PROSPERITY: a successful, flourishing, or thriving condition, especially in financial respects; good fortune. (From Dictionary.com)

It's funny that whenever I'm feeling discouraged something comes along to improve my attitude. I wasn't sure about the prosperity thing but to be thriving and flourishing in all areas of my life, not just financial, is something I would like to have. I write for the love of my characters and if they flourish and thrive in the minds of the reader I will consider myself successful.

Everywhere I read and heard was that formatting for an ebook is so complicated. I was going to pay someone do it for me but I didn’t want to wait four weeks for it to be completed so I downloaded the instructions, even though I had reading instructions. (I can’t wait for the day when that kind of stuff can just be directly downloaded into my brain.) Anyhow, I read most of the 103 page style guide from Smashwords and here are my quick tips.

                -Keep it simple
                -Tabs are evil
                -Don’t forget to reformat bold and italics

If your book has lot of graphics, tables, charts, etc. then definitely pay someone. But if all you have is straight text and a basic working knowledge of Word then all you need is a couple of hours and some patience. I did not read the Kindle formatting guide, it could say exactly everything the Smashwords one says, but when I think about the overall idea it’s a pretty simple concept.

-What to do: Select all and copy every word into a notepad document.
-Why you do it: This clears out all fonts and formatting. This way no way no formatting can sneak up on you.

-What to do: See that image of image of the backwards p up there at the top. That will show where all the formatting is. Turn that on.
-Why you do it: Turn this on now so nothing can hide from you.

-What to do: Open new word document. Set universal rules to 1-justify left, 2-Indent first line, 3-Turn off all auto correct commands. Now take everything from notepad doc and put it here. YES, justify left, not center.
-Why you do it: This allows you to have total control of the text and to eliminate tabs. And with the commands universal throughout the whole document, then any e-reader knows how to treat it.

-What to do: Search the entire document and take out any tabs or extra spaces or too many hard returns. *REMEMBER: Tabs are evil. If you find any tabs take them out.
-Why you do it: Uniformity is the key to making your document work in any DRM.

Once you have eliminated all the hidden formatting you have to go back and add in all the formatting you wanted.

-What to do: Reformat. Italics, bold, underline. All of that will need to be added back in. ALSO, if you had any paragraph dividers and titles will need to re-center those. Justify center BUT because of the universal first line indented you will have to manually change each of those.
-Why you do it: Because you wiped all that stuff out in step 1.

-What to do: If you do have pictures. (Can’t speak to charts and graphs.) When you insert them make sure to use the justify and wrap text commands. No tabs.
-Why you do it: Using the commands locks it in place. If you try to position it “just right” using tabs and space bar it will float and wreak havoc on all sorts of readers.

IN CONCLUSION- that should get you through. Is it tedious? Yes. Can it be annoying? Absolutely. But again, as long as your format is plain old boring text - easy. So to reiterate, these rules apply only to the most basic of layouts. I guarantee nothing if you have graphs and charts.

Just decide right now, ebook formatting is easy. Go ahead, say it out loud. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. You create the reality you live in. If you’ve decided something is hard than it will be. If you decide to kick its ass, you will.

I just want to take a few moments and give credit where credit is due to Sven Geier, the artist behind the banner I am using here on my website. Sven's website is full beautiful and cool digital images that he offers all for free simply because he loves to create them. Over ten years of his creative life all there for you admire and download if you find something you like. Check out his work here.