Image: Catherine Hadler / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Have you ever wanted to write your own Kindle ebook? Perhaps you'd like to publish and sell your work at Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. Or you want to know how you can make Kindle books for your website readers. Maybe you just want to put together a nicely formatted document on an upcoming holiday / knitting or sewing patterns / your ebook collection ...

In this 4 part series, I'll be showing you how you can use the free Open Office software to create your very own Kindle-friendly ebook complete with headers, images and a clickable Table of Contents. No knowledge of HTML or any coding required!


Part 1 - Headers and Document Text

This mini-series requires that you use the free and open-source software, Open Office which is available here: http://www.openoffice.org I'm currently using version 3.1.0. You should be able to use Microsoft Word but I won't be able to show you the specifics for that.

I really recommend that you view the images along with the text because they really help to show you what I'm doing. So come along to the KinWorm.com website if you need to.


1) Open up Open Office and select Text Document.

2) Go ahead and save your file before you start writing. Go to FILE / SAVE AS and save as an ODF Text Document which is hopefully the default selection.


3) I'm going to add in a title for the document which is going to contain all my holiday information. To embolden text to make it stand out, select all the text you want to change and click on the B (bold) symbol. You can also change the font (see in the image above where it says 'Times New Roman') and change the size of the font which is represented by a number next to the B symbol.


4) Next I centre the title by selecting all the text and clicking on the centered button which is shown in the image.


5) To start writing the main body of the document, you'll probably want to align the text to the left. So click the return key (left pointing arrow with a little stalk at the right end) a couple of times and then click on the Align Left button which is right next to the centered button. If you hover your cursor over the buttons, you get a brief description of each one.

I now add in what is going to be a heading ('About the Cruise') which will end up in the Clickable Table of Contents. Write your heading, select it and apply style 'Heading 1' to it. Heading Styles are over on the left in a drop-down box as highlighted in my image. Click on the arrow to get a list of heading styles and choose, Heading 1.

Headings created in this way are essential if you want to create a clickable Table of Contents. You would normally apply Heading 1 to main Chapter Headings and then use Heading 2 if you want to subdivide the chapter further. IE Chapter 1 - eReading Devices (use Heading 1) then divide the chapter into devices such as Kindle, Sony Reader, Kobo (use Heading 2) and so on. You can also apply Heading 3, 4 ...


6) In my document, I've adding in some default text and a few more headings. The Chapter title 'Decks' has had Heading 1 applied to it and 'Sky Deck' which is just one of many decks has got Heading 2 applied to it as shown in the image. So Sun Deck, for example, would also have Heading 2 applied because it is another type of Deck.

If you're used to Word Processing you might have found part 1 easy - I have tried to write this with beginners in mind as well. Do practice applying different headings until you get comfortable with the process.

The next part in this series shows you how to add images into your document, view here: http://www.kinworm.com/2011/01/create-your-own-kindle-ebook-using-open_27.html


Amazon Kindle Bestselling eBooks:

UK Amazon Kindle - Click here for the 100 Bestselling free eBooks

US Amazon Kindle - Click here for the 100 Bestselling free eBooks

I upload new freebies as soon as I find them for you, so check back soon to make sure you grab them while they're still free. Happy Kindling, Marie

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