Gather Your Materials
You’re a few steps from print-ready files. Here is everything we will need from you, and the exact sizes to prepare them in. If you can hand us these, formatting goes quickly and there is no long back-and-forth.
What we need
- Your illustrations — one for each left-hand page, at the size shown in the table below. Larger artwork is always fine — we scale it down.
- Your words — the text for each right-hand page, page by page, exactly as it should appear. Your book is laid out as a classic picture book: an illustration on each left-hand page with its words on the facing right-hand page. You can produce this text file in advance — otherwise you’ll need to copy and paste the text for each page during the input process. File format: list the words in reading order, one illustration’s text per block, separated by a blank line — for example a line that reads “1.” followed by that page’s words, then “2.”, and so on, matching your illustration numbers. Plain text or Word both work.
- Copyright details — the year and the copyright holder’s name. As soon as you publish, your work is automatically copyrighted. You don’t need to do anything else.
- A dedication or acknowledgments, if you would like one — send the final wording.
- Your author bio — a short paragraph for the About the Author page, plus anything you would like on the back cover.
- Your author photo (if you want one)
- Amazon assigns a free ISBN to your book. You don’t need to worry about it.
Your book’s size, and what to prepare
Start with one decision: the size of your book. Your book is printed in a single trim size (square, landscape, or portrait) and a single ink type — Premium Color, Standard Color, or black and white; we match the ink to your artwork. Page sizes must be the same for both paperback and hardcover, and you can’t mix color and black-and-white pages within one book. So begin by picking one size from the table below, and prepare your artwork for that size — everything else follows from it.
Sizes are in inches; artwork dimensions are in pixels at 300 DPI, including the bleed printers need. These pixel sizes are the ideal dimensions for your artwork — if you can supply them at these sizes, formatting goes quickly. If you can’t, we may still be able to adjust; see About full-page bleed below.
All these sizes are available in paperback. If you also want hardcover, you need to select a size that is available in both formats — and hardcover editions require at least 75 pages.
| Trim size | Illustrations | Paperback | Hardcover |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square | |||
| 8 × 8 | 2475 × 2475 | Available | Not available |
| 8.25 × 8.25 | 2550 × 2550 | Available | Not available |
| 8.5 × 8.5 | 2625 × 2625 | Available | Not available |
| Landscape | |||
| 8.25 × 6 | 2550 × 1875 | Available | Not available |
| Portrait | |||
| 5 × 8 | 1575 × 2475 | Available | Not available |
| 5.06 × 7.81 | 1593 × 2418 | Available | Not available |
| 5.25 × 8 | 1650 × 2475 | Available | Not available |
| 5.5 × 8.5 | 1725 × 2625 | Available | Available |
| 6 × 9 | 1875 × 2775 | Available | Available |
| 6.14 × 9.21 | 1917 × 2838 | Available | Available |
| 6.69 × 9.61 | 2082 × 2958 | Available | Not available |
| 7 × 10 | 2175 × 3075 | Available | Available |
| 7.44 × 9.69 | 2307 × 2982 | Available | Not available |
| 7.5 × 9.25 | 2325 × 2850 | Available | Not available |
| 8 × 10 | 2475 × 3075 | Available | Not available |
| 8.25 × 10.75 | 2550 × 3300 | Available | Not available |
| 8.25 × 11 | 2550 × 3375 | Available | Available |
| 8.27 × 11.69 | 2556 × 3582 | Available | Not available |
| 8.5 × 9 | 2625 × 2775 | Available | Not available |
| 8.5 × 11 | 2625 × 3375 | Available | Not available |
Every size is available with Premium Color, Standard Color, or black-and-white interiors — we match the ink to your book.
Amazon offers hardcover only in the rectangular sizes marked Available above. Hardcover and paperback dimensions differ slightly at the same size — you do not need two sets of artwork. You supply art for the size you choose; where hardcover is available, we adjust it for the hardcover edition. That part is our job, not yours. Paperback books need at least 24 pages — if yours is shorter, we’ll pad the end with blank pages to meet Amazon’s minimum.
About full-page bleed
A full-page bleed means your artwork runs all the way to the edges of the page. The sizes in the table above are the ideal for that.
- If your artwork is larger than these pixel dimensions, that’s fine — we can scale it down.
- If your artwork is smaller, we can scale it up, but there will be some loss of clarity. It may be better to center it on the page and not run it all the way to the edge.
- If your artwork is not the same shape as the page and you select a full-page bleed, we would need to crop some of it off. For example, if your artwork is rectangular and you select a square book, both the top and the bottom of your artwork will be cropped in order to fit it on the page.
During upload you’ll check a box to tell us which you prefer — full-page bleed or centered on the page — and the summary at the end of the intake shows exactly what will be done with your artwork.
What happens next
When everything is gathered, you pay once, and then we walk you through a short series of pages — one item at a time — where you upload each piece and choose your book’s typeface — we offer a choice of several fonts. No account, no software, nothing to install.
When your files are delivered you get the print-ready paperback, Kindle, and hardcover files (if applicable), plus step-by-step upload instructions, pricing guidance, and category suggestions for your actual book.