Re: Does anyone have experience converting a book manuscript from Word to Kindle?

[Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

http://selfpublishingadventure.com/converting-word-files-to-kindle-books/

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Dixie Lang <dlang -at- terracom -dot- net> wrote:

> Greetings everyone,
>
> My client has asked me to convert a 265-page book manuscript from MS
> Word 2007 to a Kindle-readable file.
>
> Before I explain more, yes, I do realize Word is not a solid choice for
> manuscripts. At the moment I am stuck with it in Word.
>
> I researched a bit on the Web about Kindle conversions, and I read the
> instructions on Amazon. I downloaded the Mobipocket reader and tried the
> conversion. Note that I used a stripped Word doc - I created a fresh
> doc, and tediously copied the front matter and first chapter through
> Notepad to strip all extraneous formatting codes. I then added back the
> bare minimum - bold and italics.
>
> I expected Word to write horrendous HTML. What I did not expect was to
> lose all the vertical spacing. I was further horrified to see what the
> conversion did to a simple table. (Apparently the early Kindle software
> does not support tables.)
>
> I then went back to digging up what I could find on the Web about Kindle
> conversions.  Much of the information is contradictory.  Some people
> recommended hand-coding the manuscript in HTML.
>
> I have extensive experience hand-coding HTML, so that's not a problem.
> The amount of time it would take is the problem - it would totally blow
> the client's budget.  Further, that would mean the doc would need to
> remain in raw HTML, limiting who could maintain it, and raising the
> chances that someone down the road will resurrect an old copy of
> FrontPage and totally trash the file.
>
> If anyone has done such a conversion, would you be willing to share best
> practices?  I am particularly interested in:
>
> - settings in Word to output the HTML as cleanly as possible
> - "clean up" scripts to remove Word's special formatting codes and
> streamline the HTML
>
> Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.
>
> - Dixie
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------
> Dixie Lang
> Dalton Unlimited
> Copywriting and More
>
> (608) 628-6074
>
> dlang -at- daltonunlimited -dot- com
> ------------------------------------------------
> "Fortune favors the brave." - Joss Whedon
>
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