Formatting Your Ebook in Word for Amazon KDP

Before you touch a single formatting setting, get your manuscript down to plain, final text. Editorial back-and-forth — tracked changes, comment bubbles, suggested edits — has no place in a file you're about to convert into an ebook, and leaving any of it in place risks stray markup bleeding into the converted file.

Open the Review tab. Under Tracking, make sure Track Changes is switched off so you stop generating new markup as you work. Then use Accept and Reject (or their "Accept All"/"Reject All" dropdown options) to resolve every tracked change in the document — don't leave anything showing as "final: show markup."

Comments are a separate layer. You can dismiss them one at a time by right-clicking a comment bubble and choosing Delete Thread, but for a full manuscript it's faster to use Review → Delete → Delete All Comments in Document. Do a final scroll-through with formatting marks visible (see the next lesson) to confirm nothing was left behind.

Amazon's official cover specification for the ebook file is precise: 1,600 × 2,560 pixels (a 1.6:1 ratio), 300 DPI, saved as JPEG in RGB color (not CMYK), under 5MB. If your cover has a white or very light background, add a thin (3-4px) medium-gray border so it doesn't visually disappear against the white background of Amazon's product pages and the Kindle library view.

Insert a blank page at the very start of the document, then add the cover image via Insert tab → Pictures, with Wrap Text → In Line with Text and centered. One detail Amazon is strict about: your title page (or cover) genuinely needs to be the first thing in the file. If any content — even a blank paragraph — precedes it, Kindle's "Look Inside" preview and the book's default opening position can both land in the wrong place.