English: Amazon Kindle wordmark. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I submitted my eBook to Amazon at the beginning of June this year, thinking it was free of any kind of error. Subsequently, I found several typos that needed to be fixed. Last night, I submitted my revised eBook, and this morning it was up on Amazon with all corrections. In between, I spent hours trying to figure out how to do it. I was stuck on a couple of seemingly simple steps KDP provided. In this post, I will explain how I accomplished this revision. It may help someone.
The EPUB logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I will restrict my focus to my specific situation. It’s when you try to give someone instructions that cover all possibilities that the whole thing crumbles. First, I submitted a mobi file to Amazon. I paid someone to prepare this mobi. I didn’t want to fool around trying to provide a Table of Contents when I knew very well that it would trip me up as it has many others. My mobi preparer also provided me an ePub file of the book. Thank goodness. It was my life saver.
Upload / Download (Photo credit: johntrainor)
My revisions were all simple deletions, spelling corrections, and left out words. Nothing complicated. To begin, it took me a while to comprehend that the KDP instructions for substituting a revised eBook started with the premise that you had completed your corrections to your original file and that it was on your computer’s hard drive, ready to be uploaded to Amazon. For the longest time, I thought I was going to need to download the error riddled file I had originally sent them.
Not so. First, you have the file that you originally submitted to Amazon. This is the file you make corrections on. You correct your file, then you upload it to Amazon. To this day I still do not know how to open a mobi file for editing. Everyone knows it’s simplicity itself to “unzip” the mobi file as some Google whiz instructs, which results in two versions falling into your lap, an html file and an opf file, correct? Wrong. I couldn’t do it. I recommend you work with an ePub file to make your corrections.
You may need to download a free copy of a program called Calibre from the internet. It can produce an ePub file from a mobi. You will definitely need to download a free copy of a program called Sigil from the internet. Sigil opens an ePub file. This Sigil opened file is where you make your simple corrections after which you save this corrected ePub file. When you reach step 6 of the KDP instructions for correcting your book after it’s been published, it’s this ePub that you upload, even if the original file you submitted was not an ePub file, as was the case with me. Amazon will convert this ePub file of yours. And as Amazon says: “The new file will overwrite the old file within 24-48 hours”. Is this perfectly clear?
