Print on demand book printing has changed the world of self-publishing and book printing. Print on demand works great for trade paperback books, particularly for soft cover books with black and white interiors. However, if your book has any unique or unusual characteristics, you can run into some the limitations of print on demand.
Recently a client of mine ordered the longest book I have ever created for Amazon KDP (a 794-page novel) and we had to make a few production changes once we saw how long the book was. Some other kinds of issues can crop up if your book is super short. Here are a few things I’ve learned that may save you some grief if you know them before you get started with getting a very short or very long book designed and printed with Amazon KDP.
Amazon KDP won’t allow you to print text on the spine of your book if it is too thin.
Books with fewer than 80 pages get no spine text. Sorry, thin books! This is simply because if your book has just a few pages, there is no room on the spine for legible text. Current guidance from Amazon KDP says:
We only print spine text on books with more than 79 pages. Text on larger spines must be sized to fit the spine, with at least 0.0625" (1.6 mm) of space between the text and the edge of the spine. Every book varies slightly when bound. Allow for 0.0625" (1.6 mm) variance on either side of the fold lines for your cover.
If you want a “real real” book, as one of my clients called it, with spine text, just know that it has to be thick enough to have a spine that fits text!
Amazon KDP requires a wider inside gutter for long books.
For shorter books, it doesn’t matter as much if you have a wide gutter (inner margin, on the spine side) but for thicker books, a wide interior margin is needed so that text doesn’t become hard to read when the reader opens the book. KDP requires a wider and wider inside margin (AKA “gutter”) as the book gets longer. If you’re not sure how long your book is going to be, but know it will be long (say 100K+ words), it’s probably good to just go ahead and make your inner margin 0.875 inches or wider, as seen below or explained here.
If it’s toooo long or too short, Amazon KDP may not print it at all.
Your book cannot be fewer than 24 or more than 826 page to print as a softcover book at Amazon KDP. But the ranger for hardcover is narrower, probably because of the more complex build and production of a hardcover book. Amazon KDP hardcover books cannot have fewer than 75 or more than 550 pages.
These are the main limitations I watch for now when I know that a book is going to be printed with Amazon KDP (or another print on demand printer, like IngramSpark). I will add to this list if I notice other requirements that will affect short or long books. If you want to get more specific information about what it would take to make your manuscript into a book, please consult with me!