Adventures in Self-Publishing: Figuring Out How to Format My 6x9 Novel for KDP
Ohhh my god. Formatting a book for print is not for the faint of heart.
When I decided to self-publish my novel on Amazon KDP, I figured I’d upload a Word doc, pick a cute cover, and boom—done. Maybe hit publish over a cup of coffee and wait for the readers to roll in.
I was wrong.
Turns out, formatting your book—especially for a 6x9 paperback—is an entire thing. A rabbit hole. A surprisingly specific art form with a dozen tiny rules and reader expectations I never even considered until I started falling down the formatting abyss.
Here’s how it went.
Step One: What Even Is the “Right” Format?
I started by grabbing a handful of novels off my shelf. Some were indie-published, some traditional, all roughly the size I wanted—6x9. I flipped through them like a detective:
Where are the page numbers?
How much space is between the text and the edges?
What font is this?
Is the first line of each chapter indented differently?
Why does this copyright page have an ISBN and a paragraph about reprinting in Bulgaria?
Suddenly, I wasn’t reading for fun—I was reverse-engineering. I realized I didn’t just need to write a book. I needed to design one too.
Step Two: Google, Reddit, Repeat
With a pile of open books beside me and a million questions in my head, I turned to the internet. My search history this week looks like:
“KDP novel margins for 6x9”
“Best font for fiction book novels”
“Do novels have headers on every page?”
“Copyright page template self-publishing”
“How to add page numbers to paperback novels”
“Why is formatting a book so hard???”
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has their own helpful guides, including videos and downloadable PDFs, but for somewhat impatient people like me, Reddit and Facebook were surprisingly helpful. There’s an entire community of kind, slightly frazzled self-publishers who’ve done this before and left a trail of wisdom behind. I also found a few incredible YouTube tutorials and some generous bloggers who offer loads of free advice and even templates (bless them).
Step Three: The Anatomy of a Well-Formatted Book
Once I gathered enough intel, here’s what I learned:
✔ Page Size:
For KDP, a 6x9 trim size means the final printed book is 6 inches wide and 9 inches tall. You have to format your manuscript to those exact dimensions before uploading it—or KDP will yell at you.
✔ Margins:
There are normal margins, and then there are KDP margins. Because the book is bound in the middle, you need a wider inside margin (called a "gutter"). KDP has a handy chart, but it still took me a few tries before everything didn’t look… off.
✔ Font Type and Size:
Most novels use a serif font like Garamond, Palatino, or Times New Roman. I went with 12-point Sabon, which is a version of Garamond that seems popular for fiction novels. It feels bookish without looking too squished.
✔ Line Spacing:
1.15 or 1.2 spacing gives enough breathing room without making your book 700 pages. Anything tighter looks like a school essay. Anything looser feels like a large-print edition. I went with 1.2 this time.
✔ Page Numbers & Headers:
I didn’t realize headers (the little title/author thing at the top) don’t usually appear on chapter opening pages. Or on blank pages. Or the copyright page. Or the title page. Or the table of contents. Basically, half your pages don’t get numbers or headers—and yes, I manually removed them. It was... tedious.
✔ The Copyright Page:
Honestly? I borrowed wording from several books I own and cobbled something together. It has the “all rights reserved” bit, a line about the book being a work of fiction, and other bits and bobs that seem to make sense and hopefully does.
✔ Section Breaks:
I added ornamental breaks between scenes (hello, pretty asterisks!) and made sure each chapter starts on a new page. Odd-numbered pages, specifically. That’s another thing I didn’t know—chapters should always start on the right-hand page. All of this had to be done manually by me because I don’t know how else to do it.
Step Four: It’s Ugly… Until It’s Not
The first few versions of my formatted file looked like a mess. Page numbers and headers where they didn’t belong. Random spacing and white pages. Paragraphs floating weirdly — PRO TIP: check that you DO NOT have the page vertically aligned to the centre! This cost me several precious hours to figure out.
I exported to PDF, flipped through it on my laptop like it was a real book, sighed, and went back to Word. Again and again.
But slowly, it started to come together. The font felt right. The chapters began where they should. It started to look… like a book.
I had a weird moment when I scrolled through the PDF and thought: Holy crap. This is actually happening. I made a book.
Final Thoughts
There’s still so much to learn. I haven’t even gotten into the ebook formatting yet, or the cover design specifics (did you know your spine width depends on page count?!). But for now, I’m celebrating this little milestone.
To anyone else out there formatting their first novel: You’re not alone. You’re not dumb. It’s supposed to be confusing at first. But it’s also kind of magical—watching your messy Word doc slowly transform into something that looks like the books you’ve loved your whole life.
So… onward! More formatting. More Google searches. And hopefully, one day soon, a finished book I can hold in my hands.
Wish me luck (and please send snacks).
—Tracy