How to Prepare Your Novel for Amazon KDP Upload

KDP does a fair amount of formatting work for you automatically once your file is uploaded. That's helpful, and it's also exactly why a manuscript with its own conflicting formatting choices, page numbers you added by hand, headers left over from drafting, causes more trouble than a plainer file would.

Structure your front matter correctly

Your manuscript file should open with front matter in a specific order: title page, copyright page, then table of contents if you're including one, all before chapter one begins. This is content that belongs before the story starts, and KDP expects to find it there, not mixed into the body of the book.

Choose the right file format

KDP accepts PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, HTML, or TXT, and converts anything that isn't already a PDF automatically before publishing. Amazon's own guidance recommends converting to PDF yourself before uploading, since it gives you the most reliable, predictable result rather than trusting the automatic conversion to interpret your formatting correctly.

Remove page numbers, headers, and footers

If your Word document has manually added page numbers or headers left over from a submission format, take them out before uploading. KDP generates page numbers and running headers itself as part of its paperback formatting process, and a manually added version can conflict with or duplicate what KDP adds automatically.

Use real page breaks between chapters

Each new chapter should start with an actual page break (Insert > Break > Page Break in Word), not several blank lines pressed to push the text down. Blank lines can render inconsistently once KDP processes the file; a real page break is unambiguous.

Prepare your manuscript and cover as separate files

A KDP paperback listing needs two distinct files: the manuscript file (front matter, body, and any back matter) and a separate cover file covering the front, spine, and back. Keep these as two clean, independent files rather than trying to combine them.

Where automatic formatting saves you this entire checklist

Every step here exists to prevent your own formatting choices from conflicting with KDP's automatic processing, which means the underlying goal is a manuscript file with clean, consistent, standard formatting and nothing extra layered on top. Quillen's export already produces exactly that: industry-standard formatting, no manual page numbers or headers to strip out, and a clean PDF or Word file ready to upload without a pre-submission cleanup pass.