10 Steps to Create an Awesome Amazon Kindle eBook

I really didn’t know much about eBooks when I started this process about 2 weeks ago.

I have Kindle devices, but aside from clicking to buy and having them magically appear on the device, I didn’t know much else.

If you’re new to my blog, I wrote and illustrated a children’s book called Use Your Voice and initially released it as a hardcover. I wasn’t starting from scratch, but I thought the eBook conversion process was an interesting experience and worth sharing.

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ADVANTAGES OF AN E-BOOK

I wanted to do an eBook version so that my audience could have another option in accessing my book. The eBook would be at a lower price point and easier to carry around than a physical book. From a marketing perspective, it would also be easier to share my book with influencers digitally instead of mailing them a copy.

Actually these reasons came from fellow author Eevie Jones, so thank you Eevie!

STEP 1: CHOOSE LAYOUT TYPE

The first step is to decide on the format of the eBook:

1. Reflowable eBook – mostly black and white text, where the amount of text on the screen can be adjusted according to the screen size / font size / other user preferences of the e-reader device
   
2. Fixed-Layout eBook – often children’s books or art books that require a specific layout for each page, regardless of the device size

In my case, I have a children’s book and each page needs to stay exactly as-is, so I went with the fixed layout option.

STEP 2: CHOOSE A SERVICE PROVIDER

Initially, I was going to choose IngramSpark to self-publish my eBook because I had already used them for the hardcover version.

In the author dashboard, they offer a paid “Convert to Ebook” option, where they use your existing design PDF files. I didn’t want to go with this option because I wasn’t sure about the quality (it would be based off a format that wasn’t originally intended for eBooks). Since I already had to learn Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for the first book, I figured I could generate the eBook format on my own.

As I was digging through the IngramSpark documentation on how to do this, it appeared that if I created a fixed layout eBook with IngramSpark, it would only be for sale on Apple and Kobo – and not Amazon. Disclaimer: if this isn’t true, let me know.

Most of my hardcover sales from Amazon, and I didn’t want to leave them out, so I chose to go with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

I also believe that the royalty rate would be higher with Amazon, and there would be no fee to upload the book or make revisions. To keep things simple, I focused solely on the Amazon Kindle platform, and didn’t worry yet about uploading to other ebookstores like Apple’s.

STEP 3: DOWNLOAD KINDLE TOOLS

Amazon has pretty good tools for helping authors publish their eBook. Check out this list for which ones would apply to your case.

I downloaded the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator for doing the eBook conversion. Then I downloaded the Kindle Previewer tool for previewing the eBook before publishing.

The Kindle Kids’ Book Creator takes a PDF file and will convert it into the proper format for the Kindle store. Hence, I went back to the design files to generate a proper PDF.

STEP 4: MODIFY THE ILLUSTRATION FILES

There were some changes needed to the illustration files because an eBook is viewed in digital format on a screen (RGB color mode), whereas a physical book is printed on a paper (requires margins / bleed regions for where the paper is cut and needs to be in CMYK color mode).

Let me clarify how my files were set up for my hardcover book:

• 18 Adobe Illustrator files for each page of my book (including the book cover)
• 1 Adobe Indesign file that combined all the pages together into a book

I made a complete copy of all my design files mentioned above, and put them into an eBook folder on my computer. I didn’t want to mess up any of my previous files in case I ever need to make changes to the hardcover book.

From the new set of files, I went ahead and made these changes to all Adobe Illustrator files:

• Remove the margin and bleed regions that were needed for the print version, so that the illustration on the page goes edge-to-edge (see screenshots below)
• Switch to RGB color mode. This was a somewhat involved process because I had to unlock all the layers of my design and make sure I selected all of the layers for conversion to RGB. I still kept these illustrations as Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files. These articles were helpful: Adjust Colors and Converting Color Spaces.

Adobe Illustrator file for hardcover book (There’s a required white margin on the left, and a bleed region around the artboard marked in red)

Adobe Illustrator file for eBook (In this version, ideally, all the art should be within the artboard size, marked by the black border. However, the art still goes beyond the artboard size because I was too lazy to adjust the shapes to fit within the border, but that didn’t affect the final look of the image later on.)

STEP 5: GET NEW ISBN NUMBER

My understanding is that each format of a book should have a different bardcode. The eBook, hardcover, and paperback versions of the same book should all have different barcodes.

From the documentation, I wasn’t quite sure if this was required for Amazon Kindle books. To be safe though, I got another ISBN number and updated the copyright page to mention this new number.

Copyright page – edited within Adobe Illustrator

When I needed an ISBN for my first book, I already purchased a bulk pack of 10 ISBNs from Bowker. Hence, I used another barcode from my pack and assigned my eBook details to it within the Bowker database. The details were mostly the same metadata as for my hardcover book – except the publish date and price were different.

Note: The back cover of my book also contains the ISBN number, but for eBooks, there is no back cover file, so no need to update that.

STEP 6: MODIFY THE INDESIGN FILE

The Adobe InDesign file is what puts all the pages together. Adobe InDesign is used for layout design for things like magazines and newspapers.

I refer to this as the eBook Interior File. It starts off with the front cover of the book. Then I imported each of the 17 pages of my book (Adobe Illustrator files that I had updated in Step 4). I also modified the dimensions of the document to not have any bleed regions.

Next I did a pixel perfect check using the Adobe InDesign presentation mode to flip through the whole eBook. Sometimes there was white line on the edges of the pages because I hadn’t filled the content to the edge of the artboard, so I adjusted accordingly.

Adobe InDesign Presentation mode

When it looked exactly as I wanted, I exported the file as a PDF!

STEP 7: GENERATE EBOOK FILE

I imported the PDF file into the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator, downloaded from Step 3.

There’s some options in the setup process like whether the book is landscape or portrait, or showing 2 pages at a time or 1 page. I chose landscape, 1 page at a time. Then wala! It does its conversion magic. All the pages show up in the Creator like this.

Kindle Kids’ Book Creator

You can also add text pop-ups to magnify the text and make it easier for reading. I tried it out, but it made the experience feel ugly with big ol’ text boxes on top of the illustrations. I also felt like the font in my pages were already pretty big, so I decided to forgo this option.

STEP 8: TESTING

Within the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator, check out the Help > User Guide on how to test and export the eBook as a .mobi file. I also used the Kindle Previewer I downloaded earlier to test the eBook on various configurations like phone and tablet.

When it looks good, then you can do Save for Publishing for the final output .mobi file.

Note: When testing, I was actually able to view the eBook in black-and-white-grayscale on my Kindle Paperwhite (using this method). Later I realized it wasn’t a supported device for my final eBook version in the store though. Weird. Oh well. I think these children’s eBooks are only meant for devices that show color like Kindle Fire devices, Kindle Reader apps on phones, tablets, and on desktop. The available devices are listed on the product page for each eBook in the store.

STEP 9: UPLOAD TO KINDLE STORE

I created a Kindle Direct Publishing account, logged into the dashboard, and added a new book title. I entered in all the metadata (basically the same as what is already listed for my hardcover book, except a new ISBN).

Then I uploaded the .mobi file for the interior of the eBook and also a .jpg file for the cover of the book.

Note: For the cover of the book, I had to export the image in Adobe Illustrator as 300 ppi so that the resolution was high enough to be accepted. Amazon rejects lower quality images. They also have a cover generator if you need help with the cover art of your eBook, but it’ll probably be more attractive to create your own or have someone design it for you.

When uploading to book to the store, Amazon asks you to enter in your price and royalty option. Helpful resources: Amazon’s royalty rate (35% or 70% royalty options), their price requirements based on file size, and the pricing page.

To figure out my eBook price, I browsed through other kids books in my genre – social emotional learning books, Todd Parr books, Sandra Boynton books, etc… For those books, I also looked at how their Kindle book price compared with their hardcover and paperback prices. I decided on a happy medium and felt assured that I could always adjust it later.

STEP 10: PUBLISH

When everything’s entered, they give you one more opportunity to see everything with the Kindle previewer in the browser. Then you can publish! WOOHOO!!!! It said it would upload to the store in about 72 hours.

Once it went live, I tested it of course on my Kindle Fire device, phone, tablet, and browser. It didn’t work on the Kindle Paperwhite, and confirmed that the device was not listed as a supported device for my eBook. I also tested the “gift” option with another Amazon account and made sure that worked smoothly. Yay!

It was nice that the eBook automatically linked with my existing Amazon page for my hardcover book (which was created automatically through IngramSpark). It would’ve been awkward if they were separate product pages. If you have this problem though, check this link to resolve it manually.

Then I shared the happy news with friends and family!

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ve got to say, it’s quite empowering to have finished my first eBook. *Flexes muscles* ;P And what’s even more amazing is that distribution is all done electronically. One of the lessons learned from being an author so far is that having physical books and inventory is hard! There’s the overhead of ordering books from my supplier, distributing them, needing to store and track this inventory, and sometimes books can be defective or get damaged.

No need to lift heavy boxes this time! I’m thrilled with my first eBook!

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to see the final product, here is my Kindle eBook: Use Your Voice!

For a behind-the-scenes look at how I created the whole book (including illustrating it), check out my YouTube series on Writing a Children’s Book on my channel Kat Kuan: