Check My Book

The mistake the other checkers can’t catch

Most rejected paperbacks have a cover and interior that were each fine on their own but don’t match each other. You make the cover for 200 pages, then add an index and the interior grows to 216 pages. The spine needs to grow from 0.4504 in to 0.4864 in (on white paper), so the whole cover is now 0.036 in too narrow. KDP checks the cover against the real interior, and rejects it.

Check my book does the same. It reads the page count from your interior, works out the spine and full cover size for that count, and checks your cover against those numbers. You never type a page count, so it can’t be out of date.

What’s in the report

• Your book: the page count KDP will use, the spine width it needs and the full cover size.
• Cover: size, bleed, spine, picture resolution, text in the safe area, spine text, fonts and file settings, with your cover and the problems marked.
• Interior: page count, page size and bleed, margins on every page, pictures, fonts, blank pages and text size, with previews of the pages to fix.

When to use it

Use it as the last step before you upload, after your interior is final. If you still expect to change pages, use the cover calculator for now, and check the pair once the interior is finished. A couple of pages makes only a tiny difference (200 pages on white paper is a 0.4504 in spine, 202 pages is 0.4549 in), but KDP doesn’t publish how much it allows, so remake the cover whenever the page count changes.