Interior bleed and cover bleed are different animals, and confusing them is how this rejection happens. Interior bleed (for books that use it) goes on three outer edges — never the gutter. A cover is a single spread — back cover, spine, front cover — and IngramSpark wants 0.125″ of bleed on all four sides of that spread, including the spine's top and bottom edges. A cover built to exact trim size, or built with bleed left off one edge, comes back — or worse, passes and prints with a white sliver on the thin side.
The correct spread, measured
Full cover width = 0.125″ bleed + back cover + spine + front cover + 0.125″ bleed. Full height = trim height + 0.25″. For three common books (spine from the PPI math):
| Book | Spine | Correct spread size | In PDF points (72/in) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 × 9″, 300 pp, cream | 0.750″ | 13.000 × 9.25″ | 936 × 666 pt |
| 6 × 9″, 200 pp, white | 0.450″ | 12.700 × 9.25″ | 914.4 × 666 pt |
| 8.5 × 11″, 100 pp, white | 0.225″ | 17.475 × 11.25″ | 1258.2 × 810 pt |
Hardcovers are a different wrap entirely: the cover file wraps around the boards with a 0.625″ wrap margin instead of 0.125″ bleed-only. If you're building a hardcover, use the hardcover template from your title setup — never adapt the paperback file by “adding a bit.”
How one side goes missing
- The spine-side trim. Someone rebuilt the cover after a page-count change by cropping the old spread to the new width from one side — taking the bleed off the back-cover edge with it. (This is why spine fixes are rebuilds, not crops: spine width.)
- Top-and-bottom amnesia. Templates and habit focus on width. A spread built at exactly trim height (9.00″ for a 6×9″) is missing its top and bottom bleed — 0.25″ of height that has to come from somewhere.
- The front-cover export. Exporting a single front cover at trim-plus-bleed and calling it the cover file. IngramSpark's cover is the whole spread, one page, nothing else.
Check it yourself
- Open the cover PDF in Acrobat: File > Properties — one page, and what size?
- Convert: inches = points ÷ 72. Compare against the table above for your book (recompute from your own page count and stock if yours isn't listed).
- Look past the numbers at the art: cover background and imagery must extend into the bleed on every side. A spread can be the right size with the artwork stopping at the trim line — that prints the sliver too.
- While you're here: text and important elements belong inside Ingram's cover type-safety margin — 0.25″ from all trim edges — and the back cover's barcode zone stays clear (1.75 × 1″, bottom-right).
Cover dimensions are checks #5–#7 of the free check — we measure the spread against your title's real spine and flag a missing bleed before IngramSpark does. Plain English, within 48 hours, free. Get the free check →
How to fix it
Rebuild the spread on the cover template from your IngramSpark account, background art extended past every trim edge into the bleed, and export the single spread page at 300 ppi in CMYK. If your art doesn't reach, the options are the honest ones from every bleed problem: extend the background (solid, texture, or mirrored edge), pull the design inside the trim with a deliberate border, or re-crop from a larger original. Stretching the art to reach is the one that looks cheap.
The honest limit
Bleed forgives trimming variance, nothing else. It can't restore art that was never drawn, and a cover composed hard against the trim on all four sides has no compliant version hiding inside the same pixels — the composition has to move. That's a five-minute fix in the source file and an impossible one in the PDF.
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 IngramSpark rejects it for a formatting issue we were hired to fix. We rebuild files to be compliant with the platform's published spec — that's the promise we can keep.
Prefer the whole library in one file? The KDP Rejection Field Guide (free PDF) collects every guide, table, and the 13-point checklist.
More from the Help Library
- The KDP & IngramSpark Help Library — all guides & tools
- IngramSpark spine width — the PPI calculation
- KDP bleed error — interior bleed on three edges
- IngramSpark: your final page must be blank
- KDP vs IngramSpark — fees, reach, ISBN rules, using both
- Spine width calculator — KDP and IngramSpark math
- ISBN & barcode rules for KDP and IngramSpark
- The free rejection check — all 13 checks at once