Easy #KDP Table of Contents Formatting

#selfpublishing your latest #Kindle #ebook shouldn’t be a hassle, but I had a hell of a time trying to figure out the proper formatting for the Table of Contents Amazon requires you to include in your Kindle ebook.

So I found my own easier way.

Everything I originally found online was confusing and even Amazon’s own free Kindle book, “Publish on Amazon Kindle with Kindle Direct Publishing” was vague.

After I thought I had it figured out Mobi Pocket Creator was still giving me the error message that there was no Table of Contents or TOC.

So I decided to turn to what I thought was an expert and paid for, “Just Tell Me Simply

I didn’t care that there were grammatical mistakes and editing problems every other page, as long as the information allowed me to create a TOC that Amazon could work with I’d be happy.

This Kindle book had me creating a seperate TOC.NCX file and editing the html code. On top of that the example pieces of code were pictures that were so small they couldn’t be read on my Kindle for Android app.

After following all of the confusing instructions Mobi Pocket Creator still failed to make a functioning TOC though I was no longer getting the error message.

Frustrated and falling behind in my writing because I was still trying to figure out how to put out a quality Kindle product there was no sense in trying the same thing over again.

I did everything the way it should have been done and it didn’t work.

So I’ll throw everything I know out the window and start fresh.

I noticed that when inserting bookmarks then converting to html the bookmarks were converted into a link with the index.html#bookmark format. I thought I could use that to designate not only links to each chapter like I did before I read the How To book, but I could also designate both a TOC and Start locations for the Kindle version.

Since I had already inserted bookmarks at the begining of each chapter it was easy enough to highlight the chapter name in in the Table of Contents then link within the document to the appropriate bookmark just like you would to any outside URL.

Then I added a TOC bookmark by placing the cursor at the begining of the Table of Contents and inserting a bookmark named toc.

Where I wanted Kindle to open up to I inserted a bookmark named start.

After saving my work I then saved the file in html format.

In Mobi Pocket Creator it is a simple matter to import from html. Then we go to the Guide option on the left hand side of the program to designate those guides within our document that we want to use.

We have only two, toc and start.

You can see in the picture below how to enter the information.

Of course instead of BabysittingPerverts.html it would be the name of your source html file followed by a # sign and toc or start depending on which one you are adding.

Now when you build your Kindle PRC file using Mobi Pocket Creator you will not get an error message, (hope you remembered to include a cover) and when opened in Kindle or any Kindle app the first location displayed should be where you inserted the start bookmark.

If you go to the location drop down menu you will see both the Table of Contents and Start listed as options.

That’s all there is to it.

No TOC.NCX files, no editing html code, just a simple application of bookmarks and the easy to use guide section of Mobi Pocket Creator and the worst of your formatting errors are over.