DIY is worth a lot

Dell Zero, my first science-fiction novel, is almost ready to go. And whew!

I’m sure I hold the record for the number of uploads to Kindle Direct Publishing, attempting to get my desired ebook layout. My effort feels like the greatest, worst, and most exhausting. The final arrangement is not exactly what I wanted, but if ever I need to correct a typo, I can do it myself. Being able to do it yourself is worth a lot.

There are many ways to achieve good ebook formatting, and the best is to have a professional do it! Some of my friends achieve the results they want with techniques I don’t know. “It’s easy,” they say. Not for me.

Of all the advice I found in forums and blog posts, Amazon’s “Building Your Book For Kindle” (a free Kindle book) was easiest and most helpful. I wish its writer would write help files for Microsoft! This book was also easier to follow than the support I received from Kindle Direct Publishing.

My main problem was getting the table of contents to show up in Kindle’s “Go To” menu. “Building Your Book For Kindle” showed me how to solve that problem.

I also wanted the table of contents to be invisible except from the “Go To” menu, but the book didn’t tell me how to do that. I can live with the result.

Finally, proving DIY is essential, I tinkered with the last few lines of the story again. To those who received advance copies: sorry, yours isn’t the newest.