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Print rules of KDP, IngramSpark, BoD, epubli and tredition
By Lukas · version 1, read to
Of five print-on-demand services, only KDP makes the inside margin grow with the page count, from 0.375 in (9.6 mm) up to 150 pages to 0.875 in (22.3 mm) above 700. IngramSpark recommends half an inch on every side at any length, and BoD, epubli and tredition set no minimum at all. The bleed differs as much: 0.125 in on three edges at KDP and IngramSpark, 3 mm at epubli and 5 mm at BoD and tredition on all four. Kernsetzer read each rule on the service’s own pages and dated it; the tables are below, and the whole set is available as CSV and JSON.
Bleed
| Printer | Bleed | Edges |
|---|---|---|
| KDP | 0.125 in (3.2 mm) | top, bottom, outside |
| IngramSpark | 0.125 in (3.2 mm) | top, bottom, outside |
| BoD | 5 mm | all four |
| epubli | 3 mm | all four |
| tredition | 5 mm | all four |
Minimum margins
| Printer | Inside | Outside, top, bottom |
|---|---|---|
| KDP | 0.375 in (9.6 mm) – 0.875 in (22.3 mm), by page count | 0.25 in (6.4 mm); 0.375 in (9.6 mm) with bleed, from the bleed edge |
| IngramSpark | 0.5 in (12.7 mm); colour 0.625 in (15.9 mm) | 0.5 in (12.7 mm) |
| BoD | none required, mirrored; BoD’s blog advises keeping text 5 mm from the edge | |
| epubli | none required; its guides suggest 1.2 to 2.5 cm | |
| tredition | none stated | |
KDP’s inside margin by page count
| Pages | Inside |
|---|---|
| 24–150 | 0.375 in (9.6 mm) |
| 151–300 | 0.5 in (12.7 mm) |
| 301–500 | 0.625 in (15.9 mm) |
| 501–700 | 0.75 in (19.1 mm) |
| 701–828 | 0.875 in (22.3 mm) |
Page count
| Printer | Paper | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| KDP | black ink, white paper | 24–828 |
| black ink, cream paper | 24–776 | |
| black ink, groundwood paper | 24–812 | |
| standard colour, white paper | 72–600 | |
| premium colour, white paper | 24–828 | |
| IngramSpark | 50 lb white, black or colour | 18–1,200 |
| 50 lb crème | 18–1,050 | |
| 70 lb white, black, colour or premium colour | 18–900 | |
| 38 lb groundwood | 18–900 | |
| BoD | paperback and hardcover | 24–900 |
| epubli | softcover | 36–784 |
| hardcover | 36–980 | |
| tredition | not stated in the text | |
Page count divisible by
| Printer | Page count divisible by |
|---|---|
| KDP | 2 (KDP rounds an odd count up) |
| IngramSpark | 2 (IngramSpark adds blank pages) |
| BoD | 2 (4 for a sewn hardcover; BoD adds blank pages) |
| epubli | not stated |
| tredition | 4 (tredition adds blank pages) |
Spine width per page
| Printer | Paper | Per page |
|---|---|---|
| KDP | black ink, white paper | 0.002252 in (0.0572 mm) |
| black ink, cream paper | 0.0025 in (0.0635 mm) | |
| black ink, groundwood paper | 0.00235 in (0.0597 mm) | |
| standard colour, white paper | 0.002252 in (0.0572 mm) | |
| premium colour, white paper | 0.002347 in (0.0596 mm) | |
| IngramSpark | not published; in the cover template IngramSpark emails | |
| BoD | cream, 90 g/m² | 0.0675 mm |
| white, 90 g/m² | 0.06 mm | |
| Fotomatt, 120 g/m² | 0.063 mm | |
| Fotobrillant, 130 g/m² | 0.0505 mm | |
| epubli | not published; in epubli’s price calculator | |
| tredition | not published; in the project’s size calculator | |
Text on the spine
| Printer | From |
|---|---|
| KDP | more than 79 pages |
| IngramSpark | 48 pages or more |
| BoD | not stated |
| epubli | not stated |
| tredition | not stated |
The PDF
| Printer | The PDF |
|---|---|
| KDP | PDF; PDF/X-1a preferred; a PDF is required for a book with bleed |
| IngramSpark | PDF/X-1a:2001 or PDF/X-3:2002 (named for black and white, required for colour) |
| BoD | PDF, no standard named |
| epubli | PDF, no standard named; at most 250 MB |
| tredition | PDF, no standard named; from Word “PDF/A-compatible” |
Fonts
| Printer | Fonts |
|---|---|
| KDP | embedded; fully rather than as subsets recommended |
| IngramSpark | embedded; subsets count |
| BoD | embedded |
| epubli | embedded completely |
| tredition | embedded |
Images
| Printer | Images |
|---|---|
| KDP | at least 300 dpi |
| IngramSpark | 300 ppi, line art 600 ppi; greyscale for black and white |
| BoD | 300 dpi, line art 1200 dpi; RGB preferred |
| epubli | 300 dpi |
| tredition | 300 dpi, line art 1200 dpi; CMYK recommended |
Trim sizes
| Printer | Trim sizes |
|---|---|
| KDP | 10 standard sizes from 5 × 8 to 8.5 × 11 in; custom from 4 × 6 to 8.5 × 11.69 in |
| IngramSpark | about 30 sizes from 4 × 6 to 8.5 × 11 in, A5 and 4.72 × 7.48 in (12 × 19 cm) among them; custom within limits |
| BoD | 10 sizes from 12 × 19 cm to A4; custom only for publishers |
| epubli | 12 sizes, among them 12.5 × 19 and 13.5 × 20.5 cm, A5, A4 |
| tredition | any portrait size up to A4; landscape 17 × 17 to 21 × 17 cm |
Printing cost
| Marketplace | Up to 110 pages | From 111 pages |
|---|---|---|
| KDP, Amazon.com | 2.30 USD | 1.00 USD + 0.012 USD a page |
| KDP, Amazon.co.uk | 1.93 GBP | 0.85 GBP + 0.01 GBP a page |
| KDP, Amazon.de and EU | 2.05 EUR | 0.75 EUR + 0.012 EUR a page |
| IngramSpark | not in this version | |
| BoD | not in this version | |
| epubli | not in this version | |
| tredition | not in this version | |
KDP: black ink, white or cream paper, regular trim.
neobooks prints paperbacks through epubli and states no print rules of its own.
Sources
- Amazon KDP: Set Trim Size, Bleed, and Margins (read 28 October), Paperback Submission Guidelines (read 4 November), Save Your Manuscript File (read 4 November), Create a Paperback Cover (read 28 October), Groundwood paper (read 28 October), Printing cost (read 28 October)
- IngramSpark: File Creation Guide (edition 8.24.26) (read 4 November), Trim size matrix (read 4 November)
- BoD: Buch drucken (read 30 October), Buch gestalten (read 30 October), Coverrechner (read 30 October), Grafiken und Farbmanagement (read 30 October), BoD-Blog: Buchblock mit Word einrichten (read 30 October)
- epubli: Ausstattung (read 30 October), Checkliste für Printbücher (read 30 October), Beschnittrand (read 30 October), Formatierungshilfe für Word (read 30 October)
- tredition: Innenteil für den Druck vorbereiten (read 30 October), Formate (read 30 October), Maße berechnen (read 30 October)
- neobooks: Taschenbuch veröffentlichen (read 30 October)
How the rules were gathered
Each rule is from the printer’s own help pages, guides and PDFs, listed under Sources with the day I read them: KDP’s on 28 October 2026 (the PDF, fonts and images on 4 November), BoD’s, epubli’s and tredition’s on 30 October, IngramSpark’s on 4 November. KDP’s, IngramSpark’s and BoD’s margins, bleed, page limits and spine figures are the ones the KDP and IngramSpark margin calculator and the spine calculator use. The script that writes this page, tools/make-data.py in the site’s repository, reads them from those calculators, so the three can’t disagree. Millimetres are converted from inches, and a minimum is rounded up to the next 0.1 mm, as KDP rounds its own.
The guides go through each printer’s rules in more detail: KDP, IngramSpark, and, in German, BoD, epubli and tredition.
What the tables don’t cover
The tables are about the interior of a paperback. Hardcovers, the cover beyond its spine and colour printing come up only where a rule depends on them, and the printing cost is only KDP’s in this version. “Not stated” means I didn’t find the rule on the pages listed, not that the printer has none. Where two of a printer’s pages disagree, the BoD, epubli and tredition guide gives both. The services change their rules from time to time, so check the current ones before you upload. A new reading is a new version of this dataset, with a note of what changed.
The files
One row per printer, rule and condition: print-rules.csv and print-rules.json. The columns are printer (kdp, ingramspark, bod, epubli, tredition, neobooks), rule, condition, value, unit (in, mm, pages or a currency), value_mm (lengths in millimetres), note and read (the day the rule was read). A rule a printer doesn’t state has an empty value and a note. The JSON also lists each printer’s sources.
License: CC BY 4.0: name Kernsetzer and link this page. Cite as: Kernsetzer, “Print rules of KDP, IngramSpark, BoD, epubli and tredition”, version 1, read 28 October to 4 November 2026, https://kernsetzer.app/data/print-rules.
In Kernsetzer you choose KDP, IngramSpark or BoD as the printer, and it sets the margins and bleed to these rules and checks the page count before it exports. The margin calculator works them out for your own page count. If you use the table somewhere, I’d like to hear about it.