KDP tools / Cover preflight

KDP Cover Preflight Checker

Already have a finished full-wrap PDF? Drop it in and find out what book it is actually a cover for, before Amazon tells you. Nothing is uploaded — the file is measured in your own browser.

  • Read in your browser — nothing uploaded
  • Tells you which book the file actually fits
  • Free, no account
Your full-wrap PDF

or drop it here. Up to 96 MB. It is read in this tab — there is no upload on this page.

What comes back

Which book the page size fits, the spine it implies, and how that compares with the book you are publishing — plus the artwork resolution, the fonts, and whether it is the single page a KDP cover has to be. Every row is measured from your file. Where something cannot be determined honestly, it says so instead of showing a tick.

Running the geometry backwards

A cover file does not know what book it belongs to. This works it out backwards.

A KDP paperback wrap is one page whose size is entirely determined by three things: the trim, the final page count and the paper. Back cover plus spine plus front cover across, trim height down, and 0.125" of bleed added on every outside edge. Nothing in the PDF records which of those three you chose — the file is just a rectangle of a particular size, and Amazon compares that rectangle against the book you set up in KDP.

Which means the rectangle can be run backwards. Take the height, subtract the bleed, and you have the trim height. Take the width, subtract the bleed and two trim widths, and what is left is the spine. Divide the spine by the caliper of each paper Amazon offers and you get the page count that spine was built for. This page does that against all 16 standard KDP paperback trims, so instead of "your dimensions are wrong" you get "this is a 6 × 9 wrap for about 300 pages on white paper" — and if that is not the book you are publishing, you have just found the actual problem.

Everything else it reports is measured from the same file: whether it is one page, whether the page is rotated, how many pixels your artwork has over the inches it must cover, and whether the fonts travel with the file or merely get named. Where something cannot be determined honestly it says so rather than showing a tick. Amazon's rules behind all of it were last checked against their published help pages on 2026-08-27.

What it measures

Every row below is a measurement taken from your file.

  • Which book this file fitsRun backwards from the page size against all 16 standard KDP paperback trims: the trim, the spine, and the page count each paper would imply.
  • Page size against your bookThe measured page beside the size your trim, page count and paper actually need — both numbers, not a verdict.
  • One page, not severalA KDP paperback cover is a single page carrying back, spine and front. A two-page file is a common export mistake.
  • Artwork print resolutionEach image's pixels over the inches it is actually painted across — read out of the page description, not guessed from the page size. Compared against 300 PPI.
  • Fonts embedded, not just namedA cover that only names a typeface gets re-rendered in a substitute wherever it prints, and the line breaks come back wrong.
  • Page rotationA page rotated after the fact stores one size and prints another, which print software disagrees about more often than it should.
  • Which page boxes existWhether the file marks a trim or bleed box, or only its physical size. Reported, not judged — KDP works from the page size.
  • Colour space of the artworkWhat the embedded images actually use. KDP's guidance recommends CMYK; this states what is in the file and stops there.

And what it cannot tell you

  • It cannot tell you whether your artwork reaches the bleed, or whether your text sits inside the safe area. Both need the position of every mark on the page, which means rendering it — and a checker that guessed would be wrong in the direction that costs a reprint.
  • It cannot tell you your cover will print in the right colours. It reports the colour space the file uses; the only reliable check is a physical proof copy.
  • It cannot read your spine text, or tell you whether it is centred. No text is extracted from your file at any point.
  • It cannot give an Amazon verdict. It measures geometry and file structure against Amazon’s published specifications; the Print Previewer and a human reviewer are the only authorities on acceptance.
FAQ

Frequently asked

Is my cover uploaded anywhere?

No. The file is read by your browser and measured there — there is no upload step on this page, no account, and nothing about your cover is sent to us or stored by us. Closing the tab is all it takes to be rid of it.

What if I do not know my trim, page count and paper?

Leave them blank. The checker works out which books the page size fits and tells you, which is the whole reason to arrive with a mystery PDF. Filling them in adds one thing: a direct comparison against the book you believe you are publishing, and a warning when the file disagrees.

It says my file fits more than one book. Why?

Because it genuinely does. The spine width is fixed by the page, but the page count that produces that spine depends on the paper: a 0.676" spine is about 300 pages on white, 288 on groundwood or premium colour, and 270 on cream. The trim you are publishing at decides which line applies — the file cannot say.

Does passing this mean KDP will accept my cover?

No, and nobody can offer you that. It measures what is measurable in the file — page size, spine against page count, resolution, fonts, structure — against Amazon's published specifications, last checked on 2026-08-27. It says nothing about your interior, your metadata, your categories or what a human reviewer makes of your cover art. Amazon retains final review. Look at the file in KDP's Print Previewer and order a proof before you launch.

Why does it not check bleed or the safe area?

Because it cannot do so honestly. Knowing whether your artwork reaches the bleed means knowing where every mark on the page falls, which needs the file rendered rather than read. A green tick we could not stand behind is worse than no tick, so those two are absent rather than guessed.

It could not measure some of my artwork. What does that mean?

Some design tools nest artwork inside a reusable object with its own internal coordinates. This checker follows images painted directly onto the page and does not open those nested objects, so their print resolution is unknown rather than fine. Everything else on the file is still measured.

How big a file can it read?

Up to 96 MB. Past that a browser cannot safely hold the file and the objects needed to parse it, so it is refused before anything is read rather than crashing the tab.

My file is the wrong size. What now?

Read the "what book this file fits" row first — it often turns out the file is correct and the page count changed, or the trim in KDP is not the one the cover was built at. If the cover artwork itself is fine and only the wrap is wrong, the Paperback Wrap Builder rebuilds the wrap around your front cover at the right size, free.