IngramSpark: Your Final Page Must Be Blank

KDP has no such rule, so authors who reuse their KDP interior on IngramSpark walk straight into it. The file passes every check they know — and comes back over a page they never thought about.

What IngramSpark is actually saying

IngramSpark's printer, Lightning Source, reserves the final page of your interior for its own production barcode — the small mark the plant uses to track your book through printing and binding. Anything printed on that page can collide with their mark, so Ingram's file rules simply require the page to arrive empty. It's in their file creation checklist alongside the other Ingram-only rules KDP authors don't expect: margins of at least 0.5″, every font embedded, and a publisher-owned ISBN (IngramSpark has no free ISBN — see ISBN & barcode rules).

What counts as blank (this is where people fail twice)

Nothing at all. No text, no image, no ornament — and no page number. A page whose only content is a folio or a running header is not blank.
Your last content page doesn't count. If your story, index, or “about the author” ends on the final page of the file, you don't have a blank page — you have a rejection.
The blank page is part of your page count. Add it before you finalize anything spine-related: one more page changes your spine width, and Ingram calculates spines by paper stock (white 444 PPI, cream 400 PPI — pages ÷ PPI), not by KDP's per-page factors.
Closing pages go before it. Review requests, “also by this author” pages, and ads for your other books are all fine at the back of an Ingram book — they just can't be the last page. Blank goes after them.

Check it yourself

Open your interior PDF and go to the very last page. Is it truly empty — no page number, no header, no stray text frame?
Check your page count with the blank included, and confirm your cover's spine was built for that count.
While you're in the file: are all fonts embedded (File > Properties > Fonts in Acrobat — every font should say “Embedded” or “Embedded Subset”)? It's the next most common Ingram rejection; our fonts guide covers the checking method — it works the same here.

Moving a book from KDP to IngramSpark? The rules differ in seven places, not one. Send us your interior and cover files and we'll run the full IngramSpark check — final page, fonts, spine-by-PPI, barcode zone, all of it — and tell you in plain English what doesn't transfer. The check is free. Get the free check →

How to fix it

In Word, Pages, or LibreOffice

Click at the very end of your document and insert a page break so a new, empty page becomes the last page. Then make sure page numbering doesn't print on it: most templates number every page automatically. In Word, use a section break before the final page and unlink its footer; in Pages and LibreOffice, start a new section/page style with no header or footer content.

In InDesign or Affinity Publisher

Add one page at the end of the document and apply a blank master/parent page to it — no folio, no running head. Export as usual.

In Canva

Add a page at the end and leave it empty — and check it stayed empty after export; Canva page backgrounds count as content if one is set.

Then redo the spine math

New page count = new spine. For IngramSpark: spine width = pages ÷ 444 (white paper) or pages ÷ 400 (cream). Rebuild or resize the cover to match before you re-upload, or you'll fix this rejection and earn a cover-size one. Our spine calculator does both platforms' math.

The honest limit

This is the easiest Ingram rejection to fix — but it never travels alone. Files that fail the blank-page check usually also carry KDP habits that break other Ingram rules: 0.25″ margins (Ingram wants 0.5″ minimum), a KDP-math spine, or an Amazon free ISBN, which IngramSpark won't accept at all. Fix the page, then check the file against Ingram's rules as a set — not against the KDP rules you already know.

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.

Get my free rejection check

IngramSpark rejected your book because the last page isn't blank