PREPARING YOUR MANUSCRIPT FOR AMAZON KDP

FONT

Although tablets are small miracles of technology, Kindle is apparently a fairly simple miracle. And because it has a narrow range of formatting artistry, you should save most of your imagination for your paper book. Kindle devices, as least at the time of this writing (fall 2016), recognize only three fonts: Garamond, Arial, and Times New Roman. If you present in any other font, KDP will change your text to its default font: Times New Roman. I prefer a larger, sans serif font, and chose Arial for all my e-books. I chose Garamond for the front page (title and author) just to give it a somewhat different look, but used Arial 12 throughout the remaining manuscript and am happy with the result. I treated CHAPTER HEADINGS simply by using Arial 12, upper case and bold.

DOCUMENT FORMATTING

First, make a copy of your manuscript and give it a new name: example, mybookforkindle.doc(x).
Next, go through the ms. and INSERT - BREAK - PAGE BREAK at the end of each chapter.
Next, (with your entire ms.still highlighted) go to FORMAT - DOCUMENT - MARGINS and make certain these are your settings:
TOP 1"; Bottom 1"; LEFT 1.25; RIGHT 1.25; GUTTER 0; HEADER 0.5; Footer 0.5

PARAGRAPH FORMATTING

If you have experience reading books on your device, you may have noticed that some books have formatting that is easier to follow and less tiring to read than others. Books uploaded without special e-book formatting are tiring to the eye. The lines of text are undifferentiated, as are the paragraphs. Therefore, space between lines and paragraphs must be pre-formatted in order to give your reader the best experience. Here's how: With your entire ms. highlighted, choose:

FORMAT - PARAGRAPH - INDENTS & SPACING

Set: Alignment: Left; Outline Level: Body Text
Set: Indentation: Left: 0"; Right 0"
Set: Special: First Line, By 0.5"
Set: Line Spacing: 1.5
Set: Spacing: Before, 0 pt; After, 10 pt
Set: Line Spacing: 1.5
Hit OKAY

Your manuscript is now properly formatted for Kindle, but you're not finished yet. The next part is tedious, but absolutely necessary.