How to Create a Hyperlinked Table of Contents for Smashwords

How to Create a Hyperlinked Table of Contents for Smashwords

If you have multiple stories or chapters in your ebook, you’ll probably need a hyperlinked table of contents if your book formatting is to be approved for premium distribution to lucrative online sales outlets such as Apple, Sony, and Kobo on Smashwords.

What is a “hyperlinked table of contents”? It’s a table of contents near the beginning of your ebook where a reader can point to and click on a chapter name or story title and immediately be taken to that place in the book.

I admit that I was intimidated by the words “hyperlinked table of contents” at first, especially by the word “hyperlinked.” It sounded like I’d have to create some kind of computer code—something I don’t know how to do.

However, I found that creating a hyperlinked table of contents isn’t all that hard.

An expanded version of this blog entry is now available as an ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc. under the title
"Basic Formatting & How to Create a Hyperlinked Table of Contents for Smashwords." I hope you will buy it and find it helpful!

Reading Amanda Hocking

(In case you missed it, the title of this post is an homage  to my book's title--if one can do an homage to one's self.)

Tonight I was reading Amanda Hocking's earliest blog entries. (Confession: I'm such a newbie in the world of self-ePublishing that I didn't even know who she was until a few days ago!) Anyway, the story in these posts was doubly heart-breaking because it's also my story.

Of desparately wanting to get published.

Of groveling for an agent.

And of doubting my own work.

As she puts it: "Sending off queries is so exciting, but then the rejections come, and I start feeling vaguely suicidal and like destroying everything I've written."

Oh, God, how many times did I go there myself?

But before I get too maudlin, I'll write this: "In the middle of the storm, as if by magic, the dark clouds parted, the thunder and lightning abated, the downpour stopped, and the sun of indie ePublishing shone brightly through."

Anyway, if you're a writer who is going through any of this, read Amanda's earliest blog entries--through, say, the end of April 2010. Then go read her Wikipedia page.

And then know, in your heart, that YOU are the one who will part the clouds . . . .