Mailbag: Prepping comics for Kindle Direct Publishing

Q: I know you are putting your work up on Amazon, and I was hope you'd do a post about your process and what tools you use etc. Specifically, I'm interested in:

• Creating Landscape pages (which seemed to be a problem for Amazon, or Graphicly)  - I notice you chose Portrait, even though landscape would have been better suited to your strips, why?

• Using HTML and hyperlinks (join my mailing list/visit my site/ buy the next book)

Filesize fees and how this effects an artist's cut (which seems uncool considering they're pushing an HD platform)... What file sizes are possible?

• If it's possible to hit old Kindles and Fires with one file? How?

• How did you achieve the background colour and heading you have on your comic? My comic (which you can download from Amazon) has white around it which looks terrible.

I've been hesitant to answer this because, truthfully, my process for this has been gradually developing since I started doing digital distribution in April 2012. And I've been tweaking my process ever since. But I'll be happy to share what I'm doing -- if you understand that parts of it may be a work-in-progress.

First , the good news: iPad is still dominant in the eBook market (in my experience), and nothing beats the ease and WYSIWYG appeal of a PDF. So there's that. I always make my digital comics and books available in PDF format first, and that covers a major share of my market.

But Amazon has made their Kindle readers into major players in the digital tablet market, and it's foolhardy to ignore that. So let's talk formatting for the Kindle Fire.