click the little arrow near the upper right corner (or press Ctrl+F1) to expand the “ribbon”.)
If you use a different word processor, do a similar web search, such as one of the following:
You may need to vary the search string and, if worse comes to worst, you might need to read your word processor’s manual.
Also, it’s easy to mark italics, etc., in LibreOffice, because we have videos that show exactly how to do it. LibreOffice is free and it is easy to install. You can use it to mark the italics, etc., and then go back to your favorite word processor.
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. This won’t hurt anything. You’ll be reviewing your manuscript from time to time, and as you notice an italicized word that is missing the asterisks, just add them.
Remember, put the asterisks tight against the word or phrase like this:
He had the *nerve* to **ask me my age**.
and not like this
He had the * nerve* to ** ask me my age **.
Next, look for any scene breaks and insert a <scene> tag. If you have marked
all your scene breaks with a tilde, for example,
~
just change such lines to
<scene> ~
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:
<scene> ~
Make sure, as always for such tags, that a blank line comes before and after it (so that it is in its own paragraph).
And, one more tip for the <scene>
tags: If you have tens or hundreds of scene breaks, you probably
don’t want to hunt for them visually, one by one, so use your
word processor’s search and replace facility.
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). Once you know the file name for the image, add an <image>
tag, such as
<image> "castle.jpg" "where I stayed on vacation"
You probably don’t even need to delete the
image itself from the word processor, but you can do so later if
necessary. Once you have the <image>
tag in place, your manuscript no longer needs to have the image embedded
in it.
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 want a table of contents, decide where it should appear
and add the <contents> tag
like this:
<contents>
Add a <start>
tag where you would like your book to open for the first time.
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).
Add <align> tags if you
want some or all of the chapters or sections to have something other
than the default full justification. 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.
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.
Later, you can browse through the Additional
Notes chapter and the other Nepo Press books and examples for
other tags such as <quote>
(for block quotations), <smallquote>
(for centered, shorter quotations, such as at the start of a chapter),
<font> (for custom fonts,
such as for chapter titles), and <box>
(for sidebars or examples).
After marking up your manuscript or making changes to it, here is how you will run Mobi Machine on it to create a Mobi file.
mobireport.txt file
in the list of files to see if there were any errors or warnings.
(If you don’t see that file in the file list, wait a few seconds
then press the Refresh file list button.)
If there are no errors, the file list will now contain the new Mobi file and also an HTML version of your book.
The above steps will be described in more detail below.
From within your word processor’s menu, click
on File / Save a Copy or File / Save As to save
a copy of your manuscript as a temporary file ending in .txt.
(If your manuscript is named stormynight.doc,
then name the temporary file stormynight.txt.)
If your word processor gives you a choice for the file encoding,
select UTF-8. 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 .doc
file, the .txt file must have
the name your book account is expecting. 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.txt)
must match exactly the manuscript name your book account is expecting.
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.
Here are the specific details for Microsoft Word.
.txt.
If you are using LibreOffice or OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Word, the process is almost identical.
You are probably using their native file format odt.
So, your manuscript may be named stormynight.odt
rather than stormynight.doc, but
this doesn’t make any difference. You still need to save your
manuscript as a temporary plain text file (stormynight.txt).
Here are the specific details for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
stormynight.txt.
If it winds up named stormynight.txt.csv
or just stormynight, then you
need to rename it to stormynight.txt.
After saving a copy of your manuscript as a plain
text file with the File / Save As menu item, take a look
at the name of the file you are currently editing. This
is usually shown in the title bar of the word processor’s window.
If you had been editing a file named stormynight.doc
or stormynight.docx or stormynight.odt,
the file now open in your word processor is probably the
plain text version (with an extension of .txt).
If so, close this file (File / Close) so you won’t
accidentally edit the wrong file, then reopen the .doc
or .docx or .odt
version. This isn’t necessary with word processors (such as
the recent LibreOffice) that have the File / Save a Copy
menu item. If you did accidentally make extensive changes directly
to the .txt version that you don’t
want to retrofit into the .doc
version, no problem, just keep editing the .txt
version.
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.mobi), it also
creates an HTML file (such as stormynight.html)
that you can view in a web browser.
Why both? 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 HTML version is good for this, although you may prefer to print the PDF version. 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.mobi) to your
computer, plug in your Kindle and drag the Mobi file to it. 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.mobi,
stormynight.html, and mobireport.txt will be deleted. 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.txt
in the list of files, wait a few seconds then click the Refresh
file list button. It typically takes well under a minute to
finish the formatting.
Once mobireport.txt is present
in the list of files, click on it to view it in your web browser
to see if there are any warning or error messages.
If Mobi Machine notices a problem when
processing your manuscript, it will show a warning or error message
in the mobireport.txt file and,
where appropriate, the error or warning will give some context information
to help you locate the corresponding section in your manuscript.
Here is an example of a warning. Suppose you wanted to set some
words in a mono-spaced font using the <ex>
tag but forgot to put in the ending tag. (These tags are covered
in the Mono-spaced Fonts section of
chapter 5.) That is, you should have written
This is an example of <ex>mono-spaced text</ex>. Notice how it looks.
but instead you left off the ending tag like this
This is an example of <ex>mono-spaced text. Notice how it looks.
The warning message would look like this.
Warning: <ex> tag found with no ending </ex> tag.
Rest of paragraph will be treated as if it ended with an </ex> tag.
Manuscript context begins: 'This is an example of <ex>mono-spaced te'
That’s only a warning, so it would not prevent
a Mobi file from being created, but a little too much of that paragraph
would be mono spaced. That’s an easy error to fix. Go right
to the problem by searching your manuscript for the offending paragraph
that begins with the context shown in the error message. In this
example, you would search for ‘This is an example of …’,
or else search for the <ex>
tag.
Your typical day to day work flow will be
mobireport.txt for any errors
or warnings,
Repeat above steps until your book is ready to publish.
Later, after you have released your book to the world, you might discover a typo or misspelled word. So, even after your book is “finished” and published, you may occasionally need to make corrections or improve it. 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.
We have now covered the essential markup. That’s all you really need to produce a Mobi file for the typical novel.
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.
If 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.
Just put a <box> tag at
the beginning of the section to be boxed and put a </box>
tag at the end.
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.
<box> First paragraph of a sample. It continues here. Second paragraph of a sample block. </box>
and would be rendered like this:
First paragraph of a sample. It continues here.
Second paragraph of a sample block.
These sorts of block tags have an opening tag (such
as <quote> or <box>)
and a closing tag (such as </quote>
or </box>). (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. This wrapping is independent of where you make
the lines break in your manuscript, unless you add <break>
tags (discussed later, see Forcing Line
Breaks).
You 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.
Sammy grew wings and flew to the moon. # Note to self # I need to make this # character more believable.
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.
By default, the first character of the first paragraph of each chapter will be set as a “drop cap”. 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.
The following will turn off drop caps:
<dropcaps> off
If you don’t want any drop caps, turn them off near the top of your manuscript. 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.
<dropcaps> off * Dedication ... <dropcaps> on * Preface
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.
You might also have trouble if the first paragraph of a chapter starts with italics, as in
*What am I doing with my life?* she wondered as she ...
Because it starts with an asterisk rather than a
letter, the “W” will not be set in a drop cap automatically.
You can force it with the <dc>
tags discussed elsewhere or you can just skip the first character
and italicize the rest of the phrase, like this:
W*hat am I doing with my life?* she wondered as she ...
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. For example:
* *** copyright <copy> 2012 Nepo Press ...
or even
* *** copyright <copy> 2012 Nepo Press ...
Three dots (periods)
in a row (...) are converted to
an ellipsis (…).
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.
Several forms of emphasis can be used in your manuscript:
Usually, the only emphasis you need is italics. All Kindles can render italics. Note: some Kindles ignore other forms of emphasis.
A single pair of asterisks, such as
*single* word or *several words*
indicate 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.
The above example would look like:
single word or several words
A double pair of asterisks, such as
**single** word or **several words**
indicate a bold font and would look like the following (if you don’t see the bold, then your eReader doesn’t support bold—a good reason to stick to italics for emphasis):
single word or several words
Again, the asterisks are tight against the word or phrase. Don’t write it like this:
** this**
or
**this **
Also, if you really need it, you can use a pair of triple asterisks to indicate both bold and italics. This is usually overkill.
Here is an example that applies all three types of emphasis:
"Did you *really* do that?" asked the boy. "Yes, I *really did*," replied the girl. *I can't believe she did that*, thought the boy. "**Wow!** That was very **bold** of you," he said. "I would ***never*** do that."
and it would be rendered to look like this:
“Did you really do that?” asked the boy.
“Yes, I really did,” replied the girl.
I can’t believe she did that, thought the boy. “Wow! That was very bold of you,” he said. “I would never do that.”
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.
Note the difference between using asterisks for headings and using them for emphasis:
This is *very good*. This is * not good*. This is *not good *. This is * not good *.
The above would be rendered like this:
This is very good. This is * not good*. This is *not good *. This is * not good *.
Because a heading always has a space following the asterisks and because emphasized text never does, Mobi Machine is able to tell what is or is not a heading, even when the asterisks start at the left margin.
*** This is a subheading *This* is not a subheading, (no space) Here is a ***bolded and italicized phrase*** split across two lines---no problem.
The above example would be rendered as follows:
This is not a subheading, (no space)
Here is a bolded and italicized phrase split across two lines—no problem.
Sometimes you might want to force a line break without starting a new paragraph. This can be useful in headings and in quotations.
Most of the time, you should let Kindle determine where your lines
break. Sometimes, though, you want a little more control. The <break> tag forces a line break.
Suppose you have a long chapter heading such as “Chapter 17 The Missing Ugly Green and Purple Parrot from Chicago”. If you write it this way
* Chapter 17 The Missing Ugly Green and Purple Parrot from Chicago
as you could in a text editor, it is the blank line that marks the end of the paragraph.
In a word processor, the above would be written more like the following:
* Chapter 17 The Missing Ugly Green and Purple Parrot from Chicago
that is, you would not press the Enter key until after typing “Chicago”. In a word processor, it is the Enter key (the Return key) that marks the end of a paragraph.
However, the rendered version in the eBook would likely be too long to fit on a single line on some (most) eReaders. The eReader would break the title somewhere but it might not be where you’d like it.
The example above would be rendered like this:
Instead, you can use the <break>
tag like this (in a text editor)
* Chapter 17 <break> The Missing Ugly Green <break> and Purple Parrot <break> from Chicago
or like this (in a word processor)
* Chapter 17 <break> The Missing Ugly Green <break> and Purple Parrot <break> from Chicago
which would force line breaks where you want them and would be rendered like this:
Suppose you want to quote some poetry. The locations
of the line breaks are important, so rather than just letting the
lines wrap, you would insert <break>
tags at the appropriate places, such as in the poem “Antigonish”
by William Hughes Mearns.
<quote> Yesterday, upon the stair, <break> I met a man who wasn’t there <break> He wasn’t there again today <break> I wish, I wish he’d go away... </quote>
The above has three paragraphs:
<quote> tag
</quote> tag
Again, note that the above is how it would be written in a text editor. In a word processor it would look more like this:
<quote> Yesterday, upon the stair, <break> I met a man who wasn’t there <break> He wasn’t there again today <break> I wish, I wish he’d go away... </quote>
In either case, it would be rendered like this
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who
wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish,
I wish he’d go away…
For poetry, instead of using the <quote>
tags and the explicit <break>
tags, you could use the <poetry>
tags instead, like this:
<poetry> Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away... </poetry>
and it would be rendered like this:
Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away…
However, the <poetry>
tags probably won’t be entirely satisfactory unless you are
using a text editor.
The hyphen (-) has several uses. A single hyphen
is rendered as a hyphen. Two hyphens are rendered as an en dash
(–). Three hyphens are rendered as an em dash (—).
A line that starts with four or more hyphens is rendered as a rule
(a horizontal line).
He was ex-military looking for part--time work---I think he said `work'---but I am not sure. ----
and would look like this
He was ex-military looking for part–time work—I think he said ‘work’—but I am not sure.
The <image>
tag can be very simple. All you have to give it is the file name
of the image.
<image> frank.jpg
The above example would look like this:
However, you can also supply a caption if you wish. If you supply more than just the file name, then each item must be in double quote marks (straight quotes, not curly quotes—turn off your word processor’s auto-format options if necessary). The second item of information is the caption.
<image> "frank.jpg" "the author"
and it would look like this
the author
The third item of information is the credit. Suppose the photo had been taken by Newman Studios
<image> "frank.jpg" "the author" "photo by Newman Studios"
photo by Newman Studios
the author
Note that the image itself does not need to go in
your manuscript directly, only the image tag. The image itself must
be in a separate file, and needs to be uploaded to your Nepo Press
book account. If your word processor has embedded your images in
your manuscript (if you see the pictures in your manuscript), you
may delete them from the word processor, leaving just the <image>
tags as shown above.
You do not need to upload these image files directly to Amazon. Mobi Machine bundles the images into the Mobi file, so all you need to do is upload the Mobi file to Amazon.
However, the image files do need to be in the same directory
as the HTML version of your book (e.g., stormynight.html).
This happens automatically when you view the HTML directly from
your book account. However, if you download the HTML file to post
it elsewhere, you must also put the image files in the same location.
Note the difference between the <image>
tag and the <cover> tag.
The cover image is special because it will appear inside your eBook
and you will upload it separately to Amazon. That is, when
publishing your book, you will upload both the Mobi file and the
cover image (Amazon will prompt you at the proper time—it’s
easy.) You might use two separate cover image files: a lower resolution
file to go inside your Mobi file (such as 600x800 or 900x1200 pixels)
and a higher resolution file uploaded to Amazon for use on your book
description page.
It is conventional in fiction to indent the first line of all paragraphs except for “first paragraphs”. That is, the first paragraph of a chapter (or section or scene, etc.) will not have its first line indented.
Mobi Machine sticks with this convention. The first paragraph of a chapter or section will not have its first line indented. Neither will the first paragraph after a scene break, a quote block, an image, etc.
Mobi Machine takes care of the indentation automatically. It doesn’t matter whether you insert leading spaces (or tabs) in your manuscript or not, as that has no effect on the indentation in the Mobi file.
Where should you keep your manuscripts on your computer?
In Chapter 2 Writing a Novel From Scratch and in Chapter 3 Working With An Existing Manuscript, we just more or less assumed you would use whatever directory your word processor suggested.
It doesn’t much matter where you keep your manuscripts as long as you know where to find them.
If you have several manuscripts, you can keep them all in the same directory, if you wish, but I prefer to set up a separate directory for each manuscript. That way, it is easy to organize the various files related to it, such as the cover image, the author’s photo, the book description you plan to upload to Amazon, etc.
If you would like to keep each of your manuscripts in its own directory, the YouTube video “How to Set Up Manuscript Directories” will show you how to do it:
Occasionally, it might be handy to mark a literal section within a paragraph to prevent the rendering of any markup, or just to force the font to be mono-spaced.
This can be useful to show a literal example.
That is done with the <ex>
tags (“ex” stands for “example”).
This paragraph will have <ex>some *words*</ex> in a mono-spaced font
Note that the asterisks around the word “words”
will not turn on italics, because the <ex>
tag prevents the rendering of the markup. The above example would
look like
This paragraph will have some
*words* in a mono-spaced font
Kindle’s default
paragraph alignment is full justification (lining up both the left
and right margins). You can override this with the <align>
tag by setting <align> to
right, left, or center. You can restore the default by setting <align> to default.
For example, if you use <align>
left, the left margin will be lined up, but the right margin
will be “ragged”.
The <align> tag goes on
a line by itself, starting in column 1 and stays in effect until
another <align> tag is encountered.
The <align> tag also affects
the headings. Suppose you want most headings to begin at the left
margin. The default (<align> default)
or <align> left takes care
of that. However, if you want the title page, heading and all, to
be centered, you could do it this way:
<align> center * Stormy Night ... <align> default * Introduction
<align> default This is the eReader’s default. On the Kindle, it causes each line to be fully justified.
<align> left With this style, the lines are left justified, rather than fully justified, leaving the right margin ragged.
<align> right Lines are right-justified. This is useful mainly for short, single-line paragraphs.
<align> center Lines are centered. This is useful mainly for short, single-line paragraphs such as on a title page or copyright page.
<align> left This paragraph is left justified. Thus the left margin will be lined up but the right will be "ragged". This is another sentence in the same paragraph to give enough words so we can see it spread out over several lines. You may need to change the font size on the Kindle to *see* that the right margin is ragged. <align> default
This paragraph is left justified. Thus the left margin will be lined up but the right will be “ragged”. This is another sentence in the same paragraph to give enough words so we can see it spread out over several lines. You may need to change the font size on the Kindle to see that the right margin is ragged.
With small font sizes, you may not be able to see much difference between left and full justification. So, try also increasing the font size on the Kindle.
<align> right These short lines (each is a paragraph, of course) are right justified. It is the left margin that is "ragged". <align> default
These short lines
(each is a paragraph, of course)
are right
justified.
It is the left margin that is “ragged”.
<align> center These short lines/paragraphs will be centered <align> default
These short
lines/paragraphs
will be centered
<align> default This is the default alignment, which is fully justified on the Kindle. This means the margins will be lined up on both the left and the right. One possible problem would be URLs such as http://nepotism.net/downloads or other long "words" that do not provide a convenient place to break the line. Since this book has lots of URLs, perhaps we should have used `left' rather than `default'. You may need to change the font size in your eReader to see the funny spacing.
This is the default alignment, which is fully justified on the Kindle. This means the margins will be lined up on both the left and the right. One possible problem would be URLs such as http://nepotism.net/downloads or other long “words” that do not provide a convenient place to break the line. Since this book has lots of URLs, perhaps we should have used ‘left’ rather than ‘default’. You may need to change the font size in your eReader to see the funny spacing.
Again, note that with small font sizes, you may not be able to see much difference between left and full justification when you view these examples on the Kindle. If you don’t see a difference, try increasing the font size.
The <quote>
and </quote> tags set off
a section of text to be displayed with a wider margin. This is handy
for quotations.
<quote> This paragraph is in a quote block. This is a second paragraph within a quote block. </quote>
The above example would be rendered as shown below:
This paragraph is in a quote block.
This is a second paragraph within a quote block.
There are four variants of the <quote>
tag:
<quote> … </quote>
<quotei> … </quotei>
<quotation> … </quotation>
<quotationi> … </quotationi>
You can experiment to see which suits your book best. The main differences are the width of the margins and whether the font is changed to italics or not.
Note
When we speak of the <smartquotes>
setting below, we are referring to Mobi Machine’s
smart quotes setting, not your word processor’s smart quotes
setting. Your word processor’s smart quotes should always
be turned off, as described in Appendix E.
When Mobi Machine’s <smartquotes>
are on (the default), Mobi Machine processes double quote
marks (") within a paragraph by
looking for them in pairs. It replaces the first of each pair with
an opening curly double quote (“) and the second with a closing
curly double quote (”).
Each backtick (`) will be replaced
with a left curly single quote (‘). Each single quote (apostrophe)
(') will be replaced with a right
curly single quote (’).
If you prefer to turn off these substitutions, just change the
<smartquotes> setting somewhere
near the beginning of your manuscript to this:
<smartquotes> off
Here are some examples:
"Bobby, why do you hate lemonade?" asked Sally. "No, no, *I* like lemonade. I said *Betty* said, `I hate lemonade,'" said Bobby.
which would look like this
“Bobby, why do you hate lemonade?” asked Sally.
“No, no, I like lemonade. I said Betty said, ‘I hate lemonade,’ ” said Bobby.
The quote marks are processed a paragraph at a time (sometimes just a part of a paragraph at a time if certain special markup appears in the paragraph).
If you have a troublesome paragraph where the smart quotes aren’t
doing what you want, you can turn them off just before that paragraph
and turn them on again right afterwards. Within the troublesome
paragraph, you can insert exactly the quote mark you want using the
<ldquo> and <rdquo>
tags (“ldquo” stands for “left double quote”,
“rdquo” stands for “right double quote”).
These tags are discussed more fully elsewhere.
A possible use for this would be a chapter opening with dialog
where you would like to omit the opening quote mark (so the drop
cap will look prettier). In this case, instead of a closing quote
mark, you would use the <rdquo>
tag as shown below:
* Chapter XX What are you doing here?<rdquo> she screamed.
and it would be rendered like this:
What are you doing here?” she screamed.
Because the above example did not have any straight quotes in it at all, we did not even need to turn off smart quotes.
Use the <scene>
tag to indicate a scene change within a chapter. It adds a little
extra vertical space before the next paragraph and also causes the
first word of the next paragraph to begin at the left margin (instead
of being indented).
If you use just the <scene>
tag, it defaults to showing a blank vertical space. If you would
like something else to be displayed, just put it on the same line
as the <scene> tag.
This would show three asterisks:
<scene> * * *
This would show three tildes:
<scene> ~ ~ ~
The following example uses a single tilde to indicate a scene change:
end of previous scene. <scene> ~ Start of new scene
It would look like this:
end of previous scene.
~
Start of new scene
Here is another example, using three asterisks with no spaces between them:
end of previous scene. <scene> *** Start of new scene
It would look like this:
end of previous scene.
***
Start of new scene
When you have a short
quotation that doesn’t need a whole block of text, you can
use the <smallquote> tag.
Unlike the <box> and <quote> tags, the <smallquote>
tag is not a block tag (it doesn’t need an ending tag).
It displays a small centered quotation with an optional attribution. This could be used to provide a witty quotation at the beginning of a chapter.
The <smallquote> tag expects
one or two items of information, as shown in the examples below.
The first is the quotation. The second is the attribution, which
is optional.
* Chapter 3 <break> The Trouble <smallquote> "No man is an island" "--- John Donne" This is the first paragraph.
It would look like this:
No man is an island — John Donne
This is the first paragraph.
Here’s another example:
<smallquote> "Waste not, want not" "--- Anon"
Note how both the quote and the attribution are
each enclosed in double quote marks and are written on the same line,
or in the same paragraph, as the <smallquote>
tag.
It would look like this:
Waste not, want not — Anon
This section, and the YouTube video “How to Copy a Mobi File From Disk to Kindle” will show you how to get your Mobi file to your Kindle:
Of course, you do not need to have a Kindle in order to read a Kindle eBook. You can use one of the free Kindle apps from Amazon to read a Mobi file on Windows, Mac, a smart phone, or even in a web browser. See, for example
and the link on that page that starts “click here to view our entire family of FREE Kindle Reading Apps”. At this writing, it lists these devices:
However, if you have a Kindle, or if you have friends or beta readers who have Kindles, you probably want to put your book on an actual Kindle.
There are several ways to get your book to your Kindle. For the
following, suppose your manuscript is stormynight.doc
and your eBook is stormynight.mobi.
One way is to email your Mobi file to your Kindle. However, the fastest way is to connect your Kindle to your computer with the USB cable that came with it and drag and drop the Mobi file to the Kindle. Both methods are discussed below.
To email your Mobi file (e.g., stormynight.mobi)
to your Kindle, you need to know your Kindle’s email address.
You can look up your Kindle’s email address on your Kindle by pressing the Home button, then the Menu button. Next, click on Settings, then page down until you see Send-to-Kindle E-mail. On Kindle Fire, go to Settings / More / My Account (to get to Settings, press the gear symbol at the top of the screen, or see your Kindle’s manual). The exact location may vary depending on your Kindle model.
An alternative is to log into your Amazon account. Under “Your Account”, select “Manage Your Content and Devices”, then select your Kindle to see its email address.
The email address will be something like alfred_839@kindle.com. If you have a 3G Kindle there may be a charge if you send to that address. Instead, you can add the word “free” to the address (e.g., alfred_839@free.kindle.com) and the file will be delivered to your Kindle at no charge via Wi-Fi.
Then, simply email stormynight.mobi,
as an attachment, to your Kindle’s email address (such as alfred_839@free.kindle.com).
You can leave the subject (and the body) blank, just as long as you
add the attachment.
Connect your Kindle to your computer with a USB
cable. This should cause your computer’s file manager to open,
positioned on the Kindle. Your computer will treat your Kindle as
if it were a disk drive (or folder). Open another file
manager and navigate to your manuscript directory (assuming that’s
where you downloaded the Mobi file). Copy stormynight.mobi
to the Kindle’s documents
directory. (On a Kindle Fire, you can copy to the directory named
either Documents or Books.)
If that sounds complicated, don’t worry. It’s easy to get the hang of it. These YouTube videos will show you what to do:
If you have an Amazon account, then you already have a KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) account. If not, it is easy to set up an account.
To make your eBook available to the world, go to http://kdp.amazon.com, sign in (or create an account if you don’t have one yet), then follow the instructions. You will be prompted to fill in any additional information needed, such as your address and whether you want to be paid via direct deposit or check.
Then click on Bookshelf and Add new title to begin publishing your book. Fill in the specifics about your book. When you are prompted to upload your book, a file browser will pop up so you can navigate to your manuscript directory where you will select the Mobi file. Also, you will be prompted to upload your cover image in the same way. You do not have to upload other images that appear in your book, because they are already inside your Mobi file. You will also need to enter some additional information such as
It is a good idea to work out the description prior to starting to upload your book. Then, rather than typing in the description when Amazon prompts you for it, copy and paste it. This is easier and less mistake prone.
This section contains various tips for fixing minor problems, reading your book in a web browser, printing your book, customizing review copies, and such.
Mobi Machine tries to match up pairs of double quote marks (straight quotes) in each paragraph so it can turn the first of each pair into an opening curly quote and the second into a closing curly quote. This was touched on in the Quote Blocks section of chapter 5.
If the curly double quotes look backwards, that is, if you see ” where you expected to see “ or vice versa, a quoted phrase is probably missing a quote mark. The solution is to add the missing double quote mark to your manuscript.
Single quotes use two different characters. The backtick (`) will be turned into an opening single
quote. An apostrophe (') will
be turned into a closing single quote. So, if you write 'should
be in single quotes' (which renders incorrectly as ’should
be in single quotes’), the solution is to change the opening
mark to a backtick like this `should
be in single quotes' (which renders correctly as ‘should
be in single quotes’).
If your manuscript contains “smart quotes”, Mobi Machine attempts to correct for them automatically. However, if problems persist, if your manuscript appears to have the quote marks in the correct places yet the rendered Mobi file still doesn’t show them correctly, try deleting both quote marks around the problem phrase in your manuscript and retype them (in case your word processor had previously substituted curly quote marks for straight quote marks).
If you have a lot of these problems, the easiest solution might be to use your word processor’s copy/replace feature to replace all curly quotes with straight quotes.
Then, as usual, save a copy of your manuscript (stormynight.doc)
as a temporary text file (stormynight.txt)
then regenerate your Mobi file.
Block tags and setting tags that should start at the beginning of a line should go on a line (or paragraph) by themselves with a blank line above and below. For example, the following quote block is incorrect because it is missing the blank lines:
<quote> Some witty quotation or poem </quote>
The following quote block is even worse:
<quote> Some witty quotation or poem </quote>
Here is the proper way to write a quote block:
<quote> Some witty quotation or poem </quote>
Remember to back up your work early and often, especially your manuscripts. It is a good idea to keep some of the copies off site.
When Mobi Machine produces a Mobi file from your manuscript, it also produces an HTML file that you can read in a web browser.
The essence of eBooks is that the eReader device reflows the text to fit the width of the screen, given the font size and spacing selected by the reader.
An eReader’s screen is not usually as wide as a desktop computer’s screen. So, the style sheet used for the HTML version sets the width appropriately. If this is still too wide, you can make your web browser’s screen narrower by grabbing an edge or corner (with the mouse) and dragging to resize it to a comfortable width and height. You can adjust the font size with your web browser’s View / Zoom menu.
As mentioned previously, Mobi Machine produces an HTML version of your eBook at the same time it produces the Mobi file. There are at least two files related to the HTML version:
stormynight.html
htmlstyle.css (or htmlcustom.css,
etc.)
Mobi Machine creates this HTML file in
your book account. Thus, all these files are present in the same
place. If you copy the HTML file somewhere else (to a directory
on your computer or to a web server) be sure also to copy the style
sheet, e.g., htmlstyle.css or
htmlcustom.css, and all the image
files.
This also applies if you email the HTML file to someone. You need to send him the style sheet and image files too. But why bother doing all that? Just send him the Mobi file instead. If he doesn’t know how to copy it to his Kindle or if he doesn’t have a Kindle, you can point him to the videos for detailed instructions:
If you have installed Kindle for PC, you can read your newly created Mobi file in it by
stormynight.mobi)
from the file manager to the Kindle for PC “library”
The following YouTube videos show you how to do this step by step:
The HTML version of your eBook is “printer friendly”. It is set up to force page breaks so that each chapter (each level one and level two heading) starts on a new page. You can print this file from your web browser to produce a hard-copy for proofreading purposes. (Or, you can produce a PDF as described elsewhere. A PDF is even more “printer friendly”.)
If the page breaks are not falling where you think they should, try a different web browser. Firefox is a good choice.
If you want to print just part of your book (perhaps just a chapter or two), then instead of going to File / Print in Firefox, go to File / Print Preview. From there, determine the range of page numbers you want to print, then from within the Print Preview window, click on Print and click on Pages: and enter the range, such as “50-62”.
Should you use a word processor or a text editor for your manuscript?
The easiest thing to do is just keep using what you are comfortable with. If you use and like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, stick with it until or unless you find a reason to change.
Likewise, if you are an Emacs or Vi or TextMate or other text editor enthusiast, just stick with it.
However, as far as Mobi Machine is concerned, a word processor does not provide any benefits. You would have more control over the formatting if you switch to a text editor. Also, it would allow you to skip the Save-as step, since your manuscript would already be in a plain text format.
If you currently use a word processor but would like to switch to a text editor, it is easy to do. Full details are given in the Advanced Mobi and EPUB Machines book.
This appendix contains a list of all the tags recognized by Mobi Machine that have been discussed in this book. (Additional tags are covered in the book Advanced Mobi and EPUB Machines.)
Each tag is linked to the main chapter or chapters that discuss it. Also, you can use your eReader’s search facility to locate every occurrence of a specific tag.
<align> Chapter
2, Paragraph Alignment
<box> Boxes
<break> Forcing
Line Breaks
<contents> The
table of contents
<copy> The
copyright page
<cover> Boilerplate
<dropcaps> Drop
Caps
<ex> Mono-spaced
Fonts
<image> Images
<ldquo> Quote
Marks and Smart Quotes
<publisher> Boilerplate
<quote> Quote
Blocks
<quotei> Quote
Blocks
<quotation> Quote
Blocks
<quotationi> Quote
Blocks
<rdquo> Quote
Marks and Smart Quotes
<scene> Chapter
3, Scene Breaks
<smallquote> Small
Quotes
<smartquotes> Quote
Marks and Smart Quotes
<start> Where
should your book start?
The default options for some word processors, especially the auto-format options, will interfere with the operation of Mobi Machine.
Here are some of the problems to watch out for:
<image>
and <smallquote>) (although
Mobi Machine attempts to fix this automatically).
The solution is to change your word processor’s settings to turn these items off.
Specific instructions for turning them off in Microsoft Word and in LibreOffice are given in the following sections. Other word processors will be similar but you may need to browse through the menu system to look for something like “options” or “settings” or “preferences”. If you are stumped, just Google for the answer by searching for something like “WordPerfect how to turn off automatic lists” or “OpenOffice how to turn off table of contents”.
Here is how to configure Microsoft Word:
Here is how to configure LibreOffice:
You will see an “[M]” column and a “[T]” column and a description column. Uncheck the boxes under “[M]” and “[T]” for the following:
Next, click on the Localized Options tab and make sure the “Replace” box is unchecked under both “Single quotes” and “Double quotes”.
Finally, click on OK.
Note, if you are starting with an existing manuscript, probably all the quote marks will already be “smart”, i.e., curly.
The quote marks used in tags and headings (such as chapter headings
and <image> tags and <smallquote> tags) must
be straight quotes, not curly quotes. So, it is a good idea to turn
off smart quotes as described above prior to marking up your manuscript.
Generally though, you do not need to go through your manuscript to change them all to straight quotes because Mobi Machine attempts to change them to straight quotes automatically.
If Mobi Machine can’t fix this automatically, you may need to go through your manuscript and change all the “smart” quotes to straight quotes.
If you have a different word processor, you should be able to find where to turn off any automatic formatting by browsing around its menu system or by doing a web search as described earlier.
You may have a different version of Microsoft Word or LibreOffice where the detailed instructions in this chapter will not apply exactly. If it is not obvious how to turn off the automatic formatting, a web search as mentioned above will likely lead you to the answer quickly.
Also, depending on how you have set up your word processor, there may be other settings and formatting that you will need to turn off.
This book has used miniature versions of the Stormy Night novel as examples. Now it is time to show a longer example manuscript for that book. The manuscript is shown here with a short line width to make it easier to read on eReaders. If, in spite of this, lines wrap that should not, try changing your eReader to use a smaller font or to use landscape mode.
The full (although still quite short) Stormy Night novel is available through various booksellers and from the Nepo Press web site.
Here is the manuscript.
<publisher> Nepo Press <cover> stormy.jpg <align> center #### title page * "Stormy Night" "" *** Frank Sergeant #### copyright page * *** copyright <copy> 2012 Nepo Press all rights reserved version 1 <align> default <contents> * Acknowledgments The background image for the cover is the painting *The Storm* (La Tempête) by French artist Pierre Auguste Côt <url https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Storm.jpg>. <start> * Preface This novel is far too short to be called a short story, never mind a novella or novel. However, it is just the right length to serve as an example of how to format a novel that can be turned into an eBook, automatically, with the system described in *Mobi Machine (Your Kindle Formatting Butler)*. Please read it in that light rather than for its literary merit. * Chapter One <break> The Haunted House It was a dark and stormy night. All the windows were closed and the shutters were tight. Bobby and Judy had been drinking and they were tight too. They had not been drinking very much so, even though they were tight too, they were not too tight. This is the third paragraph of the exciting first chapter. This is the conclusion of the first chapter. Although it was exciting at first, it is beginning to drag. * Chapter Two <break> The Visitor "Hand me that bottle," said Bobby. The occupants continued to drink. The storm picked up. The lightning crashed. The thunder sparked. Bobby got nervous. Judy shrieked and jumped into Bobby's arms, catching him off balance. They tumbled onto the floor, spilling their drinks. Suddenly the lights went off. What was that knocking sound? A burglar? A monster? A woodpecker that likes to work at night? "Bobby, you'd better go check on that," said Judy. "Hell, no, I'm not going out there!" said Bobby. *Wimp!* thought Judy but she said, "Okay, okay, I'll go out there myself. I always have to do everything myself." <scene> ~ Judy got her shotgun and put on her rain hat and stumbled drunkenly (they had continued to drink) outdoors. She fell off the steps and the gun went off. Fortunately, no one was hurt. She picked herself up and wandered into the dark. *I should have brought a flashlight*. <scene> ~ Bobby heard the gun go off and began to worry about Judy. He almost went out to look for her. Instead he called out, "Judy, Judy, are you all right?" There was no answer. Now Bobby was really worried. * Epilogue Judy (poor Judy) eventually fell into a puddle of water. Fortunately, she fell onto her back, otherwise, she would have drowned. Bobby (poor Bobby), even though almost sick with worry, eventually fell into a deep puddle of sleep. The next morning, the hungover but sober pair drove into town for breakfast and lived happily ever after. # This is a comment. # It will not appear in # the formatted book. * About the Author <image> "frank.jpg" "Frank Sergeant" Among other things, the author provides programming and technical support services to Nepo Press. His experience turning manuscripts into eBooks led to the book *Mobi Machine (Your Kindle Formatting Butler)* and the associated software, a system allowing anyone to format books for the Kindle at the touch of a button. He enjoys receiving email from readers at frank@nepotism.net. The author's web site is at http://nepotism.net.
Yes, I call P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster’s Jeeves a butler, knowing full well that he is a valet. I’ll try to get past this discrepancy and I hope you will too. In my defense, apparently Bertie occasionally loans Jeeves out as a butler and has said that Jeeves can buttle with the best of them. I felt that “Your Kindle Formatting Valet” didn’t have quite the same ring to it.
I have made a number of YouTube videos (screencasts), showing how to mark up and format a manuscript, how to put a Mobi file on the Kindle, etc.:
![[frank-curvesthreshold-200x317.jpg]](frank-curvesthreshold-200x317.jpg)
Frank Sergeant provides computer programming and technical support services to Nepo Press (http://nepotism.net), where he has been intimately involved with authors and the process of turning manuscripts into eBooks.
Please send a note to frank@nepotism.net if you would like to be added to the Nepo Press mailing list for the occasional short newsletter plus news of any updates or corrections to this book.
His other books may also be of interest. Check your favorite bookseller for these books or see the complete list at
This book, Mobi Machine, takes care of publishing on Amazon and for the Kindle, but what about Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and most other eReaders?
If you want to publish your book elsewhere than Amazon—or read it on almost any non-Kindle eReader—you might want to get EPUB Machine (Your EPUB Formatting Butler). It is available from various booksellers. EPUB Machine is just like Mobi Machine except it focuses more directly on making EPUB 3 files. EPUB Machine also runs the EpubCheck program automatically so you can verify your eBook meets the EPUB 3 standard, helping you insure that Apple and Barnes & Noble accept your eBook on the first try.
These two books are almost identical, except one is for producing Mobi files (for Kindle) and the other is for producing EPUB 3 files (for most other eReaders). If you have one, you probably do not need the other.
Additional information about formatting Mobi and EPUB eBooks is available in the Advanced Mobi and EPUB Machines book. And, it contains the details for making “camera-ready” PDF files for publishing and selling your books through CreateSpace and Amazon. It is available from various booksellers.
Your book needs a cover, and you can make it yourself with the help of the author’s Quick and Dirty eBook Covers.
It steps you through making a very simple book cover using the free GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
This is a short, focused book designed to teach you as little as possible about GIMP—just enough to create a basic eBook cover. This will not be a $300 cover or even a $150 cover, but it will be a damn good 99 cent cover.
Since you can update your cover image whenever you like on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc., this book lets you create a usable cover immediately then replace it later as your time, skills, and finances allow.
The screenshots are in full color but look good even on a grayscale eReader, and you can zoom in to see all the detail.
Also, there are three fake mystery novels whose only purpose is to show the “before” manuscript and the “after” eBook. Each is very short, perhaps 300 words. Two of them include an appendix with the actual text of the manuscript showing how various effects were achieved, such as drop caps, lists, internal links, external links, table of contents, and images. The manuscript for the third is available from the Nepo Press site as an example or to use as a template for your own novel.
For more details about the Nepo Press formatting service, including current prices, see the web site:
To get a free two-week trial book account, email frank@nepotism.net with the exact title of your book and the author name. (Pen name and/or multiple authors OK.) Books produced with the trial account will be “watermarked”. Try it out with no risk. Then, if you are happy with the formatting and ready to publish, you can upgrade to a paid account.