Dear Writing Community, Where to get photos and How to format your manuscript for e-book publishing?

So, let’s start this video with discussion of photos.

When I started writing blogs back in 2015 for a now defunct website, I noticed that most blog posts contain at least one photo. Preferably at the beginning, like this one on my blogspot. There’s a bit of introduction, then a photo and the rest of your content. If photos are relevant to your posts, then add as much as necessary. If it’s not exactly necessary, just one is enough. Its purpose is to add color to your black text and white background.

Back then, I got bothered by copyright issues. I am aware what a copyright is. It’s basically ownership. These days, you can own photos you’ve taken, music you’ve made, stories you’ve written, art you’ve created… it depends on the person whether they would allow someone else to use them. For free or with payment.

Just because a photo is available online, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are free to use it anyway you want. No, sir. Even when you go on Google and search for images, they are not all available for use. You have to be careful, or else… you might be called out for it.

The first website I’ve found where to get photos is pexels.com. Majority are free to use, commercial purposes or not, attribution is not required but appreciated. Some are not. So, I had to click on a photo, scroll down and check for the annotation. Free to use. Commercial. No attribution required.

If I see those tags, I save the photo and use it.

The other website is unsplash.com. This one’s better because everything is free to use. Even for commercial purposes. Attribution is not required but appreciated.

Normally, on my blog, I just use the photo’s link. So, if a reader clicks on it, they get taken to the original source and they can see who provided the photo.

Let me show you for a bit. I just feel that it’s a good way to do it. Instead of downloading the photo and uploading it to your post.

Since I believe most people wouldn’t want to put unnecessary texts on their content.

But if you’re fine with putting little texts below the photo, that’s good as well.

I’m sure there are other sources, but for now, I’m good with these two. Pexels.com and unsplash.com

And then, if you need to edit the photos a bit, use them for your book content or book covers, social media content, website content… whatever. You can use canva.com.

I’m all for free resources because I don’t have that much money to spend.

Anyway, art is subjective. Sometimes, I would see covers that are less than appealing, but who knows? Maybe I’ll do a separate video on that. Not here.

Today, I’m gonna show a simple edit for formatting manuscripts. Mainly for ebooks, for upload to KDP and similar self-publishing websites.

I have here a manuscript I’ve written for Dreame. It’s a Young Adult Fiction, sub-genre Adventure and Fantasy with a dash of romance.

For my manuscripts, I use MS Word. And then, I convert it using Kindle Create.

Let’s start with MS Word.

Basic settings. Normally, I set this up before writing anything. On a fresh document.

But if you’ve already written everything, that’s alright.

Press Ctrl+A, to select everything. And then, choose your font and font size. This way, every text looks the same.

As for line spacing, while all is still selected or highlighted, go here. My normal setting is double space, with space after paragraph.

And then, go over the sections of your manuscript. Title page. Do you want to center this? Bold title. Author name.

What’s essential here for the pagination is the use of page-break. When you’re done on a page, go to Layout, click Breaks, then Page.

What’s the point? Have you seen an ebook wherein a page shows like this?

The chapter already ended and then the next one shows up on the same page?

This can happen if you only use “Enter”. Even if you pressed it enough to push the next chapter to the next page. That’s on MS Word. When it gets uploaded to KDP, they only recognize page breaks. As for the spaces you’ve made using “Enter”, they get counted by the software. If there’s only six spaces, the ebook that would show up on the app would have six spaces and then the next chapter appear. Like this.

I hope I explained that well. Page breaks. Use them, if you haven’t yet.

Then, you have your Copyright page. I normally leave it simple like this.

Do you include your book description here? If you do, it can be like this.

Do you have a table of contents? I normally don’t have one.

And then, the main story. Chapters. Some have Chapter numbers and/or Chapter titles.

That’s all good. You may want to include a bit of setting here. Do you want it center? Do you want it bigger? Or would you rather have an image to go along with it on the final look? We’ll get to that later.

The main point here, while we’re still on MS Word is the page breaks after every chapter. Make sure you have them.

After the main story, you have your back matter. You can include your Author Page, and then links to your other works, or social media pages.

Should I show you how to include links? There are two ways of doing it.

You can paste the link itself, like I did here.

The second would be to embed them to a plain text. How you do that? Like this.

Highlight a text, like Facebook. And then, right click, choose Link. And input the link. Press OK. You’re done.

Some would say this one is not so professional, but at least it shows the actual links.

Why I do this is that…

In scams, the second one is being used, you see. They use plain text like Facebook, but the link they put on it isn’t the link to their Facebook page. It could be something else that could lead to malicious sites. On an app, you have no way of previewing the links.

On a desktop though, you can see the little preview on the lower left corner of your screen when you hover over a link. I do this before clicking a link in an email or website, just to check it’s safe. With the https.

Speaking of https, when you include a link, make sure you use the https link. It adds a sense of security. It’s a safe link.

http without the s, could be flagged by some security software. www without the https could go the same way as http without the s.

Like this. It’s your choice. Do one way or another, it’s okay. You’re not a scammer. That’s clear.

You can add your photo on the author page, if you so desire. Let me add mine for, uh, example purposes.

Once you’ve gone over your manuscript on MS Word, you can now use Kindle Create to finalize it.

Let me just open this, upload the MS Word file and wait a bit.

What’s nice about using Kindle Create is that you can preview how your book would look on their app, or on their cloud reader. You can be sure that all’s well and good as you wanted it to be.

Alright. Here on Kindle Create. You want to go over every section again.

You don’t want to be bothered by the spacing, because that can actually be changed by the reader. If they want single spacing, they can change how they see it on their app.

But for the default, you can have it your way. And for the number of pages that would appear on the book page on Amazon. So, yeah. You might want to change a few things.

Title page. If you’re self-publishing, this much is enough. Title, subtitle and author name. You want to include your logo or your brand image in black and white, fine. Your choice. Just… don’t overdo it.

For me, this is enough.

Next section. Copyright page. Looks good.

Book intro. Uh huh.

The bulk of the formatting goes to the body of the book. The main story.

This is your first chapter. What do you want it to look like?

There are a few things you can do here. You can add an image or a photo. For a story, what normally works is a black and white image, to go with the text and background. It typically won’t look good when a reader chooses dark mode, though.

So, image. Let’s go on unsplash.com and get one.

Black and white mountains. It’s YA adventure, so…

After you have this, you can go to canva. Add the chapter number and/or title. What works for you. I don’t have chapter titles here but I have them on Dreame when I did my first whole edits.

Let me get them.

When you’re done, depends on how you want it, you download this.

Go back to Kindle Create and add the image. You go this way.

Upload that and this is how it will look. Since you have the chapter number and title on the image, you can delete this one.

If you want to preview how it would look on the app, click preview. Go to the first chapter. There you go.

You can do this for every chapter you have. If you feel that it’s too much work, then just add the image. Retain the text for the chapter title and image. Change the font and size.

There we go.

For the spacing, which would affect the page numbers, you might want to go over each chapter or all chapters. Highlight them, go to formatting, spacing, body, and choose… say 1.25 or 1.5, whichever you prefer.

Then, you check your back matter. See how your Author page looks. Normally, for Author page, I do single spacing. But that could be just me.

Alright, here’s another tricky part. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. When you have an image from MS Word, sometimes it gets “damaged” when it’s imported to Kindle Create. If that happens, you simply delete the image here. Go to this place, add the image, direct from your computer. That’s it.

When you’re satisfied with your overall formatting…

Oh wait, be sure you save this, every ten minutes or so. There’s auto-save but you can never be sure…

Review everything and when you’re happy, you can hit Publish. Select your folder. You can edit the file name. Save.

When you go to KDP, you can upload this file.

The file extension is kcp.

Simple book covers to upload as well? That’ll be on the next video.

So, that’s it for this one. Simple formatting for your ebook.

I avoid complicated stuff as much as possible, or try to find simpler alternatives.

Thanks and bye. 💙