Spoiler alert: I like it. VERY much.
So much, on a first trial pass, that I’m planning to redo all my Kindle books to make them even more true to the print originals.
Okay, let me back up for a second. Amazon has just released a new program designed to make creating beautiful kids’ books a total no-brainer. This is huge news, because self-publishing illustrated kids’ books for Kindle has always been somewhat of a pain in the you-know-where.
Huge. Like, “drop everything” kind of huge.
So I dropped everything to test it out.
I have a bunch of other things to do this morning, but I wanted to check out the program right away. You can download the Kindle Kids' Book Creator tool free here. (I love that they remembered the apostrophe!)
I decided to give it a “quick whirl,” a process that occasionally ends in an hours-long disaster. Not this time.
Install was quick, easy: hassle-free, and the program launched right away after install. It has a fun, friendly look.
Again, I was in a rush, so I thought, let’s just haul in an existing PDF and see how it does.
I’m in the middle of preparing a book called Panda Purim, a Jewish holiday themed follow-up to Penguin Rosh Hashanah (which made it to #9 last night in the Jewish children’s books category!).
So I just whomped in the PDF file, images, text and all.
It took a little while to import the 30-something pages, but was very stable during the process, more than I can say for some other programs.
After the import, there was a processing stage that was also kind of slow.
And then… there was my book! And it actually looked great.
But I thought, “not so fast.” It may look great in their special tool, but how will it appear in the Kindle Previewer? They bundle the Kindle Kids' Book Creator tool with a free previewer that lets you see how your book will look on an actual Kindle.
So I hit the Save for Publishing button and waited through the export process. The software exports to .mobi files, which are the standard format used by Kindle Direct Publishing.
I have to tell you, it looked unbelievably good in the previewer.
The text and images have been kept in their absolute position, and all the text has been converted to an image so that it will never move relative the images. The size and orientation of the pages has been retained, so the KDP Kids’ Book Creator version is essentially exactly the same as the print version.
Wow.
One last test, though. It may look good in the previewer, but it was time to fire up the full Kindle app on my PC to make sure it looked decent before I gave it my excited thumbs-up (and got back to the other stuff I have to do today).
And once again, the layout was totally true to the PDF version:
Wow. Wow. Wow. I am very, VERY impressed so far.
There are many features I still need to explore, including the pop-up text feature. I also need to figure out how to add links to my Kindle ebooks.
But this program is a game-changer. Seriously.
Check it out for yourself. Download the Kindle Kids' Book Creator tool free here and let me know in the Comments section what you think of it!
I review books, have yet to write one though on my agenda. If this is as good as you say it is, I am thrilled. It is such a pain to read kids books on the kindle that I do not review digital books except under extreme circumstances. This might make me open this up a bit more. It is so hard to review a picture book when the illustrations, r the text, is not visible. I like you site. My first time here from linkedIn group SCBWI.
ReplyDelete@Sue, I've had other reviewers who will only do hard copies, and for a lot of the books out there for Kindle, that makes total sense. Print writers put so much time into the look of the pages and most Kindle books, no matter how carefully they're done, just look thrown together. I had hoped at first glance that this software would help with that... and it does, but others' comments here indicate that it may not be as life-changing as I'd hoped. :-/
DeleteAs you mention, there doesn't seem to be a way to add links. This is a very basic tool and nothing like as good as iBooks Author for iPads. I used Kindle Comics Creator for my book, Hoover the Hungry Dog, and there is nothing in this new tool that would suggest it is worth redoing it. I hope they improve it in future versions.
ReplyDeleteI have tried it out and the pop-up thing is kind of flakey. Imported my Kindle Kids' book test project to my Kindle Fire HD and had a very difficult time getting the pop-up to work. Double-click, double-click....where is it??
ReplyDeleteAnd color text? It has ever color you like, if you like black. Very limited with what one can do. Was hoping for much more.
Not ready for prime time. And not a game changer.
Kindle Comic Book creator can be used to create a Kids book.
@Charles, I have to admit that I tried the Comics Creator and it just made a mess of my story. But I'm disappointed that you've found that this tool doesn't offer much flexibility. Will have to have another look through.
DeleteI am trying to get the Kids book creator to work. Finally found how to change colors of text. Key to pop up thing is make sure the target area (blue dotted line area) is big enough to hit in the book. But can not find out how people know where in book to double-tap to find pop-up text. Guessing put target area over entire page if only one pop up. I need to do more experimenting.
DeleteI am glad Amazon brought it out.
Regarding Comics Creator & its comic panel "popup" views. It really does make a mess if there are lots of small comic panels. Works best with a few number of comic panels in the page. I am now making comics without "popup" panels, then one can flip one's reader from portrait to landscape and have facing pages + zoom. Again, glad Amazon brought out this software,too. Just have to get it to work for me and my books.
Charles - I used Kindle Comic Book Creator for my second book - "Go Fly A Kite." I loved that software. It couldn't have been easier! That also has some kind of text enlargement feature - but I didn't feel I needed it yet. So it took me minutes to make my book. But - are there any meta issues - will a book miss any of Amazon's promo push now that they've FINALLY put the children's book audience in their crosshair? And Jennifer - I love your blog!
Deletehttp://www.amazon.com/Go-Fly-Kite-Butterfly-Story-ebook/dp/B00ISFI9PM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1411338745&sr=8-4&keywords=go+fly+a+kite
Do you know how it does if you don't have illustrations already done? Can you go back and add them at a later time, or do they all have to be done before uploading? It sounds like an interesting process. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteYou would definitely want the book to be fully set up before attempting to put it into this thing. It turns out to be murderously hard to move pages around and insert. Not impossible, but really, I think it's ideally suited to books if you a) have the print version done already, and b) you want the ebook to look as much like the print book as possible.
DeleteBut there are 2 steps here. The program itself is offline, so you are not uploading anything until the very end. Everything stays on your computer until you're ready to upload to KDP (or wherever you want to send the finished mobi file).
Are there published books online at the moment that we can see good examples of?
ReplyDeleteThe other concern I have with this...maybe I am missing something in the understanding of it, but how does the reader know where and what to click on that pops up?
ReplyDeleteI did a couple of test books, let people read through them and not one clicked a pop-up until I pointed out where and what to do. Is one supposed to just click all over a page hoping to find a pop-up?
Charles,
DeleteYou are 100% right, and I was wondering about this yesterday when I converted my book Seven Special Gifts. I put in a pop-up and then even I couldn't find where it was, so I gave up. And without the ability to tack on URLs, any kind of call-to-action in the book is kind of meaningless. I should probably sit down and figure out how to add a hard-coded page of plain HTML at the end with any links I want. If that's even possible.
Like I said, I'm still using it to convert my books, one by one. For the ones not currently available via Kindle, it's better than nothing.
Oh - one more drawback. The preview says it only works on certain Kindle models. Not the older / lower-tech ones. So not perfect after all...
RE: HTML - On pages 6 & 7 of the Kids Book Creator Guide it talks about editing the HTML, but gives no examples of what one can or cannot or should not do. Nothing about links or whether it interferes with pop-ups. I have not tried it. Will try adding a link and see what happens.
DeleteI asked Kindle tech support about this and this is their answer. (But I do not understand what they are saying):
ReplyDelete"The text pop up feature will enable all the readers to read the text over the page clearly. I am sorry but there is no separate feature which will give this view to customer that this page contains pop up but if the page is not having clear visibility of the text written , We can add the text pop-up feature over there so that when customer double tab that area then customer have magnified view of the text."
It's actually very easy to add links to your kindle book. Here's a post where I've explained it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.blog.dickrink.nl/kindle-kids-book-creator-books-links
It works just fine. (Though KPD hasn't reviewed these last changes yet)...
Dick, this is utterly genius (and your book trailer looks GREAT as well!). I'd love to see your cover coming in to the 2015 indie kids' cover contest if it meets all the rules.
DeleteI have actually just posted twice about KDP Kids' Book Creator - once about why I'm terribly disappointed and won't be using it anymore, and once about a quick, easy alternative. Links were definitely one of the reasons, but there are others, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on those posts as well...
Dick - Good idea, thanks for the info. I will try it out.
DeleteHi Jennifer, thanks for the compliments. Always nice to hear.
ReplyDeleteI have read you posts. I guess you made your book in Word and saved it as a PDF? The size of images used in your Word document determines the size of the final mobi file. Personaly, I rather use JPEG format images in the Kindle Kids Book Creator instead of Word converted PDF's. Maybe because my book is more of a picture book instead of a story. In my case I made a book of 28 pages all with 1500x750 pixel images (medium quality - which is good enough). The size and quality of the images are very important. The size of my mobi file is 5.6mb. Once it's uploaded and converted the size will be even smaller. So my advice is to take a good look at the size and quality of the images you used.
Fixed layout works great for me. Maybe because I use a JPEG image for every page where illustration and text are "glued" together. I don't have a Kindle device, but the layout of the book looks good on every other device I tried (iPhone, Android phone, PC, Tablet).
You are right about the lack of flexibility when you want to add a page with only text. When you want to make a picture book the Kindle Kids Book Creator is a great tool because it's easy to use and because of the fixed layout. If you want to make a story with a cover, some pictures and a lot of text, Epub seems indeed a better solution.
Hi again! Actually, I'm saving my word document as a word document. (I really recommend you look at the full post to see what how I'm doing it instead)
DeleteIf I saved it as a PDF, then you'd be mainly right about it affecting the size of the final file. But by importing the Word document directly into Calibre, it creates pretty lean HTML instead. It also - an advanced-user feature - lets me "explode" the book, unpack all the graphics and pare down the file sizes to the point where they're suitable for on-screen viewing but far less than the 300dpi required by print. Then I just repack the book and it's lean, and mean, and ready to go. It has to be under 4-something to be eligible for 99 cents, and I found that none of my Kindle Kids' book creator books ever were. :-(
The drawback, as you say, is that it isn't fixed layout. I do recommend you try your books on an older Kindle along with the new kids' ones- some books and formats do NOT work there at all.