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Kernsetzer and Kindle Create compared
By Lukas · updated
Kindle Create is Amazon’s own free app for formatting books for Kindle Direct Publishing. If your book is a novel or a memoir and it goes only to Amazon, it may be all you need. Here is what it makes, where it stops, and how Kernsetzer differs.
Kernsetzer is still in development; its public beta opens in mid-November. Its column describes what the app does today.
| Kindle Create | Kernsetzer (beta) | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Windows 10 or later; macOS 10.15 or later on Intel Macs, macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon. No Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux as a desktop app, offline, no account |
| Price | Free | The beta is a free download; without a key, exported books carry a trial watermark. The finished app’s price isn’t announced: pay once, no subscription |
| Manuscript in | DOC or DOCX, from Word or any program that saves it; PDF only for Print Replica ebooks, and PDF or JPEG files for comics | Word (DOCX) and Markdown |
| Makes | A KPF file to upload to KDP, for the Kindle ebook and the print book; an EPUB of text books. No PDF | Print-ready PDF and EPUB 3 |
| Print book | Only through KDP: you upload the KPF, choose the trim size there and see the pages in KDP’s previewer. Only books without bleed | A PDF for any printer, in KDP’s, IngramSpark’s and BoD’s trim sizes, with each printer’s margins and bleed |
| Design | Four themes, which can’t be edited; font, indents and spacing per paragraph | Three themes, each with settings for text size, chapter openers and more; two of them have initials |
| Footnotes, tables | Can’t be edited in it; not supported in print books yet | Footnotes at the foot of the page and tables, in the print book |
| Available | Yes | Public beta from mid-November |
Where Kindle Create is better
It costs nothing, it comes from Amazon, and it is made for KDP. The KPF file it exports is the format Amazon recommends for Kindle ebooks, and the same file gives you a paperback or a hardcover on KDP in any trim size KDP offers: Kindle Create sets the margins, page numbers and running heads, puts title and chapter pages on the right-hand side and keeps widows and orphans down. Its previewer shows the ebook as it will look on a Kindle, a tablet and a phone. If your book is mostly text, with no footnotes or tables, sells only on Amazon, and you work on Windows or a Mac, try Kindle Create first. Kernsetzer’s beta is free as well, but without a key it puts a trial watermark on what it exports.
Where it stops
Amazon’s help pages are open about the limits. Kindle Create exports two formats, KPF and EPUB, and no PDF, so the print book exists only inside KDP: there is no file to send to IngramSpark, BoD or a local printer, and you see the printed pages only after you upload. Amazon lists publishing outside Kindle as unsupported; the EPUB is meant mainly for reading the book on other devices, and it drops image bleeds and chapter start images. Tables, lists and footnotes can’t be edited in Kindle Create, tables, footnotes and endnotes aren’t supported in print books yet, print books can’t have bleed, and pictures can’t have captions. It formats the inside of the book only, not the cover.
Amazon recommends finishing the manuscript in Word or another word processor before you import it. If you change the Word file afterwards, you copy the changed text into Kindle Create by hand, and some of the formatting from Word gets lost. The project is a KCB work file and a folder on your computer, and Amazon keeps no copy, so back the folder up.
How Kernsetzer differs
Kernsetzer is a desktop program for Windows, macOS and Linux, and your manuscript stays a file on your computer. It makes a print PDF you can send to KDP, IngramSpark, BoD or another printer, and an EPUB 3 for Kindle and the other ebook shops. You pick the trim size from KDP’s, IngramSpark’s and BoD’s lists, and the margins and bleed follow the printer you choose. Footnotes stand at the foot of the page, and pictures can have captions and stand in the text, beside it, on a page of their own or out to the edge. Most of my work goes into the printed page: hyphenation, widows and orphans, chapter openers, and German set as carefully as English. The first look has screenshots of the app as it is today. For the other options, see Kernsetzer and Atticus, Kernsetzer and Vellum and Kernsetzer and Reedsy Studio.
Sign up for the beta and tell me about your book.
Facts about Kindle Create come from Amazon’s own pages (the Kindle Create page and its questions on amazon.com, and KDP’s help pages Getting Started with Kindle Create, Prepare Reflowable and Print Books, Previewing and Publishing, Kindle Create’s limits in print and KDP’s hardcover page, which lists Kindle Create for the interior), read on 30 October 2026, and can change. Kernsetzer has no connection to Amazon; product names belong to their owners. If something here is wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it.