Don’t Be Like Debbie: A Guide to KDP Formatting for Authors and Illustrators

Poor Debbie.

Debbie wrote her first book and submitted it to KDP, but her files were rejected. Debbie is fictitious, but her mistakes are only too real. Follow along with professional book formatter Donna Gielow McFarland as she demonstrates:

How to format a book to look the way readers expect a book to look. How to avoid the hassle of rejection by doing it right the first time. Tips and tricks for working in KDP.

Don’t Be Like Debbie can serve as a manual for how to format a book so it will pass KDP’s inspection. It’s more than the bare minimum, though. Don’t Be Like Debbie describes how to format a book so it looks the way readers expect a book to look.

The instructions are not software-specific - someone will still have to figure out how to set margins or page size in whatever software they’re using. But Don’t Be Like Debbie contains a detailed explanation of elements needed to format a book correctly, including avoiding errors that won’t cause KDP to reject a manuscript, but will make the book look like it was written by a do-it-yourselfer.

Don’t Be Like Debbie is for authors who want to try formatting their own books, it’s for graphic designers and illustrators who just got their first job working on a book and it’s for authors who hired a graphic designer or illustrator who is new to designing books. Take a quick read through and you’ll avoid tons of mistakes, some of them very costly to correct.