Step 1: Set the document size before you design
Canva designs are sized in inches or mm under Resize → Custom size. Your interior document should be:
- No bleed: exactly your trim size — e.g. 6″ × 9″ for a 6×9 book.
- With bleed: trim width + 0.125″, trim height + 0.25″ — e.g. 6.125″ × 9.25″. Design to the bleed size and keep text inside the margin minimums; KDP trims the extra 0.125″ off three sides.
- Cover: the full wraparound size — 0.125 + back + spine + front + 0.125 wide. Get the spine from your page count with our spine calculator; build the cover as one wide document, back on the left, front on the right.
Resizing a finished design to a different page size is where Canva books quietly break — fonts shift, margins drift. Size first, design second.
Step 2: Export with these exact settings
- Share → Download → File type: PDF Print. Never PDF Standard — it's screen resolution and it's why Canva interiors come back with the low-resolution error. PDF Print exports at print resolution.
- Check “Crop marks and bleed” if your document was designed at trim size and you used Canva's bleed area (File → Settings → Show print bleed). If you designed at bleed size already (step 1), leave crop marks off and make sure the exported page size still equals your bleed size — then verify (step 3). Either route is fine; mixing them is what produces size mismatches.
- Color profile: CMYK if your plan offers it (it's a Canva Pro feature) — see the honest note below before you worry about this.
- Flatten PDF (offered on PDF Print in Canva Pro): flattens transparency into the page. Transparency left live in a PDF gets flattened by KDP instead, sometimes shifting colors. Flattening it yourself, then checking the result, is the safer pair of hands.
- Download the interior and the cover as separate files. KDP wants two uploads, and the cover is a single page.
The CMYK question, answered honestly
Canva works in RGB. KDP accepts RGB PDFs and converts them — and for most books, especially black-and-white interiors, that conversion is a non-event. Saturated RGB blues, greens, and oranges can print duller in CMYK, because some screen colors simply don't exist in ink. Canva Pro's CMYK export shows you that duller version up front instead of on the proof. If your book is a black-ink interior or a muted palette, RGB export is fine and a proof copy will confirm it. If your cover is neon, order the proof before you judge — the file was never the problem, physics was.
Fonts: the good news
Canva embeds the fonts it uses when it exports a PDF Print file, so the fonts-not-embedded error is rare from Canva. Two exceptions: text you converted or uploaded in unusual ways, and fonts in uploaded PDFs you've placed as elements. Verify once — open the exported PDF in Acrobat, File > Properties > Fonts, everything should say Embedded — and then stop worrying.
Exported, uploaded, rejected anyway? Send us your interior and cover PDFs and we'll run the full 13-point check and tell you in plain English which setting actually did it. The check is free. Get the free check →
Step 3: Verify the exported file (30 seconds, saves a rejection)
- Open the PDF and check the page size (Acrobat: File > Properties > Description shows page size in inches or points — divide points by 72). Interior: trim size, or bleed size if the book bleeds. Cover: the full wraparound size.
- Check the page count matches your final document — Canva exports every page, including that blank one you forgot at the end. (On IngramSpark a blank last page is required; on KDP an accidental blank changes your page count and your spine math. Know which blank pages you have.)
- Zoom to 200% on a detailed page: lines should be crisp, not fuzzy. Fuzzy at 200% = an element Canva placed at low resolution; replace that element, not the whole book.
The honest limit
Canva can't do everything KDP wants. It has no real gutter control — you manage inside margins by eye with guides, which is fine for most books and fragile for 600-page ones. Its bleed workflow confuses even experienced users because there are two ways to reach a bleed file (design-at-bleed-size vs trim-size-plus-bleed-area) and they must not be combined. And full-bleed photo books will test the resolution of every image you uploaded. None of that stops Canva publishing a good book — it just means the verification step isn't optional.
Or send us the files — the check is free
Email your interior and cover PDFs and we'll tell you exactly what's wrong — in plain English, free, within 48 hours. If it does need fixing, the by-hand fix is $19 and we redo it free if KDP rejects it for a formatting issue we were hired to fix. We rebuild files to be compliant with KDP's published spec — that's the promise we can keep.