KINDLE KIDS’ BOOK CREATOR

KDP Kids features a new FREE, easy-to-use tool for designing illustrated children’s books. It’s called the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator.

Will this tool work well for your book?

• If all (or most) of your book consist of illustrations, and some (or all) of the pages also have text, this tool provides an EASY way to create pop-up text for Kindle devices (and apps).
• If your book reads more like a novel or chapter book where many pages have just text, I recommend creating a reflowable e-book instead.

First, I will tell you a little bit about the tool, and then I will show you how to use it. It really is easy!

BETTER FORMATTING

Kindle Kids’ Book Creator solves a major hurdle in creating Kindle e-books:

• Pop-up text makes it much easier to read illustrated children’s books on small devices, such as cell phones.
• As I’ll show you, it’s really EASY to use. And it’s FREE.
• It respects the concept of a page, which is so important for children’s books, while still making the text readable on small devices.
• It’s designed to work on Kindle Fire tablets, iPads, cell phones, and Android Kindle apps. You see the pattern here? These devices all support color. (Although Paperwhite comes up as an option in the previewer, I checked on a book published this way and it wasn’t available on the Paperwhite.)

Better and easier formatting will attract more children’s authors to create illustrated Kindle e-books.

Better-formatted children’s Kindle e-books will attract more parents and educators to the Kindle children’s market.

This may also increase parent participation in Kindle Unlimited. For $9.99, you can read unlimited Kindle e-books from 600,000 participating titles, which is a great value for bedtime stories, chapter books, early readers, and homework resources.

You might as well enjoy the benefits of KDP Select, since the output format only works with Kindle anyway.

KDP KIDS

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has a new page just for kids, called KDP Kids: https://kdp.amazon.com/kids.

Visit the KDP Kids page to download the new Kindle Kids’ Book Creator tool. Click the Get Started button.

• It’s available for both Windows and Mac.
• For the PC, you need Windows Vista, 7 or later.
• For Mac, you need OS X 10.5 or later.
• Click the Learn More link for additional options (and to read the FAQ’s).

If you have any problems with functionality, first I would try using a different web browser (e.g. Mozilla FireFox instead of Internet Explorer). If switching browsers doesn’t resolve your functionality issue, visit the KDP help pages and look for the Contact Us button to explain your problem to KDP support.

I downloaded the tool without any problems. Everything was virtually automatic. I just had to check boxes for what to install (I selected everything) and agree to the terms of use.

It added itself to my start menu and also appears on my desktop. However, as a general rule, it’s wise to write down the location where you save it on your computer so that you can always find it, just in case.

GETTING STARTED

Before you open the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator, you’ll want to get your materials together.

You have a couple of options:

• You can upload a PDF of your illustrated children’s book.
• You can upload image files in JPG, TIF, PNG, or PPM format.
• The images can include text, or you can add text later.

A partial PDF is okay, too: That is, once you upload a PDF, you still have the option to add additional pages as images later.

When you upload a PDF, the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator automatically converts every ‘page’ to an image.

Every ‘page’ should appear exactly how you want it to appear on the screen (but you can leave the text out now, if you wish, and add the text later).

If you already have a PDF of your illustrated children’s book for a print edition, that’s perfect.

If not, you need to first create the ‘pages’ for your book:

• You can open a graphics program (find one that’s better quality than Paint) and create each page there (with or without the text—you can add text later, if you wish).
• You can scan images onto your computer, but, if so, you’ll want high-quality scans that will look good on any device. If the scans don’t include text, that’s okay, as you’ll be able to add text later.
• You can open Microsoft Word and put each image on a page (without text is okay, as you can add it later), and then you can save your Word file as a PDF. Making a PDF is unnecessary, though, as you can simply leave all of your images separate, and just upload your image files.

ADDING YOUR IMAGES

Here is how to add your images (or how to add a PDF):

1. Open the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator.
2. Click the button to create a new book.
3. Read the directions, then press Continue.
4. Enter the title for your book.
5. Enter the author name(s).
6. If you have a publisher name to use, enter it here.
7. Select a language from the list. Note that not all languages are supported. Presently, it’s English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Russian, and Portuguese. (Someone should contact KDP and let them know that they misspelled Portuguese. Oops!)
8. Click browse and find a location where you want to save your book. You’ll actually have to create an empty folder for your book. Right-click in the pop-up window and choose New > Folder, then right-click the folder to name it, and then select this folder. Press Select Folder.
9. Choose landscape or portrait. The bottom options only apply if you choose landscape (they disappear if you pick portrait). If you’re using landscape, choose the options you want.
10. Uploading the cover and pages: Only choose the top option if you’re uploading a PDF and the first page of the PDF is your book cover. (You don’t have to bother adding the cover to your PDF. Just pick the second option and you’ll be able to submit your cover file and PDF separately.) To submit your cover as a separate file, pick the bottom option.
11. Browse for the files as instructed. You should be doing one of the following.
12. One option is to upload a PDF that includes your cover and your pages. You can still additional pages later.
13. Another option is to first upload a cover as an image file and then upload a PDF of your pages. You can still add additional pages later.
14. A third option is to upload image files. In this case, each image file should contain one ‘page’ from your book (including any text that needs to appear on that page).
15. Once you upload your files (and you wait a while for the program to assemble the pages of your book together), you will have the option to add images, add text, or add blank pages.

PERFECTING YOUR BOOK

You may wish to adjust the zoom from 100% to something else.

The main features you’ll need to perfect your book can be found on the toolbar above:

• Add page.
• Delete page.
• Add text.
• Add pop-up.
• Add blank page (see the little arrow on the right side of the Add Page button).
• Add multiple pages (see the little arrow on the right side of the Add Page button).

ADDING PAGES

It’s easy to insert pages:

• Click on the page where you’d like to insert a new page.
• Browse to find the image that you’d like to add.
• Choose whether to add the image before the selected page, after the selected page, or at the beginning or end of the book.
• If you choose before or after a page, you can also select the page number you’d like to have it placed before or after.

You can also add a blank page by clicking the little arrow on the right side of the Add Page button.

ADDING TEXT

It’s easy to add text to any page.

• Select the page.
• Click the Add text button.
• This opens a rectangle. Grab any corner and drag it to resize. Grab any edge to move the rectangle.
• Type your text in the rectangle. Place your cursor in the pop-up and look for a gray box just above the rectangle called View Pop-Up. Click View Pop-Up. This pulls up a white box that says Enter Text Here. Just start typing and you should see the text you type show up before Enter Text Here. Press the delete button to delete Enter Text Here.
• Highlight selected text and use the toolbar above to change the font style, font size, boldface, italics, underline, font color, line spacing, letter spacing (kerning), or alignment.
• Add as many textboxes as you’d like to any page.
• Select the number at the top left of the textbox and press the delete button on your keyboard to delete a textbox. Or just right-click on the pop-up. You don’t want stray, empty pop-ups lying around.

Text added this way will automatically pop-up. You won’t need to do the next step unless you have text that was already part of the image (or if you uploaded a PDF).

ADDING POP-UP TEXT

If your text was embedded in your images, you’ll need to add pop-up text in order to make the text pop-up. It won’t be automatic if the text was embedded in the images that you uploaded (or if you uploaded a PDF), as opposed to adding text through the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator.

Here is how to make your text pop-up:

• Select the page.
• Click the Add Pop-up button.
• This opens a rectangle. Grab any corner and drag it to resize. Grab any edge to move the rectangle.
• Place your cursor over the rectangle and you’ll see a View Pop-up option. Click View Pop-up.
• A white box will appear that says, “Enter text here.” Enter your text.
• Highlight selected text and use the toolbar above to change the font style, font size, boldface, italics, underline, font color, line spacing, letter spacing (kerning), or alignment.
• Add as much pop-up text as you’d like to any page. You can create a pop-up text for each text area.
• Select the number  at the top left of the pop-up text and press the delete button on your keyboard to delete pop-up text.

EDITING THE HTML

A cool feature of the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator is that it allows you to edit the HTML. You don’t actually need to know HTML: just what to look for to change.

For example, if you wish to insert hyperlinks, such as the url for your author website, you can click View > HTML View. You would then find the text (which you probably don’t want to be in a pop-up, if you want a clickable link in the text; note that you can disable a pop-up if you wish), and place something like <a href=”http://www.website.com”>website</a&gt; where you would like to make a clickable link. The syntax is very important. Put the website url in the quotes, including the http:// part, and the text that you want to show between the > and </a> (that text can be the same as the url, if you want).

Be very careful with HTML, especially the syntax. If you’re not already fluent in HTML, research exactly what you want to do thoroughly before you try it out.

BOOK PREVIEW

Click Book Preview at the top of the screen to preview your book.

This opens your book in the downloadable Kindle Previewer tool.

Preview your book carefully in each device.

Click the Devices button at the top.

You need to check:

• Kindle e-ink
• Kindle Fire
• Kindle for IOS

The e-ink option will only give you Paperwhite, but when I checked on a book published this way, it wasn’t available on Paperwhite. (Try finding a book published this way and see if this may have changed recently.)

When you select Kindle Fire, you’ll see three options:

• Kindle Fire
• Kindle Fire HDX
• Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″

When you select Kindle for IOS, the previewer will create an AZK file that you can download. Connect your iPad or iPhone to your computer with a USB cable to preview your AZK file. If you’re not familiar with this, you may need to Google some help.

With view, you can also open the file in Kindle for PC.

SAVE FOR PUBLISHING

When your book is ready, go to File and click Save for Publishing.

This will create a .mobi file.

Find the .mobi file in the book folder.

Now you can log into KDP and upload your book file.

MORE HELP

Click the help button and choose user guide to explore all the possibilities.

VIEWING TIP

I would add a page near the beginning of the book that says:

This e-book features pop-up text:

Double-tap on text to open a text pop-up. The pop-up text displays in a large font size for easy reading.

This is especially convenient on small devices.

I would also include an image on the Viewing Tip page to make it look interesting. A picture of you actually doing this on a device with your book would be perfect. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

• Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
• Volume 2 on marketability and marketing