What margins does KDP require?

The outside, top and bottom margins must be at least 0.25 inches without bleed, or 0.375 inches with bleed. The inside margin is different: it grows with the page count, from 0.375 inches for a book of 24 to 150 pages up to 0.875 inches past 700. Those are minimums that KDP enforces, not recommendations.

Why does the inside margin depend on the page count?

Because a thicker book curves more sharply into its binding, so text set at a fixed inside margin disappears into the gutter as the book gets longer. A 500-page book needs 0.625 inches where a 100-page book needs 0.375. This is the single most common reason a self-published paperback is hard to read: the words are there, but they are curving out of sight.

Does KDP need bleed on all four sides?

No. KDP asks for 3.2mm on the top, bottom and outside edges only. The binding edge is never trimmed, so no allowance is required there, and adding one there pushes your content out of position.

What is the maximum page count for a KDP paperback?

It depends on the ink and the paper. Black ink reaches 828 pages on white paper but only 776 on cream, because cream stock is thicker. Standard colour has the narrowest window of all at 72 to 600 pages. The floor is 24 pages for every option.

Can I change the ink after publishing?

No. The ink choice is locked after publication, and it sets your printing cost. A book that drifts to 601 pages in standard colour has to change ink, which changes the unit cost, and that cannot be undone once the title is live.

What trim sizes does KDP accept?

Sixteen regular sizes, from 5 × 8 inches up to 8.5 × 11, including A4 at 8.27 × 11.69. The four largest accept fewer pages than the rest. KDP also accepts custom sizes within a range, which is a different kind of requirement than choosing from a list.

Do I need to fix the file for Kindle separately?

Yes, in the sense that it is a different file and a different check. The paperback is a print-ready PDF; the ebook is an EPUB, which KDP converts to its own format after accepting it. Passing the upload does not tell you what the converted book looks like, so open it in Kindle Previewer before you publish.

How to format a book for Amazon KDP

KDP does not publish its requirements in one place. The trim sizes are on one help page, the margins on another, the ink and page-count limits on a third, and the number you need is often in a table whose relevance is not obvious until a file comes back refused.

What follows is the same information, together, with the parts that vary by book made explicit.

The interior and the cover are two separate files

They have different rules, and the most expensive mistake in the whole process comes from treating them as one job. The interior is a print-ready PDF of the pages. The cover is a single flat sheet carrying back, spine and front together.

The cover cannot be finished until the interior is, because the spine width comes from the page count, and the page count comes from how the interior is typeset. That is a whole subject of its own, covered in setting up a cover file.

Trim size comes first

KDP offers sixteen regular sizes, from 5 × 8 inches up to 8.5 × 11, with A4 among them at 8.27 × 11.69. The four largest accept fewer pages than the rest.

Choosing one is a decision about what your book should look like beside the others in its genre, and about what it will cost to print, which is covered in choosing a trim size. What matters here is that it is the first decision, because everything below depends on it.

KDP also accepts custom trim sizes within a range. That is a different kind of requirement than picking from a list, and tools that only know the sixteen will report a custom size as unsupported. Conservative, but worth knowing before you are surprised by it.

Margins, and the one that moves

Three of the four margins are a flat minimum. The fourth is not, and it is where most books go wrong.

Margin	Without bleed	With bleed
Outside, top, bottom	0.25″ minimum	0.375″ minimum
Inside (gutter)	see the table below	see the table below

The inside margin grows with the page count:

Page count	Minimum inside margin
24 – 150	0.375″
151 – 300	0.5″
301 – 500	0.625″
501 – 700	0.75″
701 – 828	0.875″

A thicker book curves more sharply into its binding, so text set at a fixed inside margin slides into the gutter as the book gets longer. A reader experiences this as a book that has to be forced open to be read, and it is the most common reason a self-published paperback feels wrong in the hand without the reader being able to say why.

These are minimums, not recommendations. A book that sits exactly on one is legal and still tight; most typeset books carry more.

There is a circularity here worth naming. Widening the gutter reflows the text, which changes the page count, which may move the book into a different band and demand a wider gutter again. Any tool that sets margins for you has to converge on that rather than apply the table once.

Bleed is three edges, not four

If any element runs off the edge of a page — a full-page image, a coloured band — the file needs bleed: 3.2mm added on the top, bottom and outside edges.

Not the inside. The binding edge is never trimmed, so no allowance belongs there, and adding one shifts your entire text block off centre.

If nothing in the book runs off the edge, you do not need bleed at all, and the smaller outside margin minimum applies.

Ink and paper set the page limits

This is the requirement authors meet last and can least afford to.

Ink	Paper	Page range
Black	White	24 – 828
Black	Cream	24 – 776
Black	Groundwood	24 – 812
Standard colour	any	72 – 600
Premium colour	any	24 – 828

Two things follow from this table.

Cream paper is thicker than white, so the same book reaches its ceiling 52 pages earlier. A 780-page manuscript is legal on white and refused on cream, which is not obvious from anything on the page.

And standard colour has the narrowest window of any option: 72 to 600. A book that drifts to 601 pages has to change ink, which changes the unit cost. The ink is locked after publication. It is the one decision in this guide that cannot be revised once the title is live.

The rest of the file requirements

Fonts must be embedded. Every one, including the ones you only used for a single heading. A file with an unembedded font is rejected.
Single pages, not spreads. Submit the interior as sequential single pages. A file laid out as facing pairs is rejected.
300 DPI minimum for images. Below that, quality is visibly poor in print, and there is nothing to be done about it after the fact — the pixels are not there, and enlarging them invents detail that was never captured.

The ebook is a different job

A KDP ebook is an EPUB, not a PDF, and it is reflowable: there is no page, because the reader chooses the type size. Everything above about margins and trim sizes is irrelevant to it.

The requirement that surprises people is that a reflowable Kindle book must leave body text at the reader’s own size and line spacing. Amazon states it directly, and attaches a real penalty: where a book’s font rules conflict with the reader’s chosen settings, the font files in the book are removed. So a book that fixes its body type does not merely annoy a reader — it can lose the typeface it shipped with.

Headings, epigraphs, captions and pull quotes are exempt. Amazon actively encourages styling those.

KDP converts your EPUB to its own format after accepting it. Passing the upload tells you the file was valid, not what the book looks like. Open the result in Kindle Previewer, which is free and runs the same conversion locally.

If your EPUB is being refused outright rather than rendering oddly, the cause is usually structural, and why your EPUB was rejected covers the errors one by one.

Before you upload

Confirm the trim size, and that it accepts your page count.
Check the inside margin against the band your final page count falls in.
Add bleed on three edges if anything runs off the page. Otherwise none.
Confirm the ink and paper combination accepts the page count, and remember the ink is permanent.
Embed every font. Export as single pages.
Build the cover last, from the final page count.
For the ebook, open the converted file in Kindle Previewer.

Most of these numbers are not hard to satisfy. What makes them expensive is that they interact: the gutter depends on the page count, the page count depends on the typesetting, the ink limits depend on the paper, and the cover depends on all of it. Checking them one at a time, by hand, at the end, is how a book gets refused three times over three different numbers.

Nueel keeps KDP’s requirements as a dated record of the published specification rather than as assumptions in code, and checks a book against them before you export — including the ones that move with the page count, which it re-measures rather than assuming.

Common questions

What margins does KDP require?: The outside, top and bottom margins must be at least 0.25 inches without bleed, or 0.375 inches with bleed. The inside margin is different: it grows with the page count, from 0.375 inches for a book of 24 to 150 pages up to 0.875 inches past 700. Those are minimums that KDP enforces, not recommendations.
Why does the inside margin depend on the page count?: Because a thicker book curves more sharply into its binding, so text set at a fixed inside margin disappears into the gutter as the book gets longer. A 500-page book needs 0.625 inches where a 100-page book needs 0.375. This is the single most common reason a self-published paperback is hard to read: the words are there, but they are curving out of sight.
Does KDP need bleed on all four sides?: No. KDP asks for 3.2mm on the top, bottom and outside edges only. The binding edge is never trimmed, so no allowance is required there, and adding one there pushes your content out of position.
What is the maximum page count for a KDP paperback?: It depends on the ink and the paper. Black ink reaches 828 pages on white paper but only 776 on cream, because cream stock is thicker. Standard colour has the narrowest window of all at 72 to 600 pages. The floor is 24 pages for every option.
Can I change the ink after publishing?: No. The ink choice is locked after publication, and it sets your printing cost. A book that drifts to 601 pages in standard colour has to change ink, which changes the unit cost, and that cannot be undone once the title is live.
What trim sizes does KDP accept?: Sixteen regular sizes, from 5 × 8 inches up to 8.5 × 11, including A4 at 8.27 × 11.69. The four largest accept fewer pages than the rest. KDP also accepts custom sizes within a range, which is a different kind of requirement than choosing from a list.
Do I need to fix the file for Kindle separately?: Yes, in the sense that it is a different file and a different check. The paperback is a print-ready PDF; the ebook is an EPUB, which KDP converts to its own format after accepting it. Passing the upload does not tell you what the converted book looks like, so open it in Kindle Previewer before you publish.