Home/Publishing/Amazon KDP/Word to Kindle
KDP will accept a Word file and convert it. That conversion keeps the tabs, the extra returns, the text boxes, and the heading that was never a heading. We rebuild the document with styles, then convert and read the preview. If a scene break disappears, we fix the Word file, not a screenshot.
What Word does
Tabs used as indents become uneven gaps. Several returns used as a scene break become a random hole, or nothing. A chapter title typed in bold does not enter the contents. Text boxes, headers, and footers often vanish or repeat. Images copied from a webpage arrive at screen resolution and look soft on a tablet. Smart quotes are fine. A font that your computer has and the converter does not is not.
We strip the document back to styles: Heading 1 for chapters, a body style for prose, italics for italics, a page break before each chapter. Then we convert to EPUB and open the Kindle previewer. Problems we still see get corrected in Word and converted again. Patching the export only means the next chapter brings the same bug.
Order of the work
What we give back
If you add a chapter next year, you should be able to follow the same styles.
What to send
A final PDF is not a substitute. We cannot recover styles from a PDF reliably, and we will say so if that is all you have.
Decisions
The usual novel or memoir. We restyle and convert. You get a straightforward Kindle book.
Columns, pull quotes, and colored boxes. Some of that cannot reflow. We will tell you what has to become a simpler line before we pretend Kindle can print a brochure.
A different and worse starting point. We will say whether it can be rebuilt or whether you need the original document.
House rule
Letting KDP convert the raw file is how the scene breaks vanish.
Before we open the file
Accepting the file is not the same as displaying it. The converter keeps your mistakes. We remove them first, then use the converter.
Yes, if they are real characters and real italics. A dash made of two hyphens, and emphasis made of underlines, get rebuilt.
You do. Both the Word document and the EPUB.
Send the docx
Tell us if a PDF is all you have. We will say whether that can be saved. Call (833) 688-4166 or write [email protected].
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