[Bobsterz]

Hi, I'm new to the forum. I have published six books, but years went by before I did the last one. I'm wondering if I need to get up to date on something. I normally go from Word to HTML (that I clean up, mostly with mass search and replace, but it can become arduous in places) and then to Kindle.

I like the process, because I have exact control, Word faithfully reproduces the external links and TOC, and my use of the outline view and styles result in excellent formatting once I put in my own CSS that uses the styles already created.

But what is the current thinking about going straight from Word to Kindle? Is there a lot of back and forth, getting the look right? I'm getting the impression that things have changed and maybe it's a lot easier nowadays to bypass the HTML.

There's also the matter of file size. The simple HTML I produce gives me the smallest possible file size, but how much of a difference does that amount to these days? Is it worth it?

Thanks for any insights!

P.S. Word's process for creating an index does not work for going into HTML (proper links are not produced), so this made for a lot of extra work, producing the index in HTML after the conversion. It wasn't awful, but it certainly takes longer. That's one more motive for asking about bypassing the HTML.

P.P.S I'd love to hear from folks who take on jobs that involve HTML clean-up and prepping Word files for paperback conversion as well. I need to hire out my upcoming jobs.