My apologies for the long delay in posting. I meant to have this up sooner, but my internet was down for awhile and then I just got swamped with playing catch-up. Anyway, like I promised, here are tips for formatting your own e-book. Because the process is slightly lengthy, I’m only listing a few essentials here. To get full, detailed instructions I am providing a link for you that will allow you to download them.
First, make sure your story is assembled in Word. The majority of you probably have already done this like me, but for those of you who haven’t, you better start transferring. If your story is done and finished editing, it is recommended you download Word from Microsoft and use their thirty day free trial.
Second, if you’re planning on submitting your e-book to Amazon, register with their e-book site, https://kdp.amazon.com
Once you get that done and submit your title, either click on your book or simply press the link on your right that says “edit book’s details”. That will pull up a window where you can adjust your book’s information and preview it using Amazon’s online previewer. DO NOT use the online previewer. I found out that it has quite a few bugs and makes you think your story has a ton of formatting issues when in reality it is fine. It gave me quite a few frustrating and panic filled moments until I found this out.
So instead of the online previewer, make sure you’re still on the window where you can edit your book’s details and go to the bottom of the page where you see “download previewer” I chose the one for Windows. This allows you to download a program from Amazon that allows you to preview how your book will look as an e-book on multiple devices without having to go on the internet and also has fewer bugs in it. Believe me when I say that it is a life saver.
Third, you’re going to need a few instructions on how to format your book properly in Word. This link here: https://kdp.amazon.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=9978&start=0&tstart=0 takes you to a thread on the Kindle forum. Click the link the user provides on the very first post and that will allow you to download step by step instructions on how to format your book properly and which you open using your downloadable Kindle previewer.
Fourth, once you get your e-book all done with, make sure you do not upload your story as a Word Doc. I have been told that this corrupts the manuscript, leading to several errors, and I can easily confirm that. Using Word, convert your story into an HTML file (save it as web page/ web page filtered) and then load it on to KDP.
Let me say once again that when you use Amazon’s “click to view inside” feature, it will not show any page breaks unless you use very complicated formatting. I talked with several authors about this, and even the instructions I gave you the link for warns about this. That is because the feature has bugs in it. My own theory on the matter is that Amazon hopes it scares you enough to make you pay them the money. But anyway, your book does possess those page breaks, and you can make sure by downloading your converted book off of KDP for free and using the downloadable previewer, and even download a free sample off of Amazon.com itself.
And there you have it. Hopefully, the information I have provided will be of some help to any new writers out there and save you some of the headache and frustration I went through. If any of you have any questions about the links I provided or any other questions, leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer.
Heart of Light 
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