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How to use Kindle Create Software to Format eBooks

December 21, 2018 by Arun Leave a Comment

After completing this detailed guide, you will be able to create your own well-formatted eBooks to publish on Amazon.

Check my other free guides available from the Gumroads page.

You can download Kindle Create from here. This is available for both Windows (Version 7 or later) and Mac (MacOS Version 10.9 or later).

Kindle Create now offers three different types of book formatting options.

  1. Novels, Essays, Poetry, Narrative Non-fiction.
  2. Comics (you’ll have to enable ‘Early Access’ in order to view this from Help – Settings option) (only PDF)
  3. Textbooks, Travel Guides, Cookbooks, Music books. (only PDF)

Note: if you want to format Comics then make sure you enable ‘Early Access’ to see this option.

Early access can be enabled from Help >> Settings here:

5settings
6enable%20early%20access

When it comes to using a .doc or .docx format to begin formatting, you also get to choose the language from the ‘Content Language‘ drop-down menu as shown here in the screenshot.

1content%20language
Choose your eBook’s Language

When you begin uploading your doc or docx file, depending on the contents and the number of pages in your Word document, it takes a while, to open this up in Kindle Create.

After the import is successful, you will see the ‘Continue‘ button…just click on that; and click on ‘Get Started‘.

If your document had its own Headings already, a pop-up shows all the Suggested Chapter Headings at the beginning. You could just click on any of the button to close it (if you like them, click ‘accept‘, if not you can ‘reject‘ the suggestions).

About the Kindle Create Workspace

The Kindle Create Workspace is divided into three main sections.

  • On the left-hand side, we have the ‘Contents Pane’,
  • The middle section is the ‘Edit Pane‘ and
  • On the right-hand side is the ‘Properties Pane‘.
2CONTENTSpane
3editPANE
4PROPERTIESpane

On the left side, the thumbnail pages show how your book has been divided, to help you ascertain if the chapters are organized correctly.

If the Word document already had any Table of Contents, then those entries will be used in this conversion (at the time of importing) to create Kindle’s interactive Table of Contents, sometimes referred to as the NCX file.

In the EDIT PANE, you can even directly edit any text that you want to correct. This doesn’t mean you can use this Edit pane to completely write your book right here, but to just correct any discrepancies from the importing of the Word document.

In case, you have a large quantity of text to edit, then you can do so on your source file, then copy – paste them into this Edit pane within Kindle Create. To do that, you can make use of the Copy and Paste functions from within the Edit menu.

The Properties pane on the right side is going to be your friend in formatting all your Chapter headings, and other text in your book.

Simply click on the text that you want to change, in this example, let’s say, the Chapter title – click on the text and click on ‘BOOK TITLE’ button (technically known as ‘Elements’) given on the right side within the Properties pane.

Keep editing in this manner for all your text and headings. There are decent formatting options available

  • indentation,
  • spacing,
  • paragraph alignments,
  • color,
  • subscript,
  • superscript,
  • strikethrough text,
  • highlight text, etc.

…from these sections on the properties pane, based on which part of the ebook you click to change.

8formatting

If you ever wanted to revert to your original formatting settings, simply click on this ‘Clear’ button to strip all the formatting from the selected text.

That being said, in general, try to finish all your formatting Work within your Word processor itself before importing the manuscript into Kindle Create.

Customizing the TOC

You can do so for copyrights, and other front-matter sections too. While doing this exercise, see that the thumbnails given on the Contents pane with the pages now automatically align/update themselves with the assigned titles/headings on new pages.

Deciding which pages to be included in the Table of Contents is quite easy in Kindle Create.

Here’s how to do that:

When you click on the page thumbnail on the Contents pane – a checkbox shows up on the properties pane which reads ‘Include in Table of contents‘.

7include%20in%20TOC

You can either check or uncheck as per your requirements for all your pages. Optionally, you can also change the chapter listing name using this box by typing in whatever name you want the chapter to show within the TOC.

You can validate these entries and the entire TOC when previewing by clicking on this TOC icon given at the bottom as shown in the screenshot.

9toc

Periodically, it’s a good practice for you to save your work by clicking on the ‘Save’ button given on the top right corner.

The first time you try to save, it asks for a file name, and the file type will be KCB.

Once you finish formatting your complete book – click on the Preview button (next to the ‘save’ button) to see how your book looks in various devices. We will have ‘tablet’, ‘phone’, and ‘Kindle e-reader’ options to choose from under the Device drop-down menu.

After choosing your device, you can navigate to see how the pages display on the selected sampling device.

For adding any images into your document, click on the ‘Insert‘ button to choose and insert your image into the ebook. Remember to add your Alt text and choose the image size from the properties pane given on the right side of the Kindle Create tool.

If you like what you see while previewing, go ahead and hit on the Publish icon. If you have further changes to make, simply continue to edit your document.

Now while hitting on the Publish button, your ebook will be saved as a KPF file, which you can upload through your Kindle Direct Publishing account.

Filed Under: Amazon KDP Tips, Blog Posts, Self- Publishing Tagged With: guides, Resources

Instamojo Review: Free Online Store to Sell Any Product (2018)

December 3, 2018 by Arun Leave a Comment

How to sell your eBooks directly on your very own online store, we will see exactly how to do that in this article.


What is Instamojo and what are the benefits of using it?

  • Instamojo helps us in creating our own online store to sell unlimited products online and earn passive income on the side.
  • The online store comes with in-built payments enabled so we can collect payments from our customers.
  • The payments are processed in Indian Rupees and deposited directly into the bank account in approximately 3 working days’ time.
  • If you are the creative types making crafts or paintings, writing books, or wanting to sell any physical goods or digital courses and tutorial videos, then you could do all of those using Instamojo without spending anything.
  • You could practically sell anything on your store.
  • You could also offer up products for FREE or let customers pay what they want for a particular product.

instamojo%20guides

I have been using Instamojo myself since more than an year now to sell my eBooks, both for free and at cost.

Here’s a video demo to show you exactly how to sell your products online using Instamojo:

The best part is selling digital goods through them like eBooks, which is also what I did, where they allow to host the files on their server for free. Now this is a huge deal if you see, because as you might know, the only issue with Amazon KDP is that selling our eBooks for FREE is not easily doable on Amazon.

Even if you get it to sell for free, the eBook becomes permanently-free on Amazon (which is called Perma-Free) and we cannot sell it again for a price later on.




If you ever want to just give away your eBook for free, but also want to CHANGE your pricing model later on, you would want to sell your books on your own website, and that’s where using the Instamojo integration will help you.

Just remember that eBooks should not be on KDP select if you want to do that.

Now, how to sell digital goods online for free?

As I said, the best part is ‘hosting‘ your digital files like PDF eBooks, or any eBook formats, or software, etc. Instamojo offers file hosting for free.

All you need to do is just:

  • upload your files to Instamojo and
  • use the embed link from product settings to
  • send to your customers or post it on Twitter, Facebook, or WhatsApp.

embed%20button

Let’s now see their pricing structure in detail-

  • No setup fees, or no maintenance charges,
  • No minimum commitment to get started – you pay their fees only when YOU sell.

instamojo pricing

And you can get started in just 2 to 5 minutes. They have quick and reliable transfers where you can automatically receive money in your bank account within 3 days of your sale date.

Instamojo charge ZERO transaction charges for collecting payments from your buyers if you want to use their NEFT/Bank online transfer facilities.

And the charges for collecting credit or debit card payments is just 2% per transaction + 3 rupees, as a convenience fee, at the time of writing this blog post.



They also support wallets, UPI gateways, and EMI options with some top banks through their payment gateways.

There is also a fee calculator tool (locator in the footer of their website) if you want to find what exactly you will earn from each transaction.

Let’s take some action now, and see how to sign up-

Go to their sign up page.

And if you use this special referral link when signing up (https://techlibrary.tv/instamojo – opens in a new tab), Instamojo gives you a bonus Rs. 500 after you make your first sale.

bonus

Follow the 6-step process to provide necessary details required to create your free Instamojo account as shown in the screenshots below:

1%20step%201

2%20signup%20process%20step%202

3%20step%203

 

4%20step%204

 

5%20step%205

6%20step%206

Once your Instamojo account is created – complete the KYC steps by uploading documents for address and id proof to get your account verified, create your online store and start selling.

It’s that simple.

Caution: just remember that without getting your account verified by uploading the KYC requested documents, your account might have some monthly limit of ₹10000 and some limitations on your admin dashboard.

Let me now walk you through the settings pages and all the available features.

Once your account is setup, you can login to your dashboard. The Dashboard page shows you the recent transactions, and past sales.

SIDEbar%20of%20instamojo

This is the Payment Links page where you can simply send this link to your customers, friends, or family to receive any kind of payments.

payment%20links

Just click on ‘Send link‘ button to share it with whoever you want to request payment from.

You can see a preview of how it looks by clicking on ‘preview‘ button, or send the link by WhatsApp, or a button or link on your website, or just simply as a QR code for others to scan and pay directly to you.

payment%20links%20send%20link

Next is the Products and Store page:

products%20page

This is where we can see all our physical and digital products we have in our online store.

Once a successful transaction is done, the details of the transactions reflect within your dashboard.

How to add a product to your online store –

Once you create your account – go to your online store from your profile menu – click on ‘Add product‘, choose the type of product you want to sell, upload your file – preferably a single file or a zip file if you have multiple files – you can leave this blank if you are not registered with GST or key these in if you have these codes, then input the cost, or check the box that shows you want to sell it for free.

online%20store

digital%20product%20online

If you want your customers to pay any amount as they like, then choose this option.

And then add product description and images, choose Advanced and SEO settings (which are all optional), and click on ‘Add Product to Store‘ button to list your products to your online store. So, that’s how you setup your store to sell digital goods.

Now what about refunds?

When I started selling online, I wondered what if a customer requests a refund that I need to initiate and give them their money back!

As per their website, refunds are possible with Instamojo. Sellers can issue a full or partial refund for any of the payments received by him within 180 days of the date of transaction.

The company will then execute the refund within 24 hours of the case creation, however, the final credit of the amount in buyer’s account is subject to the acquiring and issuing banks internal policies, and it may take several days to credit back the amount.

When a refund is initiated, no additional transaction fee is charged for transferring the money back into your customer’s account.

Here’s a Pro-Tip:

ProtipIf at all you don’t want to bear the convenience fees, just disable the convenience fee option in your account settings, so your buyers will bear that nominal fee at the time of payment.

This is usual with some merchants where the customers pay extra for certain kind of payments, thus you receive your full retail price for your product. You can also have customers pay you with Instamojo NEFT and have no convenience fees charged at all for anyone.

You need not even share your bank details for getting paid through NEFT with instamojo – https://www.instamojo.com/blog/launching-instamojo-neft-direct-bank-transfer/

Selling physical goods with Instamojo

If at all you want to sell physical goods, you can setup your shipping options from their MojoXpress Shipping logistics service provider. You can also read through their detailed FAQs section (https://www.instamojo.com/apps/details/com.instamojo.vamaship/faq/) or just call them up if you want any help.

Next “API and Plugins” page is for people who are integrating Instamojo with Android or iOS mobile apps – so i will skip that section for now.

Then App store is a place where we can ‘subscribe‘ to some pretty good add-ons from Instamojo to enhance our experience and our customers’ experience like we can start our own affiliate network – so if you have a good customer who wants to help you in selling your product, you can offer them a part of your earnings as referral commission.

apps

This is really a great feature to make your product go viral in sales. Then you have other apps that you can use to integrate with your email providers, payment retry options, sms alerts, generate professional invoices for payments you receive, send payment reminder emails, create business cards, and much more. There are some apps that require credits that you can also buy from them for a cost.

Next comes our:

  • Sales and customers,
  • payouts,
  • spends, and
  • analytics sections.

Here’s where you can see all your sales and customer details, and export them as needed in .CSV format to your computer if needed.

Now, all said and done, here’s another word of caution: always refrain from selling others’ copyrighted works and be aware of copyrights, Please also be prudent and don’t buy from anyone if the seller is not the author.

Finally, here’s a question for you – so based on what you just saw, what support do you need to get started in selling your creations online – let me know in the comments below.

 

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: guides, Resources

Kindle eBook Pricing Strategies (Free PDF)

November 29, 2018 by Arun Leave a Comment

Learning how to price your ebook is both science and an art. In this short and useful guide, you’ll learn few strategies I have used to decide what to price my ebooks.

This one is FREE for you!

Go ahead, and download your free PDF report now! 

Filed Under: Amazon KDP Tips, Blog Posts Tagged With: guides, Resources

How to Start a Page Number from a Specific Page in Word

November 27, 2018 by Arun Leave a Comment

In today’s blog post, we will see how to start a page number from a specific page, like the Chapter 1 or any Front Matter section like the Foreword section.

Thus, by simply following the steps given in this article, you can make Page numbers for your paperback books look professional.



Pagination for PaperBacks

The secret to adding page numbers starting at first page for your first chapter is in using ‘Section breaks’. You might have used page breaks to separate different portions of your front pages and all the different chapters.

However, if you want to see different stylings for your page numbers, then go for Section breaks instead of Page breaks.

To organize what we learn, I have divided this instruction into three different categories:

  1. Creating sections
  2. Adding & formatting page numbers
  3. Deleting page numbers

Watch this on YouTube

If you don’t have time to read this blog post, simply watch this on YouTube here:

Creating sections

First and foremost, for the page numbers to be customized the way you want it to be, you need to create ‘Section breaks’ between different sections of your book – like the pages within the usual Front matter (copyrights, foreword, introduction, dedications), Chapters 1, 2, 3, and so on.

Page breaks won’t be helpful when it comes to creating page numbers in our footers. To create a ‘Section break’, just go to the Layout tab, click on Breaks and choose ‘Next Page‘ under the Section Breaks.

section breaks

Create a ‘section break’ in between all your different sections and move to the next step.

Adding & formatting page numbers

First double-click on your footer section of the page where you want to add the page number.

Once you double-click, the Header & Footer tools tab gets activated with its Design tab shown.




Now, click on ‘Page Number‘ and select ‘Bottom of Page‘ (you can choose whichever position you prefer here) and add page number.

add page numbers in footer

Formatting page numbers

Then, click again on the ‘Page Number‘ and select ‘Format Page Numbers…‘ and choose a Number format from the first drop-down option given. If you’d wanted to select ‘Roman Numerals‘ for your Front Matter section, this is the time to choose them !!

Format page numbers in Word

Additionally, if you want to customize the ‘starting’ page number for your chapter, you can change the number to start at a different number from the ‘Start at:‘ counter.

customize page numbers in word

Deleting page numbers from the first page of a new chapter

Professional editors choose not to show page numbers on the first page of a new chapter. You can also do that by simply selecting this checkbox which says ‘Different First Page‘.




 

different first page in word document

This is how you add a different starting page number for your first chapter.

Here’s a question for you: what’s the real challenge in self-publishing your first book, in case you haven’t created any yet?

Let me know in the comments below and I will see if I can help you in any way through a video or a blog post or just directly answering your questions.




Filed Under: Paperback Publishing, Blog Posts, Technology Tips, Word Tips Tagged With: guides, Resources

YouTube Journey: Some Best Practices

November 25, 2018 by Arun Leave a Comment

An year ago, I was standing at 100 subscribers!

That was a great feeling, indeed. Getting my first 100 subscribers took me a full 3 months’ time of weekly regular video uploads.

YOUTUBE%20JOURNEY

Fast forward to today, exactly (or almost) an year later, I have crossed 1050 subscribers, while being semi-regular with my video uploads. (It’s a slow growth, yes) – although helpful tools like TubeBuddy, TuberTools, and people like Backlinko’s Brian Dean, VideoCreators, Nick Nimmin have helped to a great extent in making this smooth.

Nevertheless, there is always an idea of what to upload next to YouTube on my chosen niche of Amazon KDP – all thanks to the author community’s questions!

With this incredible journey (although, it’s just the beginning) so far, I have learned a thing or two about really making it on YouTube. I just wanted to document my thoughts in this blog post about those lessons learned.

tubebuddy link

Although, these are just a few, it took a year for me to really get these! Will keep adding more to this list in the coming years.

  1. Responding to comments improves the overall watch-time: the logic behind this observation is that when people get their replies via the comments from the channel owner, the credibility tends to improve. The people who comment and get a response, start to feel that there is a person behind the scene who ‘really’ responds to their queries. This builds trust, improves chances of them watching our next videos without any question (assuming they also subscribed).
  2. Hitting on the ‘Like’ button tells me that a viewer just liked what he/she just watched. But hitting on the ‘Subscribe’ button tells me that he liked what he saw, but he also expects more of such videos in the coming days. Same goes for ‘follow’ on Facebook or Twitter – the expectations are for future content mostly, than for what they saw just now. That being said, consider that the very content that made them come to your channel, is sold. That’s why they want to see more of similar content.
  3. Contrary to the popular belief of ‘asking’ people to subscribe, I have observed that when I focus on creating extremely useful content, I don’t need to ask people to hit on the subscribe button; they naturally do (am guessing, FOMO is at play here). This is because when the content they came to watch has already connected with their intrinsic expectation of some value in what they are watching, there is no need to ‘ask’ them to ‘check the time’ when you’ve already sold them the ‘watch’ – they will automatically do that.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYupwP5yK6CSyiXT3KRs8Tw/videos

 

Filed Under: Blog Posts Tagged With: guides, Resources

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