Read the FULL SURVEY HERE at the Smashwords blog.

I’ve just had an email from reader Mark Binner relating his experience of trying to get a US Tax EIN or US Tax ITIN number. I had to go through the whole process of getting an ITIN number, detailed step by step in the book; but in 2012 authors had been reporting the ease of obtaining an EIN number over the phone. I duly updated the book with this information. HOWEVER, now here we are in April 2013, this was Mark’s experience:

“I’ve just got off the phone from the IRS at the US Embassy in London. The lady I spoke to was really helpful and was quick to point out that they do NOT give out EINs or ITINs over the phone. She also pointed out that an EIN was for companies whilst the ITIN is for an individual. I will still have to go to London to get help with the form-filling and get my passport certified (the consulate in Edinburgh can only certify the ID documents) in order to get an ITIN.”

Further to Mark’s message, Karen Inglis, a fellow-member of the Alliance Of Independent Authors has brought me right up to date on the latest procedures. She says Mark should phone the IRS office in the USA for an EIN, not the US Embassy in London. An author can be a self-employed sole trader (as I am) but they should then be registered with the Inland Revenue as self-employed which is a different kind of kerfaff and wouldn’t be worth it until the income generated from your books is steady and substantial. She also points out, very handily, that  “…it seems that some self-publishers decide the application process is more hassle than it’s worth until they get a measure of their US sales. For example, if you’re an individual based in the UK and pay 20% tax, by not doing anything you will lose out on 10% of your royalties – you then declare the income as ‘taxed at source’ on your tax return.” Read Karen’s excellent comprehensive guidelines here at http://kareninglis.wordpress.com/tax/.  Study the comments section as well – it appears the Embassy now sends original passports to the US rather than photocopies. See also Catherine, Caffeinated’s blog  http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/02/24/non-us-self-publisher-tax-issues-dont-need-to-be-taxing/ which has a step by step guide to applying for an EIN in the USA by David Gaughran.

I have already updated the book and the paperback with this new information. I’ve also added these two tips from Mark:

“You mention OpenOffice a few times – and there is nothing wrong with that – but I suggest you consider adding LibreOffice which is a fork of OpenOffice and seems destined to become the more dominant of the two because Oracle, the ‘owners’ of OpenOffice, are not popular with the open-source community. LibreOffice is updated more frequently too.”

And, for transferring documents to PDF on old computers via free online sites: “A reader suggested PrimoPDF – I use CutePDF. You can get that here: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp -It’s free for commercial and non-commercial use. I’ve been using that for years and it has served me well.”

A final update went into the KOBO WRITING LIFE section. In order to get your Goodreads star ratings and reviews showing on Kobo, you need to add the Kobo ISBN (found at the bottom right of your sales page in tiny writing). Instructions on how to do this are here at Eric Edstrom’s very helpful blog.

Welcome to the March update blog for How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget – An Author’s Guide.

A fantastic new service called Agent Hunter has just been launched in the UK by The Writer’s Workshop. The extract below is taken from my Confessions Of An Author blog post on the service:

Whilst getting a literary agent isn’t the only route to success any more, if you can find a trustworthy professional to champion your work, the benefits are obviously many. Because my novel contracts were negotiated by a good, experienced agent I had the all important get-out clauses there which meant my rights eventually reverted. My work now belongs to me again and I am free to publish and sell my novels as ebooks today. Translation deals are the other big one, with agents (and their companies) having spent years, decades, building up trustworthy international relationships.

Much like Michael Macintyre’s joke about how all of us when first subscribing to Google Earth immediately look up our own houses, so I went to have a look at my two ex agents. The information was good. My first agent is on the hunt for several genres. High-concept novels; a crime writer planning a series plus she’d like to find a Marina Lewycka-style contemporary literary author who writes about current issues like immigration. She’s also looking for intelligent fiction for older women (!) – and mentions Joanna Trollope (who she did compare me to when we had our first exciting meetings).  That’s pretty good, detailed information for a database. There’s also a link to the agency with clear submission requirements (my God they accept email now, how amazing)… My 2nd agent I see has 82 clients, and under the “Advice & Dislikes” section says she has a particular pet hate for writers who display a sense of self importance or need to prove something in style and content which she’ll reject as over-written and under-confident.

Online agent databases have been running in the US for some time now, the UK has always been so far behind. This one promises regular updates and looks to be the business, it also covers publishers and has a sophisticated search filter. A great service for writers, and for the agents who presumably will soon be getting more suitable manuscripts coming through their In Boxes. Congratulations to Harry, Laura and The Writers’ Workshop.

You can sign in for free and take a preliminary look around. Full access is £12.00 a year with a 7 day free trial. Agent Hunter.

All best,

Stephanie

Ebk$2.99/£1.94/E2,60Paperb$14.99/£8.45/E11,71

Welcome to the update blog for How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget – An Author’s Guide the simple step-by-step guide to creating, publishing and selling ebooks for the complete non-techie beginner.

The big news this month is that Smashwords now accept ePub files. This makes having to format a separate text for the Smashwords Meatgrinder a thing of the past! It’s now even simpler than ever to get your books on to Smashwords and selling in the Apple iBookstores, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, Nook and more worldwide, all for free, with excellent support and guidance.

I also hear that AMAZON are removing their tag system. It’s already happened in the US on Amazon.com and will be happening soon on Amazon.co.uk. Tags are the key words you and your customers (used to) put on your Amazon SALES page by hitting TT, NOT the all important key words that you include on your book’s sales upload file. Those are still there and great attention should be paid to your choice of key words.

All best

Stephanie

Ebk$2.99/£1.94/E2,60Paperb$14.99/£8.45/E11,71

I would have been happy to give her guide manual five stars but for the fact that I have yet to put it into practice and actually get an e-book published all on my own. However I like the way Ms Zia has explained all the essentials in simple practical wording for non-tech older people not necessarily having a modern computing background. I like the way she avoids the pretensions of some modern experts in blinding their non-expert readers or listeners with high falutin terminology as a way of demonstrating their own self-assumed superiority. I like the way she charts out all the various waterways threading through the e-publishing swamps. I liked the way she gently explains the variations arising from different (and often fiercely competing) denizens of those swamps. I like the way she gently defines the minor distinctions between US and UK procedure as well as covering all the practical elements of publishing. Finally I like the way that she has made sure that all her excellent advice is available in old non tech printed paper format.
Now if only she could the same for a printed hard copy guide for the Kindle (whose proponents seem to think that all the necessary knowledge and understanding comes automatically because they are exclusively available only in electronic form – - – !

Everything moves FAST in the world of ebooks, and this blog is a reference point so that those who have already purchased the guide can keep up to date with the latest developments. There have been a few major ones recently and the book and paperback are being updated accordingly:

• Amazon KDP now accepts Epub files. Smashwords to follow shortly. Epub is fast becoming the one-format-for-all. However, if you load an ePub to Amazon, check that the Table of Contents shows as clickable. At the moment, standard Calibre ePub conversions do not translate with a Table of Contents (TOC). Continue to use our simple Word/HTML method, or Mobi  (see below).
• Amazon’s latest Kindle Fire model mean there are changes to photo content on Kindle: now colour, and now high res. Load the highest res image you have, including 300dpi. Remember to downsize the images to 4.90cm width so that they don’t take up the whole Kindle screen.
• Amazon’s latest Kindle Fire model has a ‘view white text on black screen’ option. This means that HTML and Word files loaded direct to Kindle, the favoured, most simple, method advised, now has technical issues. To make your kindle ebook bombproof against customer complaints regarding this issue, the simplest thing is to transfer the HTML file to CALIBRE (FREE) and then, with one click, change it into a MOBI file, and (after checking) load that as your Master document. All instructions are in the book. Alternatively, you can correct your HTML document: Instructions from KDP are as follows: “The default color selection of text shouldn’t be changed or shouldn’t select black instead. You can make the following correction to your HTML code to fix the forced black font in your content.
  1. Open your HTML file in Notepad.
  2. Hit Ctrl+H to open Find and Replace window.
  3. In the “Find what:” field type in <span style=’color:black’> 4. Leave the “Replace with:” field blank and click Replace All.”
• Epub Table of Contents sometimes don’t show all the chapters in the list when you transfer. There is a simple correcting tool for this in SIGIL, free to download.
• Barnes & Noble have announced that UK residents, not only those in the USA, can now load their books direct to NOOK with their PubIt system. Royalties to authors vary between 40% and 65%. Details HERE.

EBOOK & PAPERBACK – PURCHASE DETAILS HERE

Thanks to Joanna at The Creative Penn for the alert.

The Apple iBookstore has just added 18 countries, including New Zealand and Brazil. This means that your Smashwords Premium Catalog ebooks are now available on iBooks in 50 countries. Barnes & Noble have now added a UK NOOK ebookstore.  Kobo Writing Life, big in Japan, has a simple, direct epub loading interface to get your ebooks selling in its stores. Smashwords are working towards direct epub loading by the end of this year. Epubs are simple to make on your computer using the free (donate) Calibre conversion tool (see previous blog post here for a step by step tutorial).

“This coming Christmas/New Year holiday period is set to become another record-breaker for our authors,’ says Smashwords’ Mark Coker. “So it’s important you get your new and existing titles distributed to stores in advance of the holiday rush.  Most of our retailers are operating under compressed holiday schedules.  To ensure you have time to get your book into stores in advance of the Christmas rush, please aim to upload new titles by or before December 2 to allow time to achieve Premium Catalog approval and delivery to bookstores.  Apple, for example, is recommending we deliver new books no later than December 7.  Of course, we and our retailers will do everything possible to get the stragglers in as well, but please plan ahead to reduce the stress all around. We’re staffed up in preparation for the rush.”

More at Mark Coker’s blog:

Apple ibookstore expands Global Reach of Smashwords Ebooks to 50 Countries

Turn Your Novel Into A Kindle Ebook

First you’re going to transfer the words you’ve been slaving over, correcting, deleting, etc to PLAIN TEXT. This will get rid of any hidden formatting glitches that suddenly make your words appear in places on the page where you don’t want them.

BEFORE you transfer your text to this document, make a SAFE COPY so that you can’t lose all your work.

To make a SAFE COPY :

FILE > SAVE AS > In ‘Save As’ line write SAFETYnameofdocument. In WHERE – select somewhere you’ll find it easily like ‘Desktop’.

Click > SAVE

CLOSE that document.

Now return to your original final document.

Transfer all your text to TEXT EDIT/NOTEPAD:

OPEN a blank TEXT EDIT/NOTEPAD document:

MAC: Find the TEXT EDIT Application. Click FINDER (funny blue face at the absolute bottom left of screen). Click the APPLICATIONS folder. Scroll down till you see Text Edit and double click on it. This opens the Application Icon (A piece of paper and a pen) in your control board running across the bottom of the screen. Click on the Icon to open a fresh Text Edit Document.

On very old Macs this App is called Simple Text

PC: On PCs this App is called NOTEPAD.

Highlight all of your text:

Return to your original Master doc. Click EDIT (right at top of screen) > SELECT ALL

A shadow runs across all of the text.

Now transfer it:

Click APPLE + C (CONTROL + C on PC) which copies the text somewhere deep inside your computer

Move cursor to your blank Text Edit/Notepad page

Click CONTROL/APPLE + V

Your text is now on the page.

Click FORMAT (right at top of screen) > Make Plain Text.

All your fonts and formats will disappear, leaving just the writing.

OPEN A FRESH NEW WORD DOCUMENT don’t worry about the page sizes or anything like that, you don’t need to bother with that as long as it’s a basic, standard kind of a page layout.

Now cut and paste your plain text back onto this fresh Word document.

The text will appear in the font you have set in Word. Use a basic, standard font like Times New Roman.

This is now, technically, a clean copy ready to be transferred to Kindle. Save it and name it KINDLE-booktitle.

Now, before transferring to Kindle you’ll need to:

a) Go through the text and re-insert any text formatting that’s been lost like itallics/bold. Don’t mess with the spacings yet, leave them completely alone.

b) Justify the margins. Remember, this document will not appear on Kindle as you see it written on the page. The machinery transfers your text in its own way, so only do the basics and you’ll be less likely to screw up.

Kindle automatically indents the first line of every paragraph. To keep it simple, therefore, justify your margins to the left. In your Toolbar look for the rows of parallel lines, they’re called Align Left, Centred, Align Right, Justified.

Highlight all your text EDIT > Select All.

Then Click the first on L parallel lines icon Align Left.

c)Now add your front matter, title, copyright etc. You don’t need a picture cover inside your document. See Kindle’s Simplified Formatting Guide.

d) Now for the spacings. This is where it’s a bit weird. Have your text run continuously between each chapter, if a heading within a chapter is at the bottom of the page don’t move it to the next page because once it transfers to Kindle the text will keep on running consecutively. Keep sub-headings close together, don’t space things out or huge gaps will appear in the kindle doc. What you do need to do is space between the front pages and between the chapters. So when you want a new page click INSERT > Break > Page Break.

e) Check your spacings by hitting the Backward P in your Word toolbar (CTRL+8/APPLE+8). You will then be able to see where the page breaks are and make sure they’re all there.

Don’t worry about hyperlinking chapter headings. It’s necessary for non-fiction so that readers can jump to the required chapters, but not absolutely needed for fiction. Don’t put page numbers in either, ebook Masters don’t need page numbers.

Save Word to HTML Web page (if you have pictures, you can skip this and load in Word, spacings may be less accurate & need more adjusting. If you have “HTML Filtered” option, choose this, pictures sometimes load well with this, sometimes not at all.):
Click FILE > where it says Save As > scroll down to “Save As Web Page”.
You’ll now have 2 files, your Master and your HTML Web Page Master. The latter is the one you load to Amazon KDP, the Kindle sales platform. But first load to your Kindle (or Calibre see below) read through to check for formatting and spacing issues.

LOAD TO AMAZON
First, if you have any problems, Amazon digital email help:
kdp-support@amazon.com are helpful and usually quick to respond.
Now go to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform KDP.
If you don’t have a reader account with Amazon, create one.
SIGN IN
Click GETTING STARTED & FAQs. Under the GETTING STARTED GUIDE > Publish Your Content
Scroll down to START HERE TO PUBLISH YOUR CONTENT > Enter Your Product Details
And you arrive at the first page of your dashboard.
Bookmark it so that you can find it easily whenever you need to:
Click BOOKMARK at top of screen > Bookmark this Page
Enter Details
The dashboard is your control panel. Add:
The title of your book
Click ‘Add Contributors’ and put your author name in.
Language etc are self-explanatory. Ignore ISBN, you don’t need that.
As long as all the work is your own, click ‘This is not a public domain work.’
Target Your Book to Customers comes next. Choose two categories that most closely fit your title.
Search keywords: enter up to 7 key words that relate to your book. Separate each one by a comma. Think carefully as keywords really are key to bringing readers to your book sales page.
Upload Your Book Cover. Have it ready and waiting on your Desktop – click Browse for image and select the file name.
Enable DRM – click “Do not enable digital rights management” (see main book for details).
Upload Your Book File. Hit Browse and select the HTML file you made earlier. When you get the green tick and ‘Upload and conversion successful, click PREVIEW BOOK.
A little screen will open with your Kindle book on it. Now go through the preview window and see how it looks. To correct any spacings, put your original Word Master MS up on the screen, click on the backward P thing to bring up the tab marks and other indent marks and go through your Kindle Preview and your MS together.
Retransfer your new Word Master to HTML, marked 2-titleoffile so you don’t get it confused with your earlier draft. Browse and upload. Correct again until your satisfied. Keep words and headings close together for best results.
Click SAVE AND CONTINUE
Verify Your Publishing Territories
Click Worldwide rights, assuming nobody holds rights in any other country.
Choose Your Royalty. For a 70% Royalty charge $2.99 or above. For anything lower you’ll need to go for the 35% royalty.
Kindle Book Lending. Tick Allow.
Tick Accept Terms and conditions.
Tick Save And Publish.
You’re on.
It takes anything from a couple of hours to 48 hours for your book to appear. When it does, buy it and read it through again. If anything’s not right, go to your bookmarked dashboard page and upload a corrected version. You can change your book as often as you like. You can change your price as often as you like. See what other books in your category are charging and take it from there.

Step by Step Guide To Making A Basic Epub Master for Direct Loading To Kobo Writing Life (Plus Other Epub Sales Platforms – iBooks, NOOK Etc.)

Make a new copy of your Kindle Word document and label it TitleofBook-KOBO.doc.

Go through the text and take out any references that you may have in your front and back idents which refer to Amazon. You may be asking readers to kindly think about reviewing your book on Amazon, for example. Delete, or change ‘Amazon’ to ‘Kobo’.

Make sure your chapter listings are listed straight through from beginning to end with no breaks. How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget – An Author’s Guide, for example, (from which this guide is extracted) is divided into four parts. My original index was divided by these part separations. This threw up an almighty storm when it came to the ePub reader trying to decipher chapter separation in its Table of Contents and the whole thing crashed. So it’s chapter listing, if you have them, at the front of your document reading simply all the way through: 1,2,3 etc.

Save as HTML (“Web Page”) (“filtered” if you have that option).

Now to download the free ebook reading and creation tool Calibre. If you’re using an older version of Calibre on an old Mac this might not work. You’ll have to beg or borrow a PC or modern Mac that will download the latest version of Calibre which is a breeze, formatting-wise, compared to the older versions. Watch the simple tutorial video which shows you what all the basic buttons do.

First make a new file on your desktop to store Calibre ebooks. Open the list of computer files and folders at your computer START or Apple Finder button. The list will be something like ComputerUser’sName/Documents/Music/Games/Computer/Control Panel. You need to click the Computer User’s Name, which will probably be your login name at the top of the list. Then go to > New Folder and label it CALIBRE. You will now have a Calibre Folder on your desktop.

Open the Calibre Dashboard. Click “ADD BOOKS” top Left. > Look for your ComputerUsersName label > from there you can get to your documents. Select your Kobo HTML file.

It will be added to your Calibre library.

On the Calibre Dashboard, select little arrow next to Blue EDIT METADATA icon, top row left.

Select “Edit Metadata Individually”.

Check title and author are filled in correctly. If your ebook is already online, go to bottom and click “Download Metadata” and Calibre will automatically fill in description, cover etc.

If the ebook and/or cover isn’t online click “Change Cover” “Browse” to find your cover to add.

Now click the brown “convert books” icon at the top next to Metadata icon.

A window will open. On the left near the bottom you’ll see the blue EPUB OUTPUT arrow. Click.

A wheel will spin on the bottom right. When this has stopped. You’ll see, on the right just below the cover image, that EPUB has been added to the formats.

Now get rid of the ZIP format. Right click the ZIP ident and hit delete.

Click on the title in your Calibre listing. A window will open, select the 3rd option down “SAVE TO DISC” > then 4th option “Save only Epub Format to Disc In Single Directory”.

Click “Desktop” > highlight “Calibre Books” and click “Select Folder”.

You are now done with Calibre. Don’t forget to Donate if you can afford to give the Calibre people anything for providing this service free of charge.

Now go to Kobo Writing Life. Scroll down to bottom of page and click START PUBLISHING.

The interface is very simple to follow. Fill in the title, author details and book description.

When you’re prompted to upload your Epub book, you’ll see that Calibre has exported 3 files to the folder on your desktop. Select the top “EPUB” file, not the jpeg image or the OPF File (idents are on the far right of the line).

When it has uploaded you’re invited to preview your Kobo ebook.

Look through – checking especially for spacings and that the chapter listings on the left hand side have come out OK.

If you’re happy with the content, continue. If not, delete the file from Calibre, re-edit your master, retransfer to HTML and load to Calibre again.

Next you’re asked to apply Digital Rights Management, which is set to default at YES. And then Geographic Rights, default set to YES.

My query to Kindleboards on DRM resulted in the advice not to apply DRM, so I choose not to do this and select NO. As I hold world rights on my title I keep the YES there.

Set the price and hit PUBLISH.

Don’t forget to fill out your account details so that royalties can be paid directly into your bank account every month.

Above extract taken from How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget – An Author’s Guide by Stephanie Zia.

Ebook $4.99/£3.29 Paperback $14.99/£9.99.

Kindles also have a “Click to Table Of Contents (TOC)” facility for readers as part of the actual hardware. If you embed the technical code instructions into your document, your reader can quickly navigate through your ebook at any time by pressing a button which will take them to the hyperlinked chapter listings at the front of your book.

Inserting Clickable TOC – Table Of Contents

You can find the simplest set of instructions on how to embed a TOC in Kindle’s June 2012 simplified guide Building Your Book For Kindle. Available free for both PC and Mac from the Amazon Kindle Store. It still took me a few go’s before I got it, so here’s a simplified version.

I first tried to do the TOC thing with my PC Laptop, thinking that I would be covered for the tedious technical “updates” that renders my old Mac useless on so many techie update occasions. I got so far, but then came totally unstuck because I don’t have the full, costly version, of Word on my PC Laptop, just the shortened version that the computer is sold with. GAH! So only embark on that route if you have more than the Starter Word kit installed on your PC. However, the Mac instructions tell you how to do it all manually, which I am sure would work on a PC as well.

First, go through your text chapter by chapter, highlighting each chapter heading and labelling it HEADING 1. To find HEADING 1, look at your top horizontal toolbar. Modern versions of Word will have a HOME tab, which is where you’ll find it. Older versions have a little window called TEXT BODY and you’ll find it in the drop down menu.

So, you’ve been through your text labelling your chapter headings HEADING 1 (Not 2,3,4 etc, just 1). The font will often change colour and position quite alarmingly. Don’t worry, when you’re done, just go through each one again changing it back to your preferred style, which won’t delete the hidden link at all.

Next, type out your list of chapters at the front of your book, under the heading TABLE OF CONTENTS. Next, hyperlink each chapter number (see instructions below).

CHECK the hyperlinks are all working correctly. (If you’re on Open Office you’ll have to transfer the document to a PDF to be able to click the links.)

Next, highlight the TABLE OF CONTENTS heading of your chapter list. Go to INSERT at the very top of your computer screen commands > BOOKMARK. A box will appear. Under the command BOOKMARK NAME, type three letters: toc. (no full stop) Click > ADD.

Hyperlinking

There is a wonderful video on You Tube that takes you through all the stages of turning your Open Office document into a PDF file. It also shows you how to make these hyperlinks and how to make your PDF document ‘secure’. This is something you have to do before sending your book out to the public so that nobody can hack into it and change the content.

The You Tube video was made by Instantebookpublishing.com with no creator credited or I’d write his name loud and clear, it’s called:

Creating PDF ebooks with Open Office

In case you don’t have the You Tube link I’ll explain it step by step as best I can below but you’ll grasp how to do it so much faster if you watch the clip.

How to make chapter hyperlinks in Open Office:

Click on FORMAT (running across top of your computer screen) > Styles & Formatting

A box opens with a list of Headings. First you have to assign a Heading number to each chapter. Go to the opening page of your first chapter. Position your cursor at the end of the first chapter title, CHAPTER ONE, and double click on Heading 1. This often turns the text into bold and sometimes a completely different font, even a different coloured font. Don’t worry about that for the moment.

Put the cursor at the end of ‘CHAPTER TWO’ chapter title and double click Heading 2 for chapter 2. Etc.

The Headings are numbered 1 – 10. If you have more than 10 chapters, continue your marking by going back to Heading 1 again. You won’t wipe out the previous marking, the subsequent chapters will be logged as 2.1, 2.2 etc.

When you’ve done this go back to your chapter list. Highlight Chapter 1 by holding your mouse over the beginning of ‘Chapter’ and moving it to the end of the chapter title and releasing the click.

Now you’re ready to Hyperlink the chapter heading to the actual chapter.

Go to the commands right at the very top of your screen: INSERT > Hyperlink (or click the hyperlink symbol on your toolbar).

A little screen appears. First click the ‘Document’ icon on the left of this little screen, the one with the green arrow pointing down.

Then click the image of the target icon in the centre of the three choices, under ‘Target’.

A new little window opens to the left of the screen.

Click on ‘Headings’ and then click on the relevant chapter listed. Be careful about double clicking here as you can cancel your action out. Before going on to the next stage make sure there’s a broken line surrounding your chosen chapter.

Double click Apply in the smaller window. See the words transfer to the larger window.

Double click Apply in the larger window.

You won’t know if you’ve been successful until you’ve transferred the document to PDF, but if the chapter heading is now underlined you’ve probably done it.

BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER DO A TEST!

Transferring the document to PDF takes seconds. It’s well worth checking you’ve cracked it before going through the whole document.

TO TEST:

Click FILE at the top of the Open Office command screen.

Click on Export to PDF.

Open your PDF (find in your ‘documents’ folder with same title as your Open Office file) and see if it works.

NB: Exporting to PDF in this quick way is only for testing. When exporting to your final PDF document there are other boxes to check for security and to ensure the document’s not over-sized.

MAKING CORRECTIONS

If any of your links haven’t taken. Go to the words you want hyperlinked then repeat INSERT > Hyperlink > Document > Target > Headings

Scroll down and see if your desired chapter is in the Headings list. If it is, highlight it with the broken lines and click > APPLY. Delete the broken words in your text and, with the cursor where you want the words to appear, type them instead in ‘TEXT’ > APPLY.

If your desired chapter isn’t in the Headings list. Repeat the process from the beginning. Go to your chapter. FORMAT > Styles & Formatting > Double Click any Heading. If the texting indent changes, you won’t be able to change it by hitting backspace or deleting the blank spaces. You have to go to the margin tags at the top of the page and readjust (sounds obvious but it took me ages before I twigged that one).

How to make chapter hyperlinks in Word:

Go to the opening page of your first chapter. Position your cursor at the end of the

first chapter title, CHAPTER ONE.

Click INSERT > Bookmark.

Write in Bookmark Name (C1) (has to be short or it won’t work). Do this with all

your chapter titles throughout your ebook.

Go to the beginning of the document where you want your chapter listing to

appear. Highlight the words you want linked, i.e. ‘Chapter One’.

Click INSERT > Hyperlink.

Highlight ‘Document’ in banner window.

In the ‘Anchor’ window type in your Bookmark Name (C1) > OK.

And your hyperlinked chapter heading will underline. Continue through.

Unlike Open Office, you can check that Word hyperlinks are working without having to transfer to PDF.

Once you’ve set up your chapters for hyperlinking you can use the same Headings again and again every time you wish to refer to something in a different chapter.

Extract from How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget – An Author’s Guide by Stephanie Zia

Publish to ePub direct from UK and Europe as well as US.