Creating a Kindle formatted book from Google Docs

Published: May 20, 2025 by C.S. Rhymes

I have seen a few posts on Threads recently asking what software people use to format their books. This is one option out of many, but I thought I would share my current workflow to give authors an insight into the pros and cons.

I use Google Docs to write. This is because I find it easy to use, it’s free, has a grammar and spell checker, and it syncs to the cloud and between my various devices. I have been known to do some writing on my mobile phone whilst sat in a coffee shop and the Google Docs app allows me to easily pick up where I have left off on another device.

I then use Kindle Create to format the book ready for uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing.

Find out more about my books

Writing in Google Docs.

You can just get stuck in and start writing in Google Docs, but there are a couple of things that I’d like to mention that make life easier later on.

Headings

Rather than making your chapter titles simple bold text, try and use headings. For chapters, I use ‘Heading 1’. This offers three advantages.

It looks nice. Okay, that’s not really that important.
It gives you an easy way of jumping between chapters using the links in the Document Tabs. I have found this a life saver when reading back through your manuscript and even more so when it comes to editing.
When you import it into Kindle Create, it can partially detect the headings and automatically insert the chapters for you saving you time and your sanity. For this to work, you also need to insert a ‘Page break’ between each chapter.

Indentation

I have had the tendency to insert an empty line between paragraphs of text. This is probably due to the way I write content form my blog in markdown. This is probably fine for non-fiction books, but fiction books tend to have each paragraph indented, making it easier to read.

I recently updated one of my books in Kindle Create and manually indented each paragraph. All I can say is, I’m glad it was a novella. I still need to go through others and do the same reformatting when I have some time.

You get the gist of what I am saying from this TikTok…

To save you having to do this, you can update the settings so Google Docs automatically indents the paragraphs for you.

Indent a paragraph of text.
Click on the Styles dropdown and then hover over Normal text,
Hover over the arrow on the right
Click on “Update ‘Normal text’ to match”

This should mean that each new paragraph going forward will be indented automatically.

Line spacing

I don’t think this makes a difference to Kindle Create, but I like to up the line spacing from the default 1.15 to 1.5. This makes it easier for me to read (and looks like I have written more words than I really have).

Exporting from Google Docs

Once you have your finished manuscript, you are ready to export. Kindle Create only accepts .doc, .docx or .rtf formats, so we need to export to one of the compatible formats.

Click on ‘File’
Hover over ‘Download’
Click on ‘Microsoft Word (.docx)’

Your manuscript will be downloaded into a Word formatted file.

Importing into Kindle Create

Kindle Create can be downloaded from the Amazon website and supports Windows and Mac. Follow the instructions to install the software and then launch it.

When Kindle Create is open, click on the ‘+ Create new’ button, then click ‘Choose’ in the bottom right.
Next we need to decide the format. For this example we are using ‘Reflowable’ as it is a standard text based book we want to create. After selecting ‘Reflowable’, click the ‘Continue’ button.
Enter the book title. You can also enter the author and publisher if you choose to. Then press ‘Choose File (.doc, .docx, .rtf)’.
Select the file we downloaded from Google Docs and choose ‘Open’. It will start the import process. Once it has completed, press the ‘Continue’ button.
A new screen comes up saying ‘Automatic chapter titles’. This is where setting the chapter titles as Heading 1 and inserting the Page breaks earlier helps us out. Press the Get started button.
Oh no! There are no chapter headings detected??? Don’t panic, press ‘Accept Selected’ and then you will see the ‘Body’ section on the left with the chapter titles.
Click on each chapter within Body, and for each you need to click on the chapter text in the editor and then press ‘Chapter title’ within the ‘Elements on page’ section on the right. Go through all chapters and repeat this process.
This is optional, but I also like to select the first paragraph of each chapter and click on the ‘Chapter first paragraph’ button in the ‘Elements on page’ section. This gives the first paragraph of each chapter a large letter.

Make sure you press save

We have done a lot of hard work getting this far. Make sure you regularly press save and keep your changes.

Now we have all the chapter titles selected, we can easily generate a ‘Table of contents’ by clicking on the + (plus) symbol next to ‘Front Matter’ and selecting ‘Table of contents’ from the dropdown. This will give you a preview of the contents with your chapter headings. Press ‘Ok’ to create them.

Front Matter

It’s up to you what front matter you add to your book, but I would recommend adding a title page and copyright as a minimum. If you have a prologue, then you can also add this to the Front Matter section.

Back Matter

Again, it’s up to you what back matter you want to add to your book, but if you have other books on Kindle then you can add ‘Books by this author’ with the titles and blurb, but also a link to the other books so readers can easily click on the links to buy your other books. This is especially useful if your book is in a series and the reader wants to read the next book.

Themes

There are four themes to choose from. Whilst it’s not loads of options, it ensures that it should always look good to readers. Choose a theme that best suits your book. You can preview how the theme looks using the Preview tool.

Preview

Kindle Create has a handy ‘Preview’ tool that lets you preview the book in tablet, phone and kindle views. This allows you to double check your formatting before it has been uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). You can easily make changes in the editor and then open the preview again to ensure it looks as you expect.