How to Format your Book for Amazon KDP & Paperback in 5 Steps

If you’ve ever taken steps to put in the work, effort and energy to write your first draft, you’ll find that getting to format your book for Amazon is never a walk in the park yet, it is the holy grail of self-publishing with KDP.

Yes! Outside positioning you as an excellent author, in most cases; this is one of the major criteria that will determine if your book gets kicked out or published by Amazon.

No, it’s no jokes! An author once sent me an Amazon review where the buyer commented that the author’s book was great but the interior set up was terrible so she gave her three stars. This has happened to many new authors too.

Technically, writing a great book without giving it a great finishing is almost the same thing as writing a terrible book. Because no buyer is going to spend their hard earned money on some mumbled up work. Especially on a highly competitive platform like Amazon.

To shine brightly with KDP, you don’t just need to have a great book, you have to go all the way to cross out the ‘T’s, dot the ‘I’s and get your book all shiny and ready for your readers, inside out.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the key steps you’ll need to get your book coming out clean and neat and the tricks you will use to achieve a solid formatting for your books on Amazon, even if you’re a first time author.

Steps to Prepare your Manuscript for Amazon

Preparing your manuscript can be a daunting task for most authors, most especially beginners but; there are some steps you can take to make it much easier for you.

Before formatting your book for Amazon, using the following steps will get you to have the book all set and well arranged for a great reading experience…

Map Out your Idea

Start with mapping out your idea and then dividing it into different sections starting with the beginning, middle part and then conclusions.

Further more, you’ll divide these three dimensional sections into chapters. And you’ll further map the chapters into sections or sub titles or themes as well.

Doing this makes it easier for you to find the right flow as you get to put the ideas together. It also gives your audience a consistency that gets them to follow through from the beginning of your work, to the very end without much misunderstanding.

Write your Book

Before thinking about formatting your book, you want to finish up writing the book and putting it together in an easy to read format.

In fact for most authors, before the final layout and formatting process, you want to be sure that the book is properly proof read, edited and all ready to get published in its final state.

Starting from the beginning to the middle and conclusion parts, you want your work to be consistent with a flow and a tone that works for the book generally, your brand and of course, your target audience.

Consider Using Kindle Create

There are several softwares you can use to create your book manuscript but one of them that stands out is Amazon KDP’s own Kindle Create application.

Amazon’s Kindle Create makes it easy for authors to create books that delivers great user experience for readers.

For ebooks, even though you can use Microsoft Word to set up the initial layout, to create an interior layout that delivers a continuous flow and great experience for ebook readers on mobile devices, consider using the Kindle Create Software to finish your set up after creating the initial layout with your word document.

This software gets you to put your books together quite easily, allowing a free flow of the work from the chapter titles, down to individual pages.

This is the best way to create a great user experience for a Kindle ebook.

Steps to Format ebook Interior for Amazon

Generally, creating a great interior design for your book is a pre-requisite for creating a good user experience. In this section, the following steps are areas you should pay attention to, when it comes to KDP formatting…

Choose Compatible File Format

All book formats are not compatible for Amazon KDP. To get the best out of your work, write and format it in the approved KDP compatible format.

Currently, the following are the accepted file format for Amazon ebooks: such as .doc, .docx, .html, or .rtf.

Without saving your file with either of these file format, it might be difficult to upload it on the KDP platform.

Ensure Consistent Styling

Interior book styling is very important in highlighting professionalism for a finished book interior but to get the best out of your work, you have to keep the styling consistent.

Use a consistent styling for all sections of your work. From your chapter titles to sub titles and body of work, ensure there’s a level of consistency that’s repeatable, through specific sections of the work.

If you’ll prefer to use bullet point instead of roman numerals or alphabets, stick with that. Don’t create a mix up with your design.

Choose Proper Images

Some books has need for illustrations and other images. If your book has need for these, be sure you’re using the appropriate ones, only where its relevant.

Keep in mind, too many images and illustrations may increase the overall size and cost of production of your work as well as your preferred interior styling.

Use Page Breaks

To ensure proper formatting of your work, be sure you’re using page break between each chapter of the work. This feature is available if you’re editing the work as a word document.

Anything less than this might get one chapter flowing into the other, making the work look all mumbled up.

Preview Before Submission

Before final submission of your ebook draft for Amazon KDP review, preview the interior of your work, using the Amazon preview tool or KDP Create.

This will show you the display of your book on different devices, exactly as it’ll be displayed for potential readers.

Preferably, take time to go through each of the pages, one after the other, be it for ebook or Paperback.

Steps to Format Paperback (Print copy) Interior for Amazon KDP

The following are the steps you’ll take to format Paperback interior for Amazon KDP…

Select a Paper Size

One of the first steps to format paperback interior for Amazon KDP is to choose the right trim size. This is very crucial.

Using your preferred word processor, select the appropriate trim size (paper size) for your book before uploading it on Amazon.

The popular trim sizes for Amazon KDP are 5×8, 6×9, and 8.5×11 inches. You can use any of these, depending on your goal.

Font and Line Spacing

Although you can choose from a widespread number of fonts, not all fonts are readable, useful for a print book interior or readily available across printers so you want to be careful with your choice of fonts.

The following are the popular fonts for Paperback content interior on Amazon KDP: Centaur, Garamond, Hightower Text, Palatino type as well as Arial and Times New Roman.

PS: Remember you don’t necessarily have to use the same font for both body of work and chapter title.

Add Page Numbers

Add page numbers to your book for each sections. You can use the options in your word processor for easy alignment.

While at it, be sure to differentiate between the page numbering for the pre-chapter section of your work and the main body of work.

Format Images Properly

Incorrect use of images in the interior section of your work can cause printing issues and overall, bad experience for your readers.

Pay attention to use images only on sections that’s necessary. Also, format each section for a proper display.

Where you’re using illustration, run all necessary checks to ensure that there’s a correct delivery of each sections of the work before final submissions for review.

For best results, convert your file to PDF before uploading it on Amazon. And then, go ahead and preview your draft, before final submission.

General Interior Formatting Requirements for Amazon KDP

Now, the following are the general formatting requirements and the important sections you’ll need for your non fiction book, notwithstanding whether it’s Paperback or ebook;

Title Page

A title page contains the title of your book. And the sub title (if any). It usually shows up immediately after your book cover.

There’s really no hard and fast rule about creating a title page. Most authors use this page to write out the book’s title, sub title and author’s name, just as it is on the book cover.

Table of Content

Ideally, a table of content lists all the content of your book in a vertical order, starting from the first item on your book, excluding the book cover, to the last section of your book (like references, bibliographies, etc.).

It gives your readers an idea about the different sections of your book. And it’s clickable for most ebooks.

Platforms like Amazon gives readers the chance to preview your table of content before buying your book.

There are chances that your table of content might help a potential reader to decide whether to buy your book or not so you want to pay attention to this part of your work.

Introduction, Preface or Prologue

The introduction is usually a very good place to “sell” your book to your prospective buyer.

Some authors might choose to call this section Preface or Prologue. The goal of this part is that it gives a summary of detail that’s meant to further capture a potential reader’s interest in your book.

Most authors open their introduction with great story telling. They try to capture their audience’s interest through masterful story telling and in most cases this usually works.

Because, just like the back cover in traditional publishing; on Amazon, a potential buyer can preview your introduction before deciding to buy your book.

This gives you an even bigger opportunity to summarize and sell the story behind your book in a very compelling way.

Book Chapters

Chapters usually are sub sections of your book. They are a collection of sub headings and themes that come together to make up the entire book.

To be successful with online publishing, the chapters of your book should not only be captivating. They should be able to link up the section with the main theme of your work.

Individually, try to give each chapter of your book a central theme. And make each of them a collection of content that links up with the main story that forms a bulk of your work.

Generally, with the basic word formatting, you can get your book ready for Amazon Publishing. But, you also can add further formatting styles to make your book look even better.

If you want to do this then you can use the following steps…

• Highlight the title of the first chapter. On your home tab, in your word processor, locate the the styles section, then click Heading 1 to apply the style to the chapter title.

• Repeat this step for each chapter title.

Using the H1 styling will get your chapter headings aligned properly and will be very useful while you’re setting up your Table of Content.

About the Author

Usually, while formatting your book interior for Amazon KDP, there’s need to create content that will be used as part of the author bio.

If you’re publishing an eBook, you don’t need a back cover instead, you’ll have an “about the author” section for your book, both in the “author central” section and your main Amazon account.

What you need to do here is to keep your “about” description consistent with your book’s central theme. It is very important.

If you’re writing a book about a topic related to mathematics for instance, while writing your author bio, you’ll come off as more reliable if you show off your experiences or degrees demonstrating your expertise in Mathematics or related field rather than showing off your PhD in Literature in English.

It doesn’t matter how many certifications you have, your experience in the field you’re writing about can do a lot in boosting your perception to a prospective reader…

This is why it is always important you list your experience and related certifications in your about page.

Where you don’t have requisite experience in that field, you can work on listing certification or experiences in similar or closely related fields.

Whatever the case, be sure you’re not under selling yourself in your “about the author” section.

Where you feel you don’t have enough experience, then you can get to learn. And even the learning process can still qualify you to share a compelling story about yourself to a potential reader.

PS: For print copy, you’ll have an “About the author” section on your back cover , alongside your profile and author page.

Book Description

In traditional publishing, book description comes as part of the back cover under “about the book” at the back cover of your book.

Amazon KDP gives you the chance to include your book’s description right on the front page, where your book is displayed on Amazon website and in the book cover (for paperback).

Beyond writing a very compelling description here, you can also use this as an avenue to optimize your book for better visibility, using some important keywords.

How to Design Book Interior For Online Publishing

The following are the recommended ways to format your book for Amazon and set up the book for better visibility.

Font & Text Arrangement

To get the best experience for your users, avoid using excessive decorative font style as some of these fonts do not get displayed correctly, after uploads on Amazon.

To avoid this, use recommended fonts and also, always embed fonts, while converting your book to PDF versions further upload on Amazon.

Alternatively, you can stick to a few of the popular fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, etc. and focus on using a uniform font size for specific headings and body content.

Book Length

Although it is good you have a reasonable length of content, there’s really no strict rule on how big or how small your book’s content should be, especially for non fiction titles.

It’s a no brainer, quality is still more valuable than quantity but not withstanding, be sure your book has a reasonable number of pages alongside good content and justifiable pricing.

Use of ISBN

ISBN or international standard book number helps in book store indexing, documentation and identification of your book’s metadata across stores.

Publishing with Amazon gives you the option of using your own personal ISBN or an ISBN generated for your book by Amazon.

Both ISBN are good enough for your book but you can only use one at a time. So if you already have an ISBN for your book then you can use that instead of getting another ISBN from Amazon.

Book Cover Design

To make things easier for publishers, Amazon has a collection of book cover templates you can use to create a cover for your book.

Although it is always preferable to use your own book cover, If you’re not serious about getting a professionally designed book cover, you can use any of the Amazon templates to create your book cover.

If you’re planning to use the Amazon book cover creator, note that they usually come with limitations and just a few functionalities so in some cases, you may not have exactly what you want.

Use of Keywords

Keywords are common words used by web users while searching for items on the search engines.

As you’d probably know, Amazon has it’s own in-built search engine which allow users to search for items and find them on Amazon website.

For your book to appear in organic search on the Amazon search engine, you’ll need to input search keywords related to your book.

Amazon allows you to use about seven keywords related to your book while uploading the book.

This, alongside the other search terms like your sub title, description, reviews and ratings helps in improving the rankings and availability of your book for display to potential buyers.

Final Words

In conclusion, there are so many things that makes up a successful book. Formatting is a very important part of this.

And when it comes to online publishing, you need to understand and use the formatting that works with the platform you want to publish on, before publishing your book on the platform.

To get the best out of your book’s formatting, check out our Amazon Publishing Options here or get our professionals to have a look at your work by reaching out to us here.

So, there you have the complete guide on how to format your book for Amazon publishing. Now, It’s your turn. Which of these steps, did you find very difficult to navigate? Drop your comments below.