To format your book’s trim size and margins, depending on whether your book requires bleed, ensure your book prints correctly. In this video, you can calculate the bleed, margin, and gutter size for your KDP interiors with bleed and set it up in Affinity Publisher. Increase your outside margins to prevent content from being trimmed when your book is printed. The outside, top, and bottom margin requirements are 0.25″ (6.35mm) for books without bleed and 0.2375″ (9.6mm) for books with bleed.
Creating interiors for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) can seem daunting at first, but with the right guidance, it becomes a fun and rewarding process. The top, bottom, and outside margins must be a minimum of 0.25 inches for books without bleed and 0.375 inches (9.6mm) for books with bleed. If you are doing full bleed, then the images and content have to go to the BLEED line, which is outside of the edge of the physical page.
When setting up your page in Indesign with bleed at the top and bottom (2 x 3.2mm or 0.125″), then on the outside (also 3.2mm), set up your margins (wider on inner pages). The outside, top, and bottom margin requirements are 0.25″ (6.35mm) for books without bleed and 0.375″ (9.52mm) for books with bleed.
📹 How to Format KDP Self Published Books – Bleed and Margin
Knowing how to format KDP self published books on the KDP platform to sell and create an income on Amazon can be one of the …
What is the interior trim size of a book?
The trim size of a printed book is crucial for its appearance and functionality. The most common trim size in the US is 6″ x 9″, which is a regular trim size for paperbacks. However, there are other options available, with books with a measurement more than 6. 12 inches (155. 5 mm) or more than 9 inches (228. 6 mm) in height being considered large trim sizes. Bleed is a printing term that refers to printed objects that extend past the edge of the page, ensuring they reach the edge of the page.
Margins, which are three outside margins and one inside margin, ensure text isn’t cut off during manufacturing. The trim size is set before margins, as margin size depends on page count and bleed elements. The size of the book determines its page count, with minimum and maximum page counts listed in the Trim Size Specifications table. Large trim sizes have different printing costs than regular trim sizes.
What is the 10% rule for KDP?
To ensure a positive customer experience, bonus content should be limited to around 10 pages in your book. If multiple stories are desired, consider creating a collection of works. Title selection should follow Metadata Guidelines. Primary and bonus content must meet program guidelines, including exclusive bonus content in KDP Select titles. Translated content must be high quality and not machine-generated. Disruptive links and promises of gifts or rewards are not allowed.
Does Amazon print landscape?
The dimensions of the print in question are 6 inches in height and 8. 25 inches in width, which renders it ineligible for expanded distribution. A bespoke size of up to 8 inches may be produced. A width of five inches may be produced, but it is also ineligible for expanded distribution.
What is the most common KDP book size?
The most prevalent trim size for books in the United States is 6″ x 9″ (152. 4 x 228. 6 mm). To modify the dimensions, select the option “Select a different size.” The financial outlay required for printing varies according to the dimensions of the trim size, whether standard or large. The term “large trim size” is used to describe dimensions exceeding 6. The dimensions of the aforementioned format are 12 inches in width and 9 inches in height.
Paperbacks may also be configured with bespoke trim sizes, with dimensions of width and height within the range of 4–8 inches. The dimensions in question are 5″ and 6″-11. The respective dimensions are 69 inches.
What is not allowed on KDP?
The company does not sell certain content, including hate speech, sexual exploitation of children, pornography, rape, pedophilia, terrorism, or other material deemed inappropriate or offensive. They require users to inform them of AI-generated content when publishing a new book or editing an existing one through KDP. AI-generated content includes cover and interior images and artwork, while AI-assisted content is not required.
AI-generated content is defined as text, images, or translations created by an AI-based tool, while AI-assisted content is created by users who created the content themselves and used AI-based tools to edit, refine, or improve it. It is not necessary to disclose the use of AI-based tools or processes. The company does not require users to disclose AI-generated or AI-assisted content.
How do I change the look inside percentage on KDP?
The “Contact Us” button, located at the bottom of the page, enables users to request an increased percentage (up to 80%) for the SRL. This policy is designed to benefit customers, as most Amazon policies are driven by customer satisfaction.
What is the interior type on KDP?
KDP Interior Templates are tools designed to create the interior layout of a book for publishing through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform. These templates are typically available in PDFs or Word Documents, and can be downloaded for free on Kindlepreneur. They ensure a consistent and professional-looking layout, making it easy for authors to create visually appealing layouts without advanced design skills. KDP Interior Templates are available for both print and digital book formats.
What is the best size for interior trim?
Baseboard height should be approximately 7 times the wall height for a solid, definable base without being too big. A comfortable proportion of baseboard to wall height is ideal. For a room with a 9 foot high ceiling, a baseboard of 8 inches tall is suitable. The 50 Percent Rule is a good starting point for sizing vertical trim elements like door and window casings, which should be smaller and less hefty than baseboards.
This rule is also applicable to crowns, but there are many variables to consider, such as profile and picture rail. Overall, a baseboard height of 8 inches is suitable for a room with a 9 foot high ceiling.
How do I print landscape without portrait?
In order to alter the page orientation of a document, it is necessary to click or tap within the document, navigate to the Layout menu, and select Orientation. From here, the Landscape option should be chosen. Subsequently, navigate to the File menu and select Print. Ensure that the orientation box indicates “Landscape Orientation” and then select Print. This method is applicable to a number of Microsoft 365, Word, Word 2021, Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, and other software programs.
How many impressions is good on KDP?
It should be noted that the ad dashboard is updated every 24 hours. However, a successful ad campaign requires a minimum of 5, 000 daily impressions. This is because 1, 000 impressions over the course of a month are insufficient to provide even a minimal chance of success.
How do you format the interior of a book?
Formatting a book interior can be challenging, but it is essential for a novice author to avoid mistakes. To ensure a well-formatted book, set margins wide, around 75mm to 1. 0mm, and experiment with line spacing at a slightly larger than single-spacing. Start each chapter on a right-hand page, which may result in left-hand pages being sometimes blank. Start the first line of a new chapter about a third of the way down the page.
Consider starting the first line of text in a chapter with a dropcap, depending on the rest of the chapter opener. Position subheads on the line directly above the text block they introduce and set them off with a linespace above to separate them from the previous text block. If a subhead requires two lines, break the first line so that it is shorter than the second line to create the illusion that the second line is a foundation for the first line.
For most pages, create a header and footer, remove the header and footer on the first page of every chapter, and remove the header and footer text on all blank pages. Remove the header or footer text in front matter (title page, copyright page, dedication, table of contents, etc.) and back matter (acknowledgments, about the author).
Never allow a widow or orphan to appear alone on a page, and make sure your title page appears on a right-hand page. If formatting is overwhelming, consider using a preformatted book template, which includes all these details, and allows you to cut and paste your manuscript into the right sections.
📹 How to Properly Use Margins and Bleeds in KDP Books
In this video, I’m going to show you how to use margins in Adobe InDesign, as well as when to use bleeds, in books being created …
Thank you! I’ve been looking everywhere for a simple, clear explanation for using InDesign to ready my book and this is the first time it really ‘clicked’ for me. You’re an excellent teacher and you’ve earned my sub. Please make lots of Adobe product tutorials specific like this one, I’m an old hat at Photoshop but while I have the full creative cloud, I’m not confident in the others for making art (or money). There’s lots online for Photoshop but so little for Indesign, Illustrator and Animator that I settle for old articles with outdated tool names/locations making it take longer to learn anything without confusion. Thanks again! Looking forward to seeing what more you do 🙂
Craig Babin, thank you for your article. At 8:40, For the bleed setting, I think you should turn “Inside Bleed” to zero. Outside, Top, and Bottom are the same 0.125 in. Because I saw you setup all four bleed options same 0.125, so your final paper size is 8.5in x 8.5in, not 8.375in x 8.5in as page size with bleed requirement of KDP. I guess that is the reason why your books got rejected. That is my personal opinion based on my understood. What you think about my comment? Please let me know. I just start my KDP and I am learning, and Bleed is one of my big concerns, so I want to clear understand about that before I publish my book.
I loved this article absolutely loved it. ❤❤❤. I especially liked what you did with the paper which really gives a fantastic excellent visual on The concept of margins and gutters etc. this is my fifth book but my first attempt at self publishing and I’m finding the formatting to be very challenging even though I am a daily user for over 20 years of MICROSOFT. I just find that some of the requirements are kind of convoluted in a bit much. I was doing well with the margin formatting after mini trial and error attempts and I’m going to go back to the drawing board now and basically do what you said about adding to the inside margin. What has happened to me is that today I went to PDF for the first time to test it and found that, for example, my page numbers were outside the boundaries of my book size. In other words for a 6 x 9″ book if you counted from the first line on the page all the way down the page number on the bottom of the page was at 9.75 inches! How can that be? My top margin is 1 inch in the bottom is .75 inches. Even though it does not ask you for a header footer measurement., Somewhere the H/D measurement has to be factored in right ? Any help you can offer me, would be appreciated. Thanks for the great article I’m going to go work on it now and I know that it will be a great help.
So glad you popped up on Youtube. I just had a go-round with KDP for the last few days. I am a brand new wanna-be publisher so my first two books were just journals. My second book kept getting rejected because of the gutter margin. The journal has 153 pages so they wanted the gutter to be 0.5″. The problem that I had is that none of the software that I have allows me to set the gutter margin for each page of the spread individually. The place for the settings (using Affinity Designer) asks for the right side and the left side measurements not inside and outside as you had on Adobe. If I set the right margin for the even-numbered page it would take care of the gutter but for odd-numbered pages, the right margin would now be the outside margin and the gutter margin would be too small. I am so brand new that I am just beginning to learn the software so I have no idea how to get around this problem. I hope you have a suggestion. I am sure I am overlooking something very obvious. Again, thank you for a great article.
Hi Craig! I just discovered your fantastic website. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I had some rejections from KDP and I don’t understand where the cause is. This is the message: “Increase your outside margins so that content isn’t trimmed when your book is printed. The outside, top, and bottom margin requirements are 0.25″ (6.35mm) for books without bleed and 0.375″ (9.52mm) for books with bleed.” My document must be after trimming 7×10 so the final dimension of the file is 7.125×10.25. I choose “bleed” option because is a color activity book, so is my choice if the “irrelevant content” is spreading out (like snowflakes). I don’t know what to do because I have had 3 rejections already. Thank you!
Thank you so much. I am so exhausted seeing same message again and again. would you please guide me. my book size is 8.5×11. Thank you so much in advance. “”” We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP: Cover Reduce the size of your spine text in your cover file. Spine text needs at least 0.0625″ (1.6 mm) space on either side so that it doesn’t wrap onto the front or back cover Interior Your file contains insufficient bleed. See examples PDF page(s) 1. 1. Ensure the page(s) are sized correctly for bleed. Interiors with bleed should have 0.125″ (3.2 mm) added to the width and 0.25″ (6.4 mm) to the page height. 2. If the pages are already sized for bleed, make sure you extend any images and backgrounds that you want to reach all the way to the edge of the page at least 0.125″ (3.2 mm) beyond the trim line. This prevents white gaps along the outside edge(s) when the file is trimmed to size. 3. If there is content that is not intended to bleed, please ensure it stops within the margins, 0.375″ (9.5 mm) or more from any outside edge of the page.”””
Thank You for this awesome article ! I have a question regarding to margins and bleed. I created all my coloring pages in Adobe Illustrator and the size what i choose is 8.5×11 in. On all the coloring pages I use a box with white clean space around, as you described in the article on min 6:10 (Prompt 1), only the interior of the boxes are for coloring. But for the interior template I would use Adobe In design. I mention that this framing box does not go to the edges. For This coloring pages do I need to use inside margins and no bleed? If I have around 106 pages? Thank you.
Thank you so much for doing this article. I’ve watched several articles because I’ve been having a lot trouble with my first book files for KDP. This is the first article that actually explained what I needed to do. Others have stated what size I needed to make the files and now I’m finding that those were incorrect. Thank you so much for clarifying everything!
I am going to seek your advice once again at the risk of being a nuisance. You have been so helpful so far that I just want to fill you in on some things in and ask you a couple of questions, please. I am at the point of going to a publisher (KDP)to begin the actual publishing process, but I have a problem that I just don’t understand. I have set margins according to my best knowledge, but I am so afraid that they are off. From everything I read, they might be. I understand the concept of gutters, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just make the inside margin larger-in other words, why are there two factors inside and gutters? What I have done to help myself I learned from you. I took a book that was published by someone through KDP and I did what I saw you do on YouTube. I actually measured the space between the inside most text and the edge of the paper which is glued inside the gutter. It was .875 in. The outside margin was .625. I used the .875 as my inside margin and 6.25 as my outside margin. Should I add EVEN MORE for adding a gutter or just leave the gutter at zero? it would seem to me that because of my measurements I’ve already included the gutter in that .875 figure. I hope I’m making this clear. I really need help and this is so important to me. According to my physical measures and calculations, this worked for this author beautifully in terms of what I can see visually in his presentation. But I have no idea as to what the numbers were in the custom margins for him.
Hi, I have a question. I set the inside margins bigger for the paperback, but now I want to make a PDF, but when I export to PDF and view as single page, the text column bounces from left to right when I turn each page because the text on the right page is pushed more to the right. I tried to change the margins to .5 for all sides, but this made a lot of the text run over the pictures in my document. I have no idea what to do and have been searching about this for a few hours.
Great article. Thanks, Craig! Question: In my Mac version of InDesign, I can only create an inside margin of 0.75 inches by selecting “facing pages” and unlinking the margin dimensions. But when facing pages is unchecked, “inside” changes to “left” and “outside” to right. Since KDP wants pages rather than spreads, will it sort everything out? Or will the left- and right- pages have unequal gutters?
Craig Babin, thank you so much for this clear, concise and informative article. Currently I’m writing my memoir and I want to publish through KDP. My book has art journal pages and text, so I am using indesign. One question, “when I upload my book to KDP, do I enter the trim size as 7.5 x 9.25? This is the size I chose for my book. I have set all my pages to bleed size, 7.625 x 9.5. Being a newbie I may have a heart attack if my book is rejected, hee hee. Thank you. I subscribed to your website.
Thanks for the article. I’m also new to KDP and have only published one book so far. And except for your article, I haven’t heard about the wider Gutter Margin. So thanks again. From what number of pages should you make Gutter Margin larger than bleed and outside margin? Or should you always do that no matter what page number. I also get a little confused. What should Gutter Margin be for an 8.5 x 11 book?
Ok this was much better than other articles I have watched! But I’m still confused when I want to do a border and a dashed “cut line” for a “poster” book. Could those elements go between the normal margin and the bleed margin? I don’t want them to run off the page just be larger than the “coloring” page if that makes sense. Or if I have a sketch in a journal and I’d like to fill the margin area of a page but not go off the page either…. ??? Thank you
I just love perusal your articles, I get so much information about KDP. So thank you for posting everything anyone needs to know if they choose this journey. I do have an issue and I could really use some help. So I completed my first KDP and of course had some errors and it was all related to bleed and margins. So I went back, resized it and moved things around. So I hit the ‘launch previewer’ and finally got it without any errors and was able to hit the ‘approve’ button. I went to see if my book had gone live a few days later only to see an email saying that I had to add .125″ to my width and .25″ to my height to ensure that the images in my manuscript extend beyond the edge of the page then once I have added the size I could then extend any images or backgrounds that i want to reach all the way to the edge of the page .125″ beyond the trim line. I am completely confused now I honestly thought I had done this. What am I doing wrong? HELP???
Thank you Craig for the clarification on KDP and bleed/page size. I’ve been forwards and backwards with KDP for the last month with 5 rejections of my book. They kept telling me to extend the pages and I thought they meant to add the bleed which I had done but obviously, as you point out, they don’t see that… You confirm what my next step was going to be, namely to scrap the InDesign bleed and just make the page size bigger than just 6×9 inches. Keep up the good work! You seem like a man on a mission!
I’m in the process of setting up a 6×9 lined notebook using one of my watercolour paintings as a full background image for each of the pages. After scanning my painting I edited it in Affinity Photo. I’m using Affinity Publisher to set up the book. I set the page dimensions at 6×9, and added the bleed dimensions separately. Whenever I try to export to PDF using a PDF/X-1a format, as the KDP guidelines as they stand now state is the preferred option, the pages have weird things happening around the edges. This has been making me nuts. The only solution I’ve found so far is to reduce the size of the image and then add a fill layer to complete the background. This is not really what I want to do, so I’m going to kick the bleed settings to the curb and set up the page dimensions at 6.125×9.25. Maureen
i need a 6×9 inches size per page for my comics. but im confused how to add margins, bleeding. im new to this.😢 the orig page is 6x9inches and then i add margin and bleeding? the real drawings will be smaller? so if i submit my work the original size they are asking is 6x9inches but i can submit 6.125×9.25? the publisher will understand?since they asked it to be cymk ready for printing