Did you know you can customize the look, feel, and design of Kindle book descriptions on Amazon?

If you publish books on Kindle and want to make your book descriptions stand out from the crowd, HTML formatting is a great way to do just that.

You can customize your book description using HTML to create headlines, use italics, bold, and underlined text, and you can even use bold, black headlines to make your Kindle book description stand out.

How KDP HTML Descriptions Works

If you’re already familiar with HTML, then this will be a breeze. Although Amazon used to use &lt; and &gt; HTML tags (standing for less than and greater than), they updated that in May, 2013 and now use standard HTML tags < and >.

For those of you who have no idea what HTML is, a typical HTML code looks something like this:

<h2>How To Sell More Kindle Books</h2>

This code would look something like this if implemented on a website:

How To Sell More Kindle Books

H2 is an HTML “tag” that sets the text INSIDE that tag to a “Heading 2″ font. What Heading 2 is depends on the platform you use (like your WordPress site theme or, in the case of your Kindle book descriptions, the CSS settings that Amazon uses).

For those of you who have no idea what HTML is or what I just wrote, don’t worry!

All you have to do is copy and paste these HTML codes below into your Amazon book description to make your book descriptions look AMAZING on your Amazon book page!

Custom Amazon HTML Tags Step-By-Step

Here’s what you can do using Amazon’s HTML tags:

1. H2 Black Headlines (Used to be Orange, but Not Anymore)

Special Amazon HTML Code: <h2>INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE</h2>

Here’s what it looks like in your book description on Amazon:

For H1, H3, H4, etc. headlines, just replace the “H2″ in the code with “H1″ for black headlines in your book descriptions with slightly different styles.

Below you’ll find the HTML codes for all four heading styles that you can simply copy and paste into your Kindle book descriptions.

Heading 1

<h1>INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE</h1>

Heading 2

<h2>INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE</h2>

Heading 3

<h3>INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE</h3>

Heading 4

<h4>INSERT YOUR HEADLINE HERE</h4>

2. Bold

To use bold text, copy this code:

<b>INSERT YOUR TEXT HERE</b>

3. Italics

To use italics text, copy this code:

<i>INSERT YOUR TEXT HERE</i>

4. Underlined

To use underlined text, copy this code:

<u>INSERT YOUR TEXT HERE</u>

5. Bullet Points

The Bullet point HTML for Kindle is probably the trickiest, so I recommend you simply copy/paste the code below and then replace the text inside the tags with your bullet points.

<ul>
<li> Bullet 1</li>
<li> Bullet 2</li>
<li> Bullet 3</li>
<li> Bullet 4</li>
<li> Bullet 5</li></ul>
Start your next sentence for your book description here without an extra line space after the last bullet or else there will be a big gap between the last bullet point and the next paragraph.

6. Other HTML Codes for Kindle Ebooks

Below is the entire list of HTML codes that will work in KDP book descriptions:

<b> (bold)
<br> (line space)
<em> (emphasized)
<font> (defines font)
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>
<h4>
<h5>
<h6>
<hr>
<i>
<li>
<ol>
<p>
<pre>
<s>
<strike>
<strong>
<sub>
<sup>
<u>
<ul>

Want more marketing tips for your Amazon Kindle books? Grab a copy of The Kindle Publishing Bible on Amazon.com here.

Having trouble with your book description and HTML?

Just post your questions and comments here and I’ll be happy to help!