How many pages can a print-on-demand book have?

Ask a printer how many pages a book can have and the honest answer is “which book?”. The ceiling depends on the trim size, the ink, the paper, and for some printers the binding, all at once — and the printers publish it as a table rather than a number. Read the wrong row and a manuscript that is legal on white paper at 6 × 9 inches is refused on cream at 8.5 × 11.

What follows is each printer’s table as its own pages state it, read on 5 September 2026, with the cells that catch people. Every printer changes these without notice, so check the page on the day; the links are at the end.

Why it is a table

Three limits combine, unevenly. A press binds a block up to a certain spine thickness, and spine thickness is pages times the paper’s thickness — so a thicker paper means fewer pages. Ink comes into it because colour is printed on a different press with its own window. And some printers lower the ceiling for particular trims — but that last one is not a law of physics, and the tables prove it: KDP stops 8.5 × 11 at 590 pages while the physically larger A4 reaches 780. The honest summary is that each printer exposes a manufacturing matrix, the matrix is the authoritative answer, and intuition about which cell shrinks is reliably worse than reading the cell.

Amazon KDP

Paperback

Eleven of KDP’s sixteen listed trim sizes share one range. Five do not.

Trim	Black on white	Black on cream	Black on groundwood	Standard Color	Premium Color
5 × 8 to 8 × 10 (eleven sizes)	24 – 828	24 – 776	24 – 812	72 – 600	24 – 828
8.25 × 6, 8.25 × 8.25	24 – 800	24 – 750	24 – 784	72 – 600	24 – 800
8.5 × 8.5, 8.5 × 11	24 – 590	24 – 550	24 – 578	72 – 600	24 – 590
A4 (8.27 × 11.69)	24 – 780	24 – 730	24 – 764	not offered	24 – 590

Three cells are worth staring at.

Standard Color prints ten more pages than black at 8.5 × 11. 600 against 590. It is the one place in the table where the colour option is the roomier one, because Standard Color is printed on a different press with its own limit.

A4 has no Standard Color. An A4 workbook in colour is Premium Color or nothing, and Premium Color at A4 stops at 590 where black runs to 780.

A 601-page Standard Color book has nowhere to go at 8.5 × 11. The usual advice — “move to Premium Color” — fails there, since Premium stops at 590. The book has to lose pages or change trim. And the ink is locked once the title is live, so this is decided before publication or not at all. (The paper is not, quite: KDP lets black-ink paperbacks switch between white, cream and groundwood after publication.)

KDP also prints custom paperback trims, anywhere from 4 × 6 to 8.5 × 11.69 inches. Its page table gives them no row of their own, and availability depends on the printing configuration chosen.

Hardcover

Five trims — 5.5 × 8.5, 6 × 9, 6.14 × 9.21, 7 × 10 and 8.25 × 11 — and one range for all of them: 75 to 550 pages, in black on white or cream, or Premium Color on white. No groundwood and no Standard Color. The floor is the number that surprises: a 60-page book that prints happily as a paperback cannot be a KDP hardcover at all.

That 550 is KDP’s product specification, not a property of case binding — other printers take hardcovers further, as the next two tables show.

IngramSpark

Ingram’s table turns on the paper’s weight and the binding rather than on the trim. Every trim takes the same range on a given paper, with one exception at the end.

Paper	Perfect bound	Case laminate (hardcover)
38 lb groundwood	18 – 900	18 – 840
50 lb crème	18 – 1050	18 – 1050
50 lb white	18 – 1200	18 – 1200
70 lb white	18 – 900	18 – 840
Colour, 50 lb white	18 – 1200	18 – 1200
Colour, 70 lb white	18 – 900	18 – 840
Premium Colour, 70 lb white	18 – 900	18 – 840

The exception is 11 × 8.5 inches landscape, capped at 400 pages on every paper.

Two things follow. First, “white” is not one answer at Ingram: the 50 lb sheet takes 300 pages more than the 70 lb one. An 1,100-page reference is printable on one and refused on the other, and the order form is where the difference is chosen. Second, the case ceiling is lower than the perfect-bound one on some paper and binding combinations — groundwood and the 70 lb stocks drop from 900 to 840 — and identical on others: 50 lb white and crème take as many pages in a case as perfect bound. Read the pair of cells, not a rule about hardcovers in general.

Ingram prints 32 standard trims perfect bound and 15 of them as a case laminate, plus custom trims in four envelopes: perfect bound on white or groundwood from 4 × 6 up to 8.5 × 11 inches, on crème only up to 6.14 × 9.252; a hardcover from 5 × 7 up to the same two ceilings by paper.

Lulu

Lulu’s limit turns on the binding, not the trim or the paper: perfect-bound paperbacks run from 32 to 800 pages; coil from 2 to 470; saddle stitch from 4 to 48; and both the casewrap and the linen-wrap-and-dust-jacket hardcovers from 24 to 800. That breadth of bindings is Lulu’s own reason to exist — it is the printer here that takes a 600-page hardcover, jacketed.

For the interior, Lulu also publishes a recommended gutter table that grows with the page count — and, uniquely among these printers, a table with two columns, one for an ordinary interior and one for a full-bleed interior:

Pages	Inside margin	With full bleed
under 60	0.5″	0.625″
61 – 150	0.625″	0.75″
151 – 400	1″	1.125″
401 – 600	1.125″	1.25″
over 600	1.25″	1.375″

These are recommendations, not rules Lulu refuses a file for. Lulu also bleeds all four edges, where KDP and Ingram bleed three; see what a print-ready PDF is.

Barnes & Noble Press

Twenty trims, 18 to 800 pages on every one of them, except 11 × 8.5 landscape at 400. The papers are named by weight like Ingram’s: black ink on 50 lb white, 50 lb cream or 38 lb groundwood; Standard Color on 50 lb or 70 lb white; Premium Color on 70 lb white. B&N’s per-trim table also says which trims omit cream or Premium Color — the smallest mass-market trims, for instance, print black on white only — so read the row for your trim rather than the summary.

PublishDrive

PublishDrive reproduces KDP’s table for the sixteen trims KDP lists — the same 828, 776, 600 and 590, the same A4 without Standard Color — with no groundwood column, and with KDP’s floors: 24 pages everywhere except Standard Color, which starts at 72. It lists thirty trims as supported, fourteen of them with no published range of their own. Two rules of its own are easy to miss: the interior takes no bleed at all (its 0.125″ allowance is for the cover), and every print book needs a table of contents.

What to do with this

Decide the trim, the ink and the paper before typesetting, not after, because the three are locked together — and at KDP the ink and the trim are locked for good once the book is live. Then check the page count against the cell — not against the biggest number on the page.

Nueel keeps each of these tables as data, dated and read against the printer’s own page, and checks the book against the cell its trim, ink and paper land in before writing the file. See the export check and formatting for KDP.

Sources

• KDP, Set trim size, bleed, and margins and Print options
• IngramSpark, File Creation Guide, edition 8.24.26
• Lulu, Interior formatting: the basics and Publishing a print book for global distribution
• B&N Press, Trim sizes and paper stock
• PublishDrive, Print-on-demand requirements

Common questions

What is the maximum page count for a KDP paperback?

It depends on the trim, the ink and the paper together. On the eleven listed trims that use KDP's baseline limits, black ink runs to 828 pages on white paper, 776 on cream and 812 on groundwood; Standard Color stops at 600 and Premium Color at 828. The larger preset trims take fewer: 8.5 × 11 inches stops at 590 in black on white, 550 on cream, and A4 at 780. A4 has no Standard Color at all, and Premium Color at A4 stops at 590. The floor is 24 pages everywhere, 72 for Standard Color.

Why does cream paper hold fewer pages than white?

Cream stock is thicker, so the same number of pages makes a thicker spine, and every press has a maximum spine its binding line can glue. KDP's 776 on cream against 828 on white is that limit expressed in pages. At IngramSpark the paper's weight changes the ceiling too: 50 lb white takes 1,200 pages where 70 lb white stops at 900.

Can a book be too short for print-on-demand?

Yes. KDP's paperback floor is 24 pages and its hardcover floor 75; IngramSpark and B&N Press take 18, and Lulu's perfect-bound floor is 32. Below the floor the book cannot be bound, and the usual fix is front or back matter — a title page, a copyright page, a blank leaf. Standard Color at KDP has a floor of its own, 72 pages.

What is the maximum for a hardcover?

It depends on the printer, and it is not inherently lower than a paperback's. KDP's hardcover takes 75 to 550 pages on every trim it offers — a product limit, since other printers case-bind further. At IngramSpark the ceiling is per paper and binding: 50 lb white takes 1,200 pages perfect bound and in a case, while groundwood and the 70 lb stocks take 900 and 840. Lulu case-binds to 800 either way.

Does paper weight matter, or only colour?

At KDP the paper type matters even with the same black ink: white, cream and groundwood have different page limits (828, 776, 812 on the common trims), and KDP notes that paper weight can vary by printing location. At IngramSpark the weight is the difference: 50 lb white runs to 1,200 pages and 70 lb white to 900, so an 1,100-page manuscript is printable on one and not the other. B&N Press names its stocks by weight too, but its published rule is 18–800 pages per trim regardless.

Is the page limit checked before I upload?

It is enforced, but not always at upload and not always by rejection. Lulu makes the binding choices themselves depend on the page count; PublishDrive runs a technical review after submission; Ingram explicitly says files are not preflighted before processing. A formatting tool that carries the tables can check while you still have time to change the trim, the paper or the length — the reason Nueel keeps each printer's table as data.