Need help with Amazon KDP

Hi everyone,

I recently stumbled upon an article about making passive income on Amazon, and it inspired me to try my luck with publishing a children's book on Amazon KDP. I have always been interested in writing, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to earn some extra income while pursuing my passion.

However, I've hit a roadblock in the process, and I was hoping to get some advice from those who have already published on Amazon KDP. I followed all the guidelines and uploaded my book, but it got rejected due to formatting issues. I have tried several times to fix it, but it keeps getting rejected. Could it be that I used custom paid fonts? I don't think there is anything wrong with the book format, it looks fine and I've spent a lot of time adding illustrations and making sure they look presentable.

I'm not sure where I'm going wrong, and it's quite frustrating. Has anyone else experienced this issue while publishing on Amazon KDP? If so, what steps did you take to resolve it?

As there is an option for the Kindle user to change the font of the book they are reading, I would bet my money on the custom paid font being the problem. Could you try changing it?

What file format are you using? That information would help in troubleshooting.

It sounds like the custom font thing too.

Amazon has put a lot of money into developing their bookerly font so that people with disabilities and vision issues can read more easily on a kindle.  As a side note, I've heard that regular readers can read faster and improve their comprehension with fonts like bookerly.  

A lot of custom fonts can be difficult to read on a small gadget like a kindle - I almost always change it to bookerly if the publisher used a custom font as the wrong font can make a book illegible.

Try changing the font and see what happens.  The other issue is generally with image formatting or size.  Every time a customer downloads a book, it costs Amazon money.  If the files are large, then it ends up costing them more than their profit and they don't like that.  

I'm assuming you are trying to set up an ebook, not a paperback, Is that correct? Unfortunately a file that looks perfect in Word or as a pdf may not work at all as an ebook. The reason is that ebooks don't have set page sizes, it will vary depending on the reading device and the settings the reader has chosen.

You can't use custom fonts in KDP ebooks. If the system doesn't recognise your font, that will get your file rejected. Basic fonts like Times New Roman, Georgia, or Arial are safest. You can use custom fonts for KDPP paperbacks on Amazon, by creating your book file as a pdf with the fonts embedded. If fonts aren't embedded, that will get a paperback file rejected as the system won't be able to render the font.

Other possible ebook issues?
1. What format are you uploading? KDP now works best if you upload an epub file for ebooks. It will manage a docx file, but the file size will be larger which can cause problems. It absolutely won't use a doc file, either, even though it says it will. Also pdf uploads won't work for ebooks, but are the preferred upload format for paperbacks. KDPP won't accept all pdf formats though. some of the newer pdf formats get rejected.

2. If you're pricing your ebook in the 35% royalty band, your converted book file size in Amazon must be less than 3Mb, or it will be rejected. The solution if that's the issue is to change the pricing to between $2.99 and $9.99. Then there's no limit on file size because they take the download cost from your royalties. That can cost you quite a chunk of possible earnings, if the file is very large, however.

They have a downloadable tool for kids' book set up that may help: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201562880 If will mean needing to layout your book interior again, but should fix any issue blocking the upload by ensuring your book is laid out in a way Amazon can work with.

If you want more specific advice, knowing if this is ebook or paperback and screenshots showing what the error message says when the file is rejected would be helpful.