The email always shows up at the worst possible time. You’ve hit Publish, you’re refreshing your dashboard, maybe you’ve even told a few friends the launch date. Then it lands: “We’ve reviewed your manuscript and found issues.” Ugh.<\/p>\n
Take a breath. When a KDP manuscript is rejected, the story is almost never the problem. It’s the file. A page size that’s a fraction of an inch off, a font that didn’t travel with the PDF, margins so tight the first letter of every line sits inside the binding. Annoying, sure, but fixable, and usually in one sitting.<\/p>\n
We see the same twelve problems again and again when authors send us files that got bounced. So this is that list, explained the way we’d do it across a desk. Go through it with your own file open. Amazon’s official KDP formatting guidelines have the final word, and they change now and then, so check the KDP Help pages before you re-upload.<\/p>\n
Why does KDP reject manuscripts in the first place? Two things happen after you submit. First, software scans the file: page size, margins, fonts, image quality, structure. Then, sometimes, a real person looks too, mostly to catch what a scanner can’t, like a chapter that still says “Chapter Title Here” or content that breaks Amazon’s rules.<\/p>\n
The reply usually comes within 72 hours. Don’t skim it. The email names the category that failed and, now and then, a page number. Keep it open. Then, before you touch your file, run the KDP Print Previewer (paperbacks) or the Kindle Previewer (ebooks) and try to find the problem with your own eyes. Spotting it yourself is half the repair.<\/p>\n
Roughly speaking, the first six bite paperback authors, the next three are ebook headaches, and the last three don’t care which format you picked.<\/p>\n
Start here, because it’s the most common. You choose 6 by 9 inches in the dashboard, but your Word file is still on the default letter size, 8.5 by 11. Either KDP complains, or it shrinks everything to fit and your tidy 11 point text turns into something you’d find on a pill bottle.<\/p>\n
Fix the page size before you paste in chapter one. In Word, go to Layout, then Size, then More Paper Sizes, and type your trim size in exactly. Changed your mind about the size later? Reformat the whole file. Nudging it never ends well.<\/p>\n
Nobody warns you about the gutter. It’s the inside margin, the one that curls into the spine, and the thicker your book gets, the more of it vanishes when someone opens the cover. So KDP paperback margins grow with the page count. Between 24 and 150 pages you need at least 0.375 inches inside. For 151 to 300 pages, make it 0.5. From 301 to 500, 0.625. Top, bottom and outside edges can go as slim as 0.25 inches.<\/p>\n
Those numbers are the floor, though, not a recommendation. We’d push the gutter to 0.75 inches or more for anything you want people to enjoy holding. And tick mirrored margins in Word. Skip that and the wide side lands on the wrong edge of every other page.<\/p>\n
Short one. Bleed matters only when an image or a block of color touches the edge of the page. If yours does, KDP wants an extra 0.125 inches past the trim on the top, bottom and outside edge. That makes your page width the trim width plus 0.125, and your height the trim height plus 0.25.<\/p>\n
Writing a novel with no pictures? Pick No Bleed in the dashboard and move on. Rejections happen when the dashboard says one thing and the PDF says another.<\/p>\n
A decorative font can make a chapter opening look gorgeous on your machine. Then the file lands on a computer that doesn’t have that font, and it quietly swaps in something else. Line breaks move, pages reflow, headings jump around. Embedding tucks the font inside the PDF so it travels with the file.<\/p>\n
Export with Word’s Save As PDF or Adobe’s standard preset, open the result in Acrobat, and check Properties, then the Fonts tab. Every entry should say Embedded or Embedded Subset. If one doesn’t, that’s your culprit. And honestly, a single good serif for body text will save you a lot of grief.<\/p>\n
Screens forgive a lot. Paper doesn’t. An image that looks crisp in Word can print soft and grainy, because KDP wants around 300 DPI at the size it appears on the page. Pictures saved off a website are usually 72 DPI. Stretching a small one bigger in Word doesn’t add detail, it just spreads the blur around. Go back to the original file. Or email your illustrator and ask for the large version.<\/p>\n
Paperbacks need 24 pages minimum, hardcovers 75. Some authors pad a short book with empty sheets to reach the count, and it usually goes badly. Then there are the blank pages nobody planned. The last line of a chapter spills over, a forced page break follows, and there it is, a whole empty page sitting in the middle of your book.<\/p>\n
Scroll the PDF from cover to cover with two page view on. If a page is blank, you should be able to say why.<\/p>\n
You know the trick. Hit Enter twenty times to shove the next chapter onto a fresh page. Tab to indent. Spacebar to center a title. It looks fine on your monitor, then falls apart in an ebook, where text reflows for every screen size. Suddenly there’s a giant gap, or a chapter title stranded at the bottom of a phone screen.<\/p>\n
Use paragraph styles for indents, a page break before each chapter heading, and real alignment for centering. Want proof your file has this problem? Click the little paragraph symbol button in Word. If the page looks like it’s raining \u00b6 marks, well, there you go.<\/p>\n
Ebook readers tap. They expect a chapter title to jump them straight there, and that only works when the table of contents is linked. Apply Heading 1 to every chapter title, then let Word generate the contents instead of typing it by hand. Kindle treats those headings as navigation. A typed list looks perfect and does absolutely nothing. The Kindle Previewer shows you fast, and readers notice even faster.<\/p>\n
Tables, poems, a fancy letter at the front of the book, sometimes a whole chapter: some authors screenshot them to keep the layout locked in place. In an ebook that text can’t be resized, searched, or read out loud by a screen reader, and on a phone it’s tiny. Keep text as text. If your book is heavily designed, like a cookbook or a picture book, use a tool made for it (Kindle Create or Kindle Kids’ Book Creator) instead of stretching a plain reflowable file past what it can handle.<\/p>\n
Editors love tracked changes. Publishing files hate them. Comments in the margin, suggested edits, highlighted notes to self like “fix this later”: any of it can sneak into the converted book. Open the Review tab, accept or reject every change, delete every comment. Then run File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document to find hidden text you forgot about. Do it last, right before exporting.<\/p>\n
KDP does flag spelling mistakes. Reviewers also spot template leftovers like Lorem ipsum, Chapter Title Here or Insert Dedication. Sounds ridiculous until you’re formatting at 2 a.m. from a template you downloaded weeks ago. Search your file for insert, placeholder and lorem before you upload. Even better, read the whole thing out loud. Your ears catch doubled words and missing letters that your eyes gave up on ages ago.<\/p>\n
Amazon doesn’t let ebooks steer readers toward competing retailers. A line such as “Also available at another bookstore,” plus a link, can get a file bounced. Your own author website or newsletter is normally fine, provided the link works. Click every single one in the Previewer. A dead link looks sloppy, and it can invite a closer look from reviewers.<\/p>\n
Do one last pass the way a reader would. Open the PDF on your phone and scroll. Look hard at the first ten pages and the last ten, because that’s where front matter and back matter hide their surprises. Then open the Previewer inside KDP and read every warning, including the yellow ones people tend to wave off.<\/p>\n
For paperbacks, order a proof copy. KDP sells them at print cost, and they’re stamped so nobody can resell them. It costs a few dollars and a week of waiting, and it can spare you several rounds of rejection. A physical copy shows a cramped gutter in seconds. A screen never quite does.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the file is fine and something else is wrong. If the email mentions content guidelines, metadata, or publishing rights, the fix lives outside your manuscript. Public domain reprints, low content books and title or description mismatches come up a lot. Read the exact policy KDP quotes, fix what it points to, and if you honestly think the notice is a mistake, write back through Contact Us and explain calmly.<\/p>\n
A rejection feels personal for about ten minutes. After that it’s just a checklist you hadn’t finished. Trim size, margins, bleed, fonts, images, blank pages, spacing, contents, text, comments, typos, links. Work down it in order and most files sail through on the next try.<\/p>\n
And if you’d rather hand the whole thing to someone who fixes these files every week, a professional book formatting service<\/a> can bring it up to KDP’s specs so your launch date doesn’t slip.<\/p>\n\n