Tag: formatting

Formatting Book Descriptions for Amazon

Business of Writing

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Just thought I’d share a tool that I’ve found really helpful lately.  It’s also free, which is especially nice.

Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur is the tool’s creator. It wrangles book descriptions on Amazon’s website.  If you’re like me, you don’t want the print on the description too small. You want spacing between your paragraphs.  And maybe you want some things in bold (a teaser, for example), or in italics. This tool helps with all that.

I’ve experimented with other book description tools before and still found I had issues.  Or I’d try to put in the HTML codes myself and, well, I’m not a coder.

I’ve had no issues with this tool.  I copy-paste my book description from a Word doc into Notepad or another plain text editor (or you could just type it into the generator, word by word). Then I paste that directly into the generator box.

I particularly liked creating a larger font.  I keep my book descriptions pithy and they look better in a bigger font size.

I was so happy with the way the descriptions looked that I went back through and changed all of them.  :)  Yes, this took a little while, but I was pleased with the results.

Have you used Dave Chesson’s resource before?  What tools do you find yourself using regularly?

A Book Description Generator Tool from @DaveChesson: Click To Tweet

Draft2Digital’s Free Templates

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

A quill pen and inkstand are in the background and the post title, "Draft2Digital's Free Templates" is superimposed on the top.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

As an indie author, I have a good team for all the things I don’t do well or need help with:  cover design, editing, and formatting.  But I also like to know about tools that help me to fill in the gaps in areas that I can work on.

Draft2Digital has been a big help to me in a variety of different ways (I’m not affiliated with them in any way, except as an author-user).  I especially needed ways that I could update my books’ back matter easily and inexpensively (more on their free conversion tool in a later post).

When I was a traditionally published author, interior design was very important to the total book package.  Section breaks in my Memphis Barbeque series, for instance, had little pigs as scene dividers.  When I became an indie author, at first I sought out more elaborate interior design for my ebooks.  Years later, this became a problem when one of Amazon’s devices didn’t display the design correctly…this issue included the title page, chapter headings,  dedication, and drop-cap. Continue reading

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