It's not hard to find instructions for converting from Word to Kindle -- but these instructions are usually less helpful than they could be. Many, for example, proclaim that Word's HTML output requires extensive alteration and cleanup before submission. This advice is misguided. Some who offer it have drawn their conclusions after simply choosing the wrong export option. Others fuss about a moderate amount of excess code, not realizing that it doesn't increase file size enough to matter or that the Kindle ignores it anyway. Other instructions will imply the opposite: that conversion is straightforward and just what you would expect. Supposedly, as long as you start with a properly formatted Word document, you'll wind up with a well-formatted ebook. Well, it doesn't really work that way -- not without a few techniques for tricking or bullying the Kindle into doing what you want. In this book, Aaron Shepard offers his own tips for moving your document from Word to Kindle, with a focus on desktop Word versions from 2003/2004 to 2010/2011. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// Aaron Shepard is a foremost proponent of the new business of profitable self publishing, which he has practiced and helped develop since 1998. He is the author of -Aiming at Amazon, - -POD for Profit, - and -Perfect Pages, - as well as two other books on Kindle formatting. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// CONTENTS Getting Started 1 FIRST STEPS Working with Word Document Setup Text Cleanup 2 KINDLE FORMATTING Special Characters Font Formatting Paragraph Styles Paragraph Spacing Paragraph Justification Line Breaking Page Layout 3 SPECIAL ELEMENTS Other Paragraphs Lists Tables Text Boxes and Sidebars Footnotes and Endnotes Pictures 4 NAVIGATION Web Links Internal Links Tables of Contents Menu Items 5 FINAL STEPS HTML Export Book Covers Book Data Submitting and Previewing ///////////////////////////////////////////////// SAMPLE By default, Word will apply the Normal style to your paragraphs. Amazon knows this, so for some Kindles, it hijacks that style, changing its formatting to what Amazon prefers. This can lead, for example, to unwanted space above or below a paragraph. If you want control of your own formatting, then, you'll have to avoid the Normal style and apply something different. There's no problem, though, with applying styles based on Normal, or even with applying a duplicate of Normal under a completely different name. In regard to this, watch out for manual page breaks in recent versions of Word. Unless you're in Compatibility Mode, each break is now placed in a paragraph of its own, and the Normal style is assigned automatically. That in itself isn't a problem -- but if you then hit Return and start typing, your new paragraph will be in Normal as well. (This is another reason to stick to the paragraph format setting -Page break before- to start a new page.) You can change all paragraphs already in Normal style to a different one by using the Format menu in the Find and Replace dialog. Don't enter any text, but place your cursor in first the Find box and then the Replace while choosing a style for each.

    —New York Times Book ReviewNo writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the act—the fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefle’s work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play that’s vital and welcome, that doesn’t make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange, life-enlargening fun. -The Kenyon ReviewProfound, unpredictable, charming, and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled, as well as amused... —Publishers WeeklyThis is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart, the inner-life, the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. —Matthew DickmanThe accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry, aesthetics and literature... —San Francisco ExaminerOver the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.

    [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said. 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"With this basic instruction always in mind, Anne Lamott returns to offer us a new gift: a step-by-step guide on how to write and on how to manage the writer's life. From "Getting Started,' with "Short Assignments," through "Shitty First Drafts," "Character," "Plot," "Dialogue." all the way from "False Starts" to "How Do You Know When You're Done?" Lamott encourages, instructs, and inspires. She discusses "Writers Block," "Writing Groups," and "Publication." Bracingly honest, she is also one of the funniest people alive.If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive. And always, from the life of the artist she turns to the art of life.

    It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.

    Use them to pry, chip, yank and sift good characters out of the place where they live in your memory, your imagination and your soul.Award-winning author Orson Scott Card explains in depth the techniques of inventing, developing and presenting characters, plus handling viewpoint in novels and short stories. With specific examples, he spells out your narrative options–the choices you'll make in creating fictional people so "real" that readers will feel they know them like members of their own families.You'll learn how to: draw the characters from a variety of sources, including a story's basic idea, real life–even a character's social circumstances make characters show who they are by the things they do and say, and by their individual "style" develop characters readers will love–or love to hate distinguish among major characters, minor characters and walk-ons, and develop each one appropriately choose the most effective viewpoint to reveal the characters and move the storytelling decide how deeply you should explore your characters' thoughts, emotions and attitudes

    Allowing you to combine the various elements that make up your writing project, from outlines to research to note, Scrivener helped author Nicole Dionisio write two novels in a single year. Our manual outlines how to use Scrivener to make your writing better, and is useful for writers of all stripes – which includes you. It is 48 hours before your dissertation is due and, despite the chaos, you are trying to complete the final edits, because it’s the only choice you have.There is one problem — and it isn’t the pile of unclean dishes housing sea-green mold and chatty-vermin that has become your sink — it is your computer and it is time. You should be going faster then this, you put your blood-shot pounding head in your hands and groan, “Why am I going so slow? This computer is brand new... what is the problem?”It isn’t your computer’s specs. It is your writing process. It is because you have not yet started using Scrivener.It is opening up a new webpage or PDF every 15 minutes to fact-check research. It is switching back and forth be- tween this research, your outline, your bibliography, and your draft. It is waiting for your files to load, bouncing be- tween them, and getting lost in the quantity of windows on your computer screen or document.Scrivener has two key features: it loads all documents at once and it has many visual organizational tools. Scrivener has optimum productivity, thus it gives writers more time to actually write and accomplish their goals.This manual outlines: -Planning your manuscript-Importing existing documents into Scrivener-Collecting your notes-Organizing files and documents within Scrivener-Keeping track of your characters for fiction writing-Bringing it all together and writing your manuscript-The editing process, including sharing with beta readers.-Publishing your masterpiece online

    One of the best ways to get around the problem is to surround yourself with ideas. "1,000 Creative Writing Prompts for Seasons: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More" gives you exactly one thousand idea-generating prompts that focus on the coldest, warmest, toughest and funniest days of the four seasons. This book covers many different aspects of spring, summer, fall and winter including weather, nature, holidays, festivals, the five senses, science, literature, entertainment and more! These 1,000 prompts work for blogs, scripts, stories, poems, essays, songs and anything else that requires you to stare down writer's block and put pen to paper anyway. Originally geared for the classroom, these prompts can be used by any writer from 5 to 105 to get the ideas they need when they need them. Author Bryan Cohen has written over a dozen books of writing prompts including "1,000 Character Writing Prompts: Villains, Heroes and Hams for Scripts, Stories and More," "500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade" and "The Writing Prompts Workbook Series." His books have sold over 15,000 copies. He lives in Chicago.

    It's all the information you need to solve the mystery-writing riddle!

    Someday, when it was his turn at the table, he’d connect with his readers. The experience has been even more revealing than he’d hoped.In this hilarious and perceptive essay, the celebrated humorist reflects on the unusual patterns of forced socialization between author and audience, and the obligations and sometimes surprising returns of not-so-chance encounters with strangers: jokes, secrets, insights, and even charity.

    The bestselling grammar book has been updated and revised to include the latest and greatest on the basics and subtleties of English, and features a new chapter on the language of the Internet.

    4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces, and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising and revising, and revising.More than a compendium of advice, Draft No. 4 is enriched by personal detail and charming reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee describes his enduring relationships with The New Yorker and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and recalls his early years at Time magazine. Enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world, Draft No. 4 is the long-awaited master class given by America's most renowned writing instructor.

    In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

    How can students with widely varied levels of literary experience learn to write poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama — over the course of only one semester? In Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief, David Starkey offers some solutions to the challenges of teaching the introductory creative writing course: (1) concise, accessible instruction in literary basics; (2) short models of literature to analyze, admire and emulate; (3) inventive and imaginative assignments that inspire and motivate.

    But as any writer can tell you, the blank page can be daunting. It's tough to know where to get started, what details to include in each scene, and how to move from the kernel of an idea to a completed manuscript. Writing great fiction isn't a gift reserved for the talented few. There is a craft to storytelling that can be learned, and studying writing techniques can be incredibly rewarding - both personally and professionally. Even if you don’t have ambitions of penning the next Moby-Dick, you'll find value in exploring all the elements of fiction. From evoking a scene to charting a plot to revising your drafts, Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques offers a master class in storytelling. Taught by award-winning novelist James Hynes, a former visiting professor at the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop, these 24 insightful lectures show you the ins and outs of the fiction writer's craft. Get tips for developing believable and memorable characters, explore how to craft plausible dialogue that serves the purposes of your narrative, compare the advantages of different points of view, and more. A wealth of exercises will inspire you to practice the many techniques you learn. Professor Hynes is an able guide, showing you what has worked for him and other novelists, and pointing out pitfalls to avoid. Writing Great Fiction is truly an exceptional course for anyone interested in storytelling.©2014 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2014 The Great Courses

    And if you've already written one, you can write an even better one. Author and former literary agent Nathan Bransford shares his secrets for creating killer plots, fleshing out your first ideas, crafting compelling characters, and staying sane in the process. Read the guide that New York Times bestselling author Ransom Riggs called “The best how-to-write-a-novel book I've read.” MORE PRAISE FOR 'HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL' "In his 47 brilliant rules, Nathan Bransford has nailed everything I've always wanted to tell people about writing a book but never knew how. Wonderfully thought out with lots of practical examples, this is a must-read for anyone brave enough to try their hand at a novel. It's also a great review for experienced writers. Highly recommended." - James Dashner, New York Times bestselling author of THE MAZE RUNNER "Nathan Bransford's primer is full of thoughtful, time-proven advice on how to write a novel. Nathan can sound both like a reassuring friend and a tough, no-nonsense coach. Whatever kind of novel you're writing, Nathan's insights will make you think about your process and help you find your own way to success." - Jeff Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of DOWNFALL "Nathan Bransford is sharp, thoughtful, and a must-read for all aspiring authors. His advice is not only funny and insightful, it's essential for writers at any stage in their careers." - Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of SHATTER ME "Nathan Bransford's book on how to write a novel is smart, generous and funny as hell. Read it. No matter where you are in your writing life, whether you're on your first book or are a grizzled, multi published veteran, you'll find practical advice to help you through the process -- and plenty of wisdom to inspire you along the journey." - Lisa Brackmann, author of ROCK PAPER TIGER "Equal parts encouraging and butt-kicking, hilarious and wise, Nathan Bransford's no-nonsense manifesto talks you through the process of getting the book of your dreams out of your head and onto the page. Whether you've been writing for five minutes or fifty years, this is the guide for you." - Sarah McCarry, author of ALL OUR PRETTY SONGS