How We Use the Kindle for Publishing

by Corina Koch MacLeod & Carla Douglas

@CKmacleodwriter
@CarlaJDouglas

If you’ve been following some of our earlier posts, you’ll know that at Beyond Paper we are fans of the Kindle — not just for reading ebooks, but for a host of publishing-related tasks.

Below is a list of what we use our Kindles for with links to posts that will tell you more about how we use them.

Note: Carla and I each have a Kindle Touch — Amazon's e-ink device that was the precursor to the Paperwhite. Len Edgerly of the Kindle Chronicles podcast (an excellent podcast about publishing industry news and tips for using the Kindle) demonstrates the Paperwhite's additional features. For our purposes, it would appear that the Touch is similar enough to the Paperwhite with one notable exception: the Touch has a text-speech read-aloud feature, the advantages of which I'll discuss below. If you have a Paperwhite and there are additional features you think we should know about, feel free to leave a comment.

While a Kindle e-ink device makes the most sense for the kind of work we do, we do read on and consult the Kindle iOS, Android, and PC apps for specific purposes.


Research and Productivity

Editing and writing is focused work, and it's all too easy to get distracted or lost in a research vortex on the Internet when we should be writing (or working with someone else's writing). We have a Send-to-Kindle plug-in in our Google chrome browsers so that we can capture self-publishing articles that we encounter in our Internet travels. We then read these articles on our Kindles later, so we can stay abreast of changes in the publishing field.

Feedback

You can load unpublished or "personal" documents to your Kindle using the Send-to-Kindle plug-in for your computer. This is particularly useful for manuscript evaluations in which we offer suggestions to authors on what might make their books better. Authors can send us a manuscript as a Word document, and we can pop it onto our Kindles to read it — much like a reader eventually will.

Proofreading

If you’re publishing an ebook, it makes good sense to proofread your manuscript in its final environment, ideally after it's been copyedited and formatted as a mobi file.

We convert a file using Amazon's converter (or receive a mobi file that has been already converted by a formatter) and then transfer the mobi file to the Kindle. Once it's there, we can make use of the highlights and notes features on the Kindle to flag any changes the author or formatter needs to make.

There is a way to relay a list of changes to the author and formatter, and Carla will write about that in an upcoming post. If you've already published your book, but now realize it needs some proofreading, you can follow the steps in this post.

While proofreading, it's important to read every word as you see it on the "page." Our brains are meaning-making organs and have this amazing ability to see "from" when "form" is actually what's written. To prevent your brain from tricking you into seeing what's not there, it helps to read every word aloud, or use the Kindle Touch's text-to-speech feature while proofreading. You can adjust the reading speed so that you're reading at the right rate to catch errors.

Format Checks

It's important to know that ebooks display differently on the various Kindle apps. Your book on the Kindle app will look and behave differently than it will on the iOS or PC apps. After we proofread a book on a Kindle, if an author requests it, we can page through the book in the various apps to see if it is displaying properly in each evironment. Of course, you can use the Kindle Previewer for this purpose, and while it's an excellent option, it's more accurate to page through the book on some of the devices readers will be using.

This is how we use the Kindle at Beyond Paper. We're always looking for new ways to use our Kindles. How are you using yours?

*Image by Windell Oskay

Related Posts
The New Kindle Paperwhite Demo: Incrementally Great, by Len Edgerly
Scrivener Tip: Text to Speech, by Nicole Feldringer
Use Send to Kindle to Read and Review Your Personal Documents
How to Check Your Book Using Kindle Previewer
How to Proofread on a Kindle: 8 Steps to Proofreading Your Ebook
How to Get Your Book Ebook-Ready