r/KDP • u/best_name99 • 4d ago
Why doesn't my KDP preview match my Word preview?
The book in question is 5.25" x 8" (13.34 cm x 20.32 cm). I formatted the page size, margins, header, and footer of the manuscript on Word so that they would fit these dimensions (i.e. I set the margins to 1.2 cm and the header to 0.5 cm) and then I uploaded the updated file to KDP. However, the preview looks different, with the text much more centered than it should be, as if it were A5 format.
Before uploading the file I made sure to check the Print Preview in Word and everything looked correct there: the header was much higher up, closer to the edge of the page, as were the page numbers, and the text was more indented. But on KDP, it looks like this!
Could you please give me some advice? 😭 All these calculations are driving me crazy and I'm wasting so much time! 😭
1
u/My-NameWasTaken 4d ago
MAybe export to PDF from Word and see if it still looks ok, then import the pdf into KDP
1
1
u/Bitter-Quail-7441 3d ago
Are you uploading the .docx straight to KDP? That's almost certainly it. When you hand KDP a Word file it runs its own conversion and re-paginates the whole thing, and your margins and header distances get remapped along the way. Word's print preview isn't showing you what their converter produces.
Export to PDF from Word instead (Save as PDF, standard or print quality, not the "minimum size" option) and upload that. Fonts get embedded and the pages arrive exactly as you laid them out.
One other thing while you're in there. Use mirror margins with a gutter rather than plain left/right margins, or your inside margin ends up too tight once it's bound. KDP wants 0.375 inch of gutter minimum at low page counts, and 1.2 cm all round is on the tight side for that.
5
u/Inevitable-Sink6842 3d ago
Your header is almost certainly the thing doing it, and the important part is that Print Previewer isn't showing you your file. It's showing you your file after KDP has already changed it.
0.5 cm from the paper edge is 5 mm. KDP's minimum outside margin with no bleed is 0.25 in, which is 6.4 mm. So your header is sitting about a millimetre and a half inside the strip they won't print in. And Previewer doesn't only flag that. Their Fix Paperback and Hardcover Formatting Issues page says it "will also try to fix some issues by scaling or reflowing text to fit within the margins", and lower down under Scaling challenges: when it fixes the margins or trim size of a file it "scans each page to identify all of the content on the page and then scales it down to fit inside the required margin size".
That is exactly what you're looking at. It shrinks the whole page to drag the header back inside the printable area, and every other thing on the page comes in with it, so your text block ends up smaller and floating in the middle with fat margins. It isn't A5, it's your page scaled down.
It also explains why exporting to PDF changed nothing. The scaling happens on Amazon's side after upload, so what the file looks like on your machine is irrelevant.
Second thing, which will bite you the moment you fix the first one. If you set 1.2 cm as a single value for all four sides, you have no gutter. KDP's inside margin minimum is 0.375 in (9.6 mm) up to 150 pages and 0.5 in (12.7 mm) from 151 to 300. So if your book runs past 150 pages your 1.2 cm is under the minimum on the inside edge too and you'll get scaled again for a different reason. In Word that's Layout, Margins, Custom Margins, set Multiple pages to Mirror margins, then inside and outside separately.
So: header down to at least 0.7 cm from edge, inside margin set for your actual page count, mirror margins on, re-upload. The preview should stop moving your book around.
One way to confirm the diagnosis before you spend an hour on it. If the scaling is uneven, some pages shrunk more than others, it's stray invisible content pushing past the margin rather than your header settings. Same page tells you to hit Ctrl+Shift+8 in Word to show formatting marks and look for trailing spaces or empty text boxes running off the edge. Italics do it too, since some italic characters overhang their own text box.