Table of contents
- Tutorial on Book Description Generator's Use:
- Important: Amazon complains of “Invisible Characters”
- FAQ for the Book Description Generator
- How do I publish my book description on Amazon?
- I want to write and add an Amazon Editorial Review. How do I do that?
- How do I publish my book description on Barnes & Noble?
- How do I publish my book description on Kobo?
- How do I space the paragraphs in my book description?
- How do I format bullet points or use numbered lists with the Book Description Generator?
- Don’t forget these other Kindlepreneur resources!
Here are some instructions for using the generator. You can also watch this video.
- Select the platform you want to format the description for (Amazon, B&N, etc).
- Enter your book description. If you're copying and pasting from Word Doc, use the below sub-steps to ensure you don't bring over any hidden code from Word:
- If you're on Windows: you can use the combination Ctrl + Shift + V to paste without formatting
- If you're a Mac: you can use Option + Command + Shift + V to paste without formatting
- Choose from the available formatting options. If an option is grayed out, that means it's not supported on that particular platform. If you see other book descriptions looking different than the options available here, that means those books were grandfathered in before the current rules were put in place.
- When you've got your book description looking the way you want, click “generate my code.”
- Paste the code into the platform you're publishing on.
Font Sizes
Font Style
Paragraph Style
Tutorial on Book Description Generator's Use:
Click HERE to see more videos like this
Important: Amazon complains of “Invisible Characters”
If when you go to publish your book description, and Amazon responds with “Description may not contain invisible characters”… there's a reason.
This means that there are <><> tags with nothing in between the two <> tags. These need to be removed before Amazon will say OK.
This change happened relatively recently, and can explain why some of your previously working descriptions are no longer acceptable. Simply remove these blanks and you'll be good to go.
FAQ for the Book Description Generator
Below, you’ll find answers to most of the common questions you might have about Kindlepreneur’s Book Description Generator and how to use it.
- How do I publish my book description on Amazon?
- I want to write and add an Amazon Editorial Review. How do I do that?
- How do I publish my book description on Barnes & Noble?
- How do I publish my book description on Kobo?
- How do I space the paragraphs in my book description?
- How do I format bullet points or use numbered lists with the Book Description Generator?
- Don’t forget these other Kindlepreneur resources!
But first, a few things to take note of:
- You might see other books with different looking descriptions than what’s offered above. That’s because Amazon has changed their allowed HTML over the years, and when they change it, previous books are grandfathered in and keep using the older look.
- There is no way to add pictures to a book description.
- iTunes is not included in the generator because, in order to publish directly through Apple Books, you must use their software and they naturally have their own HTML rules for this.
How do I publish my book description on Amazon?
1. Sign into your Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing account here by clicking the yellow sign up button.
2. Once signed in, navigate to your ‘Bookshelf’ and select the book you’d like to edit. Alternatively, create a new book by clicking on the button seen below.
3. Scroll down to the section ‘Description.’
4. Paste your description directly into this box. Click ‘save and continue’ at the bottom of the page. If you’re publishing for the first time, you’ll have to upload your manuscript and cover before you can proceed. Click ‘save and continue’ again, set your pricing, and click ‘publish’ thereafter.
5. After clicking ‘publish’ your description may take up to 72 hours to update.
Another method you might use is by going through Amazon Author Central. You can do that as follows:
1. Sign into your Amazon Author Central account here. This is where you manage your author pages, editorial reviews, add books to your profile, and can even edit your book description for books.
2. Select the ‘Books’ tab at the top of the page.
3. If you’ve correctly added your books to your author page, you’ll see a list of books and the one you want to edit. If not, you can add a book to your author page by clicking this button and entering the books name:
4. Once you have your book present on the books page, click on it.
5. Here you’ll find your ‘Product Description.’ Click the ‘Edit’ button, hit ‘Edit HTML’ and paste in your HTML description and hit ‘Preview.’
6. If you’re satisfied with how your product description looks, hit ‘Save Changes.’
7. Important to note: if you use this method, whenever you make changes to your book on KDP, your book description will revert to the one you originally used in KDP when first publishing your book. It’s easier to just change the book description on KDP and allow the book to update.
I want to write and add an Amazon Editorial Review. How do I do that?
1. To create an Amazon Editorial Review, make sure to follow Amazon’s guidelines when using the Kindlepreneur Editorial Review Generator. Amazon’s guidelines for review creation are as follows:
2. Editorial reviews can be reviews left by other authors, publications, or even some of the highlights of the reviews your readers have left for you. Select a few from your book reviews then click on the Amazon Editorial Review Generator.
3. Enter your review text. Separate each review onto a separate line. You can bold or italicize reviews as you wish. You can even add in five little stars.
4. Once you’re satisfied with how your editorial reviews look, hit the ‘Generate My Code’ button.
5. You now have your handy HTML code that you can paste directly into the HTML editing pane in your Amazon Editorial Review section.
6. Once you have your code, sign into your Amazon Author Central account here.
7. Select the ‘Books’ tab at the top of the page.
8. If you’ve correctly added your books to your author page, you’ll see a list of books and the one you want to edit. If not, you can add a book to your author page by clicking this button and entering the books name:
9. Once you have your book present on the books page, click on it.
10. Here, you’ll find your Editorial Review section.
11. Click ‘Add’ to add your Amazon Editorial Reviews. Hit ‘Edit HTML’ and paste in your HTML description and hit ‘Preview.’
12. Hit ‘Preview’ and ‘Save Changes’ once you are satisfied. The reviews will appear in your Editorial Review section within 3 to 5 days.
Need Help with Your Keywords?
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Take the CourseHow do I publish my book description on Barnes & Noble?
1. Head to Barnes & Noble and login to your account here.
2. Create your book by following the simple onscreen steps.Or edit your book by selecting it in the ‘Projects’’ tab.
3. Select the tab ‘Book Details.’
4. Paste your book description into the Default Book Description box as seen below.
5. Hit ‘Save and Continue’ and proceed until your book has been published or updated.
How do I publish my book description on Kobo?
1. Head over to Kobo Writing Life and sign in to your account here.
2. Once in your Dashboard, click on the ‘eBooks’ tab.
3. Click on the book you’d like to edit.
4. On the ‘Describe Your eBook’ page, scroll down until you reach the ‘Synopsis’ block.
5. Paste your description into the block then hit the ‘Save and return to Library’ button on the right.
How do I space the paragraphs in my book description?
There are two handy methods for spacing paragraphs in your book description.
Method 1
1. Enter your book description text. When you come to the end of a paragraph, hit ‘enter’ as you usually would in writing. Your description will look like this:
2. The description above has a very clear space between the paragraphs, and when you hit ‘Generate My Code,’ your HTML looks likes:
3. The space between your paragraphs will remain there when you paste it into your book description box on Amazon, Kobo or Barnes & Noble.
Method 2
1. Enter your book description text. When you come to the end of your paragraph, instead of hitting ‘enter’ as usual, hit ‘shift’ and ‘enter’ together. Your paragraph spacing now looks like this:
2. Notice the lack of space between paragraphs? When you hit ‘Generate My Code’ for your HTML, it will look as follows:
3. Now, when you copy your HTML over to your book description box on Amazon, Kobo or Barnes & Noble, it won’t have the space between paragraphs.
How do I format bullet points or use numbered lists with the Book Description Generator?
Once again, there are two fun methods you can use to generate bulleted or numbered lists.
Method 1
1. Click the ‘Bullet List’ or ‘Numbered List’ buttons under ‘Paragraph Style’.
2. Enter your list.
3. Hit ‘Generate My Code’ and you’ve got your HTML to be pasted into your book description box on the relevant retailer. Easy.
Method 2
1. To make unique bulleted or numbered lists that are still HTML friendly, you can use the Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator’s icons.
2. Instead of clicking on the ‘Bulleted List’ or ‘Numbered List’ options, use your icons. Select an icon, then type your sentence.
3. Hit either ‘shift’ and ‘enter’ or just ‘enter’ and do the same with another icon.
4. You can select any icon and use it to create a numbered or bulleted list. Once you’re satisfied, click ‘Generate My Code’ to create your HTML.
Don’t forget these other Kindlepreneur resources!
If you think this book description generator's great…well, we've got more where that came from. Be sure to check out some of our top articles that might just help you along your author's journey. You can also learn a little bit about my favorite genre of books, and a little bit more about my favorite training pistol and favorite 22LR rifle, and get a great scrivener coupon here. Also, here are my favorite keyboards.
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Cheers!
- Kindle Direct Publishing 
Dave, I keep hearing about HTML and it scares the life out of me. Are we supposed to learn it? I can’t imagine how. Surely, I can publish my book description in Word? Thanks.
Wow. Just WOW. This was stupendously helpful. My book has been up on Amazon since January (with a February launch). I had no idea what I was doing and had to make do with what I could manage to not have look messed up in my description (a much abbreviated and formless thing). NOW I finally thought to look up the html code. Of COURSE I found it here on Kindlepreneur. (Insert forehead smacking!) Why didn’t I look here ages ago?? My new description is UP and looks just like I wanted it to six months ago. THANK YOU SO MUCH DAVE. And go Red Sox!! 😀
Hi Dave
I am new in this publishing space and trying to set up my Amazon KDP account. Why do i need to convert to html for book description when using word? i am a bit confused.
Thank you
Patience
When you are entering your book description into KDP, it used to be that you had to enter the description in html if you wanted any kind of special formatting. Though that might have changed recently. Let me check on that. We may need to modify the generator.
Hi Dave, can I ask if we can continue to use this tool for our description now that Amazon has announced the Amazon HTML Ban on product detail pages.
Yes you can, because that is not applicable to book descriptions.
Thank you for providing this amazingly useful tool, Mr. Kindlepreneur. This little “hack” helped me finally get my Amazon page looking the way it should.
Awesome and glad it helped!