Creator Picture Book - How to upload pictures?

[jm24]

Hi
I have written and illustrated a picture story book for young children in MS Word and would like to publish it on Amazon Kindle. Each of the 18 pages contains 1 picture, saved as a jpeg, and a couple paragraphs of text.

When I preview the book in Amazon Previewer, the pictures are missing although the text is fine. I have downloaded Mobipocket Creator but when I import the file as a Word document, the pictures are still missing.

My IT skills are limited, so any help would be greatly appreciated in simple terms!!!
Many thanks to whoever can preserve my sanity with some advice, Jayne.

[Doitsu]

Most likely there's something wrong with the path to the images. Try the following:

1. Save the Word doc as a filtered .html file.
2. Download Sigil and add the .html file to a new project.
(If the images don't show up, add them manually to the Images folder of the project and insert them where they belong.)
3. Add a cover image and metadata such as title, author and language.
4. Save the project as an .ePub file and open it with Kindle Previewer, which will generate a .mobi file.

[jm24]

Hi
Many thanks for advice.
Will follow your instructions this afternoon - fingers crossed!
Cheers, Jayne

[jm24]

Hi
I have followed your advice and despite my feeble skills I am winning!! Thank you very much. I have now been able to open it with Kindle Previewer - a few images need repositioning (I'll attempt that when I'm feeling reasonably awake!) but otherwise looks OK. My only problem is when I added metadata in Sigil, I couldn't see where I was supposed to insert the COVER IMAGE? Sorry to be so dense.
Cheers Jayne

[jm24]

Hi
I have followed your advice and despite my feeble skills I am winning!! Thank you very much. I have now been able to open it with Kindle Previewer - a few images need repositioning (I'll attempt that when I'm feeling reasonably awake!) but otherwise looks OK. My only problem is when I added metadata in Sigil, I couldn't see where I was supposed to insert the COVER IMAGE? Sorry to be so dense.
Cheers Jayne

[Doitsu]

I'm glad to see that you're making progress.

Originally Posted by jm24

... when I added metadata in Sigil, I couldn't see where I was supposed to insert the COVER IMAGE?

The cover image is not defined in the Metadata Editor. You simply add the cover image to the Images folder in Sigil, right-click it and select Add Semantics > Cover Image. (Sigil will automatically add the appropriate information to the .opf file and it'll show up as cover image, when you compile the ePub with Kindle Previewer or Calibre.)

[jm24]

Hi
Thanks again for your help - will follow instructions and let you know!
I appreciate the fact that you replies are easy to follow - some presume we are all experts!
Cheers, Jayne

[jm24]

Hi
Thanks to your advice I am almost there! Words and pictures are now all in the right place and the book is now in Mobipocket Creator complete with cover, metadata etc.

However I used Comic Sans (size 12) when I wrote the text in MSWord but when I preview it in the Kindle Previewer it looks like Times New Roman. Have I done something wrong? I am not too worried if it can't be altered but as it's a children's book, Comic Sans is easier to read.

Thanks again, Jayne

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by jm24

Hi
Thanks to your advice I am almost there! Words and pictures are now all in the right place and the book is now in Mobipocket Creator complete with cover, metadata etc.

Mobipocket Creator is an outdated tool that doesn't support all Kindle features. You may want to use Kindle Previewer/KindleGen instead.

Originally Posted by jm24

However I used Comic Sans (size 12) when I wrote the text in MSWord but when I preview it in the Kindle Previewer it looks like Times New Roman. Have I done something wrong?

If you don't want to use the default serif or sans serif Kindle fonts, you'll need to embed a font.
Comic Sans is a Microsoft font and is not available on a Kindle. However, you can find similar free fonts at Font Squirrel.

Note that Mobipocket Creator does not support font embedding.

[jm24]

Thank you for that - wont waste any more time with Comic Sans!
Cheers, Jayne

[jm24]

Hi
Thanks to your advice, children's story book now published in Amazon's Kindle Book store.

Guess that was the easy part - just need to get it out there now and sell a few copies. If you any advice on that I would welcome it!
Cheers, Jayne