Self-publishing EBooks for the Kindle or Nook

Self-publishing eBooks for the Kindle or Nook is easy. I have my eBooks available in many places on line and I am sharing my knowledge here.

So many authors spend their time trying to sell their short stories to a publisher in hopes of selling it. I tried it and hated the long wait times that my short stories sat on the virtual desk of some publisher.

It is simply wasted time. As one of those starving artist types who rely on my income, I cannot wait for some publisher. I also write content for various websites but I want increase my income. Selling my fiction and nonfiction eBooks is a great way to do that. To me it is simply additional income in my home.

I use Microsoft Word 2007 for everything I write, be it fiction, non-fiction or content. It has the grammar checker and spell checker I rely on to make life simpler. I simply type up my short story and save it first as a doc. I get my stories out of my head and into word.

I do not add page breaks or worry about the font size. If you add page breaks in a doc setting you will have huge white spaces in your eBook, so do not do it.

Select all of your text and click the paragraph settings on the page layout tab. Alignment setting should be left, the outline level should be body text. The indents for left and right should be zero, under special select first line and add in .03. Spacing before and after should be zero and the line spacing should be single.

Once my words are all typed and it has been saved as a doc file, I go ahead and save it as a web page filtered. Your document will look different, and that is okay because from here it is easily formatted into the styles it needs to be.

Select all of your text and format it to be Arial size 12. Now go through and make your headings Arial 14. Next on the insert tab, go ahead and insert your page breaks where they should be. Center your headings, as you want them. Add the little scene breaks symbols as you see fit.

Once everything is as you want it, go ahead and save it as a doc once more. This is a properly formatted eBook for Amazon's Kindle. You can also upload the file to Smashwords who will convert your file into formats, which are readable by Nooks, iPads and other popular devices.