What do noobies do to get their books formatted properly for Kindle?

[ReneeO]

so what do noobies do to get their books formatted properly for Kindle? esp with the new Kindle Fire coming up? a noobi who has vey little money, and older MacBook with Tiger on it, and no iPad, iPhone, Kindle or other reader.
Is there some way to add the extra space on the first page/section, so Amazon has the required space to add their scripts? going to get Leopard soon, but that's going to present more problems. can you run these programs on an external harddrive?

[DoctorOhh]

Welcome to Mobileread.

Originally Posted by ReneeO

so what do noobies do to get their books formatted properly for Kindle?

First thing "noobies" do is to learn not to reopen threads that have been idle for 6 months. When in doubt start a new thread.

Moderator Notice
Moved post to its own thread.

Originally Posted by ReneeO

esp with the new Kindle Fire coming up? a noobi who has vey little money, and older MacBook with Tiger on it, and no iPad, iPhone, Kindle or other reader.

This is the calibre forum, if you want to run calibre on your Tiger MacBook you follow Note 1 on the calibre OSX download page.

Originally Posted by ReneeO

Is there some way to add the extra space on the first page/section, so Amazon has the required space to add their scripts?

Are you publishing your own book? Do you want to submit this book to Amazon? If so it is best to ask your questions about mobi book creation in the Mobi forum.

If you aren't an author trying to create your own book then don't concern yourself with 7 month old thread that would confuse most folks and has nothing to do with you reading your converted books on a Kindle. If you want to convert books to put on a Kindle, calibre will do that just fine.

Of course until you upgrade to a newer version of OSX calibre will not recognize the newer ereaders. There might be ways around this but those questions and answers will be best answered when you run into them.

[gweminence]

lol...

[ReneeO]

Oh, that's sooo funny. and insulting. I can't tell you how many forums I would have been castigated for NOT searching every damn thread for my answers, taking many days to do so first. (which I HAVE done here. as well as read the manuals.)

So, if you saw my lame intro. you would know that I am a self-published author who is TRYING to create eBook versions of my novel for all these readers, that I do not have. BECAUSE I am POOR. So upgrading to something my MacBook Tiger will not support is NOT an option. (and that incudes the version of Page '09 that does do ePub conversions directly.)
And I posted in that thread, even if it is 'old' because I thought those posters might give me an answer with a little courtesy, before I started a NEW thread.
I AM using calibre, and Sigil, and Libreoffice, and a whole bunch of other new apps, new to me anyway, to try to do this correctly.
I have a shorter manuscript of my second book that I have been using to try out the calibre conversions. so far, none of them reproduce my test book correctly. the formatting for the main text body comes out almost all correctly, except for Chapter 2. where the first 10 paragraphs all get run together into one. also All the chapters do not get included in the TOC. and I do not get the Fonts used in the original.
and how do you include embedded fonts, images, etc.?
One site says put all your html files in one folder. and zip it. another says have them in separate folders, for CSS, images, fonts, then zip it. so which is it?

LibreOffice, converted my Word doc file into one html page with CSS included not separate.
To tell you the truth, I am totally confused with all these convert to Word doc, convert to html, convert to ePub, convert to mobi, convert to..... I started with Pages, and a perfectly formatted PDF, tuned up by Acrobat Pro. (yeah, I've seen all the warnings about how bad PDF is for converting.) but converted the Pages to different versions of doc txt rtf html and pdf and am working with those.
I said I was a noobi (to converting to eBooks), so hopefully those who choose to help or guide me would understand that I AM confused. but I do understand and can handcode html, CSS, etc. and have Dreamweaver MX. and a few other programs for editing besides the ones listed above.

If you do not want to help. Fine, but don't bother to insult me, please. or be condescending.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by ReneeO

Oh, that's sooo funny. and insulting.

Pointing out the fact that the thread was old and moving your post to its own thread was neither funny or insulting, it was simple forum housekeeping.

Originally Posted by ReneeO

And I posted in that thread, even if it is 'old' because I thought those posters might give me an answer with a little courtesy, before I started a NEW thread.

The thread you had reopened was a little flame war that did not need to be brought back to the fore of the calibre forum. Additionally the information it talked about was non-applicable to calibre or converting books with calibre.

Originally Posted by ReneeO

I have a shorter manuscript of my second book that I have been using to try out the calibre conversions. so far, none of them reproduce my test book correctly.

The wiki area here at mobileread might have info to help you out.

Originally Posted by ReneeO

If you do not want to help. Fine, but don't bother to insult me, please. or be condescending.

I didn't insult you nor was I condescending. I referred you to a place for help. Calibre is not a book editing tool. Folks here are happy to answer specific conversion questions, but since the version of calibre you are forced to use is so old the answers may be hard to come by.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ReneeO

Oh, that's sooo funny. and insulting. I can't tell you how many forums I would have been castigated for NOT searching every damn thread for my answers, taking many days to do so first. (which I HAVE done here. as well as read the manuals.)

< snipped>

If you do not want to help. Fine, but don't bother to insult me, please. or be condescending.

Moderator Notice
You attitude is not appreciated

We service dozens of requests daily. When something is not totally clear, we ask for clarity to save time.