How to Create a Table of Contents in Word While Writing eBook?

In this Digital era, when self-publishing is a boon for the writers but the hardest thing is selling it to the loyal reader. Many writers try and fail in selling their product i.e. an eBook because of the wrong approach adopted by them. A self-published book, be it a novel or motivational, is tough to get buyers and bad way of arranging the content makes it even tougher.

To give your eBook an impressive Start the right way to prepare it for easy navigation. It has numerous benefits. Before you learn to create the table of Contents in Microsoft Word While writing eBook it is good to get the glimpse of its benefits, which are as follows –

It helps in targeting your audience Properly

Your targeting is tech-savvy and interested in the matter you wrote. Try utilizing the full potential by link-building. It will let them check if your content is relevant to them or not by reading the TOC (table of content).

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Reader can quickly jump to the content of their choice

Not everyone is interested in reading the complete eBook in one day. They may think of reading a specific topic for the time so linking and table of content will let them jump to the matter of their interest quickly.

No Scrolling, No Irritation

Is not it hectic when you have read half book and resuming it the next day requires lots of scrolling?

To avoid such irritating experiences for users, it is good to keep the click-reach functionality allowed. You, of course, don’t want to scroll down 400 pages to resume or check some fact read some days back.

There are many things done by platforms for eBook publishing like Amazon Kindle, Smashwords but there are still a few things you have to do on your own. Creating Table of contents is one of these things. Learn it from this step-by-step guide.

Create TOC (Table of Contents) for your eBook – Follow these simple Steps

It is an effective and easy strategy to create the table of contents from marketing your e-book. If you are unaware of the technique learn it right now.

1. Select the References in Microsoft Word. In this section, the linking, referencing, note-making and other such tasks are found under this section.
2. Go to Table of Contents and choose any of the formats you like. You may choose the automated TOC or manual TOC. Both are described in the next step.
3. Automatic Table of content picks the Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 headings and renders them in a table hierarchically. If you are picking the manual table it requires manual link-building.

Automated Tables

Making automated table is not a thing to learn at all as it’s done just by selecting the automated table. On adding content in your eBook, do not forget to click on Update Table to add the later links. Also, keep the headings formatted in Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 if you want them on the list. See this Screenshot for help –

Manual Tables

To keep the formatting and linking in your hands, my suggestion is to go for a manual table. If you have done some linking previously, the task is not tough for you.

See how to do it –

You need to do two simple things – Create Bookmark and link it to Table of contents. Firstly, select the manual table to get a foundation of creating your table.

Creating Bookmarks

To create a bookmark, first select the text to be linked (below is a snapshot to explain it clearly)

Now go into the Insert Section, and select Bookmark.

It will open up a pop-up for bookmark creation as shown below. Give a name to the selected text, which with it can be referred.

Bookmarking part completes here. However, you need to repeat the same process with all the heading which you want to let users access from the Table of Contents.

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Next task is linking the Content of table to its actual content.

Linking

Select the title of TOC to be linked and go to the Insert Section again. Click on the Hyperlink which will open up a small window for you as shown under.

As you will click on the bookmarks, it will show you the previously saved bookmarks. Select the one which is to be linked here.

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Once you hit the OK button after selecting the right bookmark, it will be mapped to the text of that bookmark. Repeat this linking with all the bookmarks you have made yet.

Better is to perform this table creation and linking after the completion of the eBook you are writing. It will save time and efforts.

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