Bleed is the most over- and under-applied setting in KDP publishing: novels get built at bleed size for no reason, and picture books get built without it and rejected. The decision itself is one question, asked page by page: is anything on this page supposed to reach the cut edge? Books are printed on oversized sheets and trimmed, and the blade drifts slightly — bleed is the extra 0.125″ of art past the trim line that lets the blade cut through color instead of leaving a white sliver. If nothing reaches the edge, there is nothing for that extra art to do.
The decision, by book type
| Your book | Interior bleed? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Novel, memoir, text-first nonfiction | No | Every element sits inside the margins; upload at exact trim size. |
| Nonfiction with photos placed inside the text area | No | Photos that stop short of the edge do not trigger bleed. |
| Children’s picture book, photo book, art book | Yes | Illustrations and photos run to the edge by design. |
| Workbook / journal with full-page backgrounds, patterned or shaded pages | Yes | A background that reaches the edge is edge-touching content, even if the text is not. |
| Coloring book with designs kept inside the margins | No | Designs framed by white page do not touch the edge — the standard, safer build. |
| One chapter-divider page with full-page art in an otherwise plain book | Yes — whole file | One qualifying page puts the entire interior at bleed dimensions. |
| Any wraparound print cover | Always yes | Covers are built with 0.125″ bleed on all four outer edges, whatever the interior does. |
What each choice does to your file size
| Trim size | No-bleed PDF page | Bleed PDF page |
|---|---|---|
| 5 × 8″ | 5 × 8″ | 5.125 × 8.25″ |
| 6 × 9″ | 6 × 9″ | 6.125 × 9.25″ |
| 8.5 × 8.5″ | 8.5 × 8.5″ | 8.625 × 8.75″ |
| 8.5 × 11″ | 8.5 × 11″ | 8.625 × 11.25″ |
Bleed goes on the top, bottom, and outside edges only — never on the inside (binding) edge, which is why the width grows by 0.125″ and the height by 0.25″. Three settings must then agree: the PDF’s actual page size, the bleed choice you select in KDP’s print options, and the art itself, extended all the way to the bleed edge. A bleed-sized file uploaded with “No bleed” selected — or the reverse — is a mismatch rejection, not a judgment call. And keep live elements (text, faces, page numbers) inside the margins: art runs into the bleed, important content stays out of it. That distinction is the whole of our bleed error guide and the live-elements warning.
Check it yourself
- Flip the whole interior, looking only for edge-touchers — backgrounds, rules, images, shaded boxes. One hit decides it.
- Measure the PDF (Acrobat, File > Properties): exact trim size, or trim + 0.125″ / + 0.25″? It must match the decision and the KDP setting.
- Check the export, not the design view. Design tools show bleed guides on screen but commonly export without them unless the bleed option is ticked — the single most common cause of the bleed rejection.
Not sure which side of the line your file is on? The free check reads your actual interior and cover PDFs — page size, bleed, margins, fonts, geometry — and reports every finding in plain English, free within 48 hours. Get the free check →
The honest limit
Bleed cannot be invented at upload time. If a background image simply ends at the trim line, software can only stretch or mirror its edge pixels to fake the extra 0.125″ — passable on a texture or a sky, visibly wrong on a face or a detailed illustration. The real fix is in the source file: larger art that extends past the edge, then a fresh export. Conversely, if your book truly has nothing touching an edge and KDP is demanding bleed, something in the file is touching one — a stray shape or a header rule that runs wide — and finding that element, not adding bleed, is the fix.
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.
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
- Bleed error — “your file does not include bleed”
- Margin error — text or important elements outside the margins
- Live-elements warning — the 0.25″ margin, decoded
- Page size does not match the trim size you selected
- IngramSpark cover bleed — 0.125″ on all four sides
- The free rejection check — all 13 checks at once