When you export a Print PDF or Print Cover PDF from BookZeta, the print settings modal lets you match the exact physical specifications required by Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, or a local commercial printer. This reference supplements Exporting a print-ready interior with the exact dimensions, margin formulas, and bleed rules BookZeta uses under the hood.
Supported trim sizes
BookZeta formats interiors and wraparound covers across standard publishing sizes (width x height in inches):
| Preset | Trim Size | Typical Use |
|---|---|---|
| US Trade Standard | 6" x 9" |
Full-length novels, trade nonfiction, graphic novels |
| Digest Format | 5.5" x 8.5" |
Literary fiction, memoirs, mid-length novels |
| Novella / Compact | 5" x 8" |
Novellas, short fiction, poetry |
| Mass Market | 4.25" x 6.87" |
Pocket-sized genre paperbacks |
| Textbook | 8.5" x 11" |
Workbooks, manuals, study guides |
| Square | 8" x 8" |
Children's picture books |
| Children's Portrait | 8" x 10" |
Classic vertical picture books |
| Children's Landscape | 10" x 8" |
Wide-format picture books |
| US Comic | 6.625" x 10.25" |
Standard American comic issues and trade paperbacks |
| Standard / Signature Manga | 5" x 7.5" / 5.75" x 8.25" |
Manga volumes |
| European Album / Magazine | 8.4" x 11.6" / 8" x 10.5" |
Bande dessinée albums and illustrated magazines |
For advice on picking between 6" x 9", 5.5" x 8.5", and 5" x 8" for your word count, see Standard Book Trim Sizes, Margins, and Bleed for Amazon KDP.
KDP bleed vs Commercial bleed
When artwork extends to the edge of the page, BookZeta adds 0.125" (1/8 inch) of bleed at 300 DPI and converts print PDFs to CMYK with zero crop or registration marks (which print-on-demand uploaders reject).
In the Print PDF export options, pick the Target that matches your printer:
- KDP (
target: kdp) — On interior pages, KDP adds0.125"bleed to the top, bottom, and outside edge only (never the inside spine edge). A6" x 9"bleed interior exports at6.125" x 9.25"; an8" x 8"picture book exports at8.125" x 8.25". - Commercial (
target: commercial) — Adds0.125"bleed on all four edges (6.25" x 9.25"for a6" x 9"trim), which commercial offset and saddle-stitch printers expect. - Full Print Covers always include
0.125"bleed around all four outer edges of the combined Back + Spine + Front spread.
Novel margins and dynamic gutter scaling
For text-heavy Writer Mode books, BookZeta applies comfortable trade margins and automatically widens the inside binding gutter as your page count grows:
- Top & bottom margins:
0.75" - Outside margin:
0.625" - Inside (gutter) margin: starts at
0.875"and adds0.0625"per 100 pages so thick novels open cleanly without swallowing text into the spine glue.
Paper type, binding, and spine width
In the export modal you can also configure:
- Paper (
WhitevsCream): Calculates spine width automatically using KDP's standard pages-per-inch thickness—0.002252"per page for White paper and0.002500"per page for Cream paper (with an optional manual Spine Override if a specialty printer supplies a custom template). - Binding (
PerfectvsSaddle-Stitch): Perfect-bound paperbacks calculate a spine width from your page count; saddle-stitch booklets fold on staples with a0"spine. - Pad to multiple of 4: For saddle-stitch comics and picture books, enabling Pad to 4 injects clean blank endpapers before the back cover so your total page count is divisible by four.
Always lock your interior PDF before exporting your wraparound cover from the Cover Editor, and verify the finished files against Amazon KDP rules.