Now there are TWO Tables of Contents

Amazon's continued improvement regime has recently added an automatic NCX [or whatever it is called] Table of Contents when rendering Word files to Kindle.

What this means is that, as well as a "clickable" TOC, those little buttons on your Kindle device [actual buttons or on screen] NOW provide the convenience of advancing from chapter to chapter.

In fact it is even better as if you start on a Level 2 Heading it will advance via Level 2 Headings.

But caution, this does NOT work if you do the normal save as html and zip for upload to Amazon.

However unless you want to include images "properly" there is no longer any need at all to do the html/zip step, but simply upload the Word file [and for some reason the font is way better].

So that is the latest improvement in the Amazon system as we surely head on to the Cloud Amazon and wave Word good-bye.

Chapter 3 - Formatting Normal Style

Chapter 3

Formatting Normal Style

By now the Styles and Formatting Window is on the Right of your main Word Window. If you hover the mouse over Normal Style you get a “Sneak Preview” as shown in this Screenshot.

This is in fact my own settings for Normal Style, as used on numerous books for indie authors via our formatting service at coversareus.com.

Then if you click the down arrow on the Right you get this drop-down menu, in which you select Modify.

The main Modify Window is shown below, and you should set yours the same or similar, and then go to Paragraph at lower Left.

A secondary Window then allows you to nominate your preferred First Line Indent, Space Below etc.

The Line and Page Breaks tab gives further options and we recommend to turn off the Widows/Orphans Control. There is some debate that by turning it off you will not get “broken paragraphs”, so it is up to you, but it certainly has solved that issue for us.

And that is all you need to do in order to set up Normal Style as you want it. If you wished, you could also make a New Style and call it say Normal1 which has no first line indent, to be used for the first paragraph in a Chapter.

Amazon LISTENS to its Customers

One of the perks of having been in Corporate Marketing was one went on "Junkets" to amazing places for "Symposiums" where we sat around for an hour or so each day and chanted "we listen to our customers" but without any such intention and then went off to enjoy the Junket.

Maybe Amazon DID read my blog and respond?

I refer to this blog post

Well the GOOD news is that, maybe as a Xmas present, Amazon has "dealt with" this issue, meaning WE don't have to deal with it (as suggested in my post).

It seems that Amazon has added a "Home" instruction to their rendering algorithm so that when you click on an internal link in a Kindle book it takes you to the designated spot on the html file BUT it then says BEFORE you render this, go BACK to the start of the line.

So this slight adjustment to the start of the rendering overcomes the Chapter Problem and you see the chapter title with FULL formatting.

Given that fixing this issue (as per my post above) was the ONLY reason to even open the html file, this is fantastic news for the sake of EFFICIENT formatting via Word, particularly for the newbies.

Here is a page of a book from Feb 2012 which I had not fixed up in the html.  This is the view in K4PC going from the TOC.

 

and here is the same result after republish today