Amazon, like Smashwords, accepts Microsoft Word files as input. The only significant difference is that Smashwords requires an inside picture and a statement that they are publishing it.

There is one more difference, though, and it’s an expensive one. Unlike Smashwords, Amazon, if you take their 70% royalties offer, charges $.15 per megabyte transmitted to the customer, so if your file is just a few bytes over 1 meg in size that’s $.30 in addition to their 30% cut of the profit.

That shouldn’t be a problem, because you have to get to 135k words before you break the one meg file size in a Word file. As an example, a 85k word novel, as a Word .doc document comes in at about .75 meg, and should deliver to the customer for $.15. It should.

That same novel, with the inside picture, for Smashwords, weighs in at .77 meg and yields a converted epub file of .619 meg—including that that internal picture. But when Amazon gets their claws on that same file it inflates to a staggering 3.05 meg. That means a $.60 delivery charge. So if you charge $2.95, which many self-pubs do, Amazon gets:

Their 30% of the profit:  $.88
Their delivery charge:     $.60
Total paid to Amazon:    $1.48 which is roughly 50% of the profit.

That becomes more interesting when you look at most published novels and see that they nearly all have a file size of well under a meg.

We could assume that the programmers working for Amazon are inept, compared to those at Smashwords, rather than it being a case of Amazon finding a way to chisel a bit of extra profit out of the self publishers—while claiming to give the author 70%. But either way, there is a way around it.

1. Clean up your file and get all the headers and other crap out.
2. Save it, using Word, as an HTML file.
3. Download a copy of Calibre. It’s a free program, though they would like, and deserve, a donation as a thank you.
5. Reduce your front cover picture to 600 pixels in the long dimension. This will become part of the metadata.
4. Open Calibre and paste or load that HTML file you created into it.
5. Highlight your novel and elect edit the Metadata. Enter your Title, the picture you created, your name, the tags, and the “sort” data: If your title has “the” as the first word, enter the title minus “the” and follow it with the title, a comma, a space, and “The”. Your sort Author name is your last name, followed by a comma a space and your first. If you already have the piece published via Kindle, copy the publication date and the ISBN from the existing Kindle page.
6. Highlight the file and select the Convert Books feature. Be certain that the output file (top right) is listed as MOBI.
7. At the bottom right press Okay.

The MOBI file that results is what you send to Amazon in place of your MS Word file, and the final size will be under the 1 meg threshold. And with a $.15 delivery fee and a $2.95 price their share of the profit drops to 34% And, you make $.40 more per sale.

As always, though, review the result via Amazon's reader, and do that before you push the publish button.

Hope this helps

Most versions of WORD let you convert to HTML.  If you have quality graphics, wait till you convert to HTML before you add the pics.  That way GIFs are preserved; otherwise KDP convertor just makes them PNGs.  You can also save a lot of WORD bulk by deleting all paragraph classes that aren't specifically used in your manuscript.

Better yet, use KDP 9 convertor to change your HTML to MOBI.  Then upload the MOBI file to Kindle Direct publishing.  Incorporate your cover photo with your MOBI file, which lets you use a GIF instead of a HUGE JPEG with poor colors.

Major publishers haven't made use of the biggest advantage for eBooks.  They don't index the text.  It's up to self=publishers to lead the way.  Acronyms, foreign-language words and coined words (such as in-house slang) should be endnoted. This is easy to do with WORD -> HTML  -> MOBI.

There's no reason for eBooks to take backstage to printed books.  In 20 years no one will buy a printed book, if the eBooks are easier to access.  "Scribblers ARISE; you have nothing to lose but your paper."

--edited by John Speikers on 8/13/2015, 12:19 PM--