My design studio designed and formatted a book for a self-published author using InDesign and two fonts, one being an Adobe Font (Linux Libertine and Aaux Next). We provided the author with a print PDF in CMYK to upload. We have an active Adobe Cloud subscription for anyone using the files. We've designed and had dozens of books printed and never ran into this issue Amadon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) presented
The author has spent the last several weeks going back and forth with KDP support about the proper file format they need and the Adobe Font used. KDP support told the author they couldn't print his book because KDP doesn't hold the license to the Adobe Font. 😡
Amazon KDP support responses seem to contradict Adobe documentation on font licensing for printed books unless they're considered a print bureau. Even if they are that, we didn't provide packaged files so that wouldn't apply to this situation right?
https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#act-comm
https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#act-pdf
1. Amazon KDP claims that fonts that say "Embedded Subset" aren't actually embedded and may not print correctly. In Acrobat when viewing the Properties > Fonts panel, all fonts show as "Embedded Subset".
https://www.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/resources/embed-fonts-in-pdf.html
2. Amazon KDP claims they are a print bureau and referenced this page: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/package-font-files.html. They claim they must have the license to the Adobe Fonts to print the book. We did not provide packaged files from InDesign. Only a PDF.
3. Amazon KDP mentioned the PDF x/1-a format and a flattened file. We provide a file in that format.
In Acrobat we used the Print Production Tool > Flattener Preview to convert all text to outlines using the '100' setting for raster. Is changing that to 0 so all text is converted the only way to use a custom font with Amazon KDP? Rasterizing the entire book? It is just black text on the interior and very few images, but still, it seems ridiculous to have to do that.
Has anyone else run into this issue with Amazon KDP for a print version of a book? This book is scheduled to release later this month and right now won't print with the custom fonts.
The author gave up and changed the fonts (every designer's nightmare) instead of attempting to use a fully rasterized PDF made from Acrobat with the raster setting on '0'
I also love KDP's resources that all reference how to use MS Word to format your book... 🙄
Help!
2 Correct answers
To start with, KDP is almost impossible to resolve problems with. You fly through the keyhole, or you don't get past the door. Knocking will do no good. All you will get, in nine responses out of ten, is an AI-generated cloud of fog that something isn't good enough. And KDP documentation ranges from the six-pages-on-one-trivial-point to two paragraphs summarizing a complex procedure to links that no longer go anywhere to clear, concise and detailed guidance that is five years out of date.
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SOLVED!
Just a little update: My book is a coloured paperback (not Kindle). I finally embedded all the fonts, which was a big fat faff! I unchecked ‘ligatures’ in the character panel for all paragraph styles and the master pages. Also, PDFs saved from Illustrator and imported into InDesign brought in the fonts too, so I outlined them for ease.
KDP’s ‘dense vector graphics’ flag was silly. Even underlined text with colour is considered a vector! I didn’t change much as that’s the design.
When expo
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Replies
It also doesn't really matter whether KDP has the font or not; that's the whole freakin' point of PDF, or one of them, anyway.
ETA: Try not subsetting any fonts. It may be that the preview is finding a (phantom) glyph that is not in the subset ones, and since they don't have the font, they can't fill in. Embed all of the fonts and try again.
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By @James Gifford—NitroPress
I was screaming with rage the same about PDFs as I replied to each email my client forwarded me from them. Thank you for the suggestion on not subsetting fonts. Will look into that.
ETA: Try not subsetting any fonts. It may be that the preview is finding a (phantom) glyph that is not in the subset ones, and since they don't have the font, they can't fill in. Embed all of the fonts and try again.
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By @James Gifford—NitroPress
By this, do you mean unassign and reassign all the fonts from the character and paragraph? If not, how would one not subset a font in InDesign?
By default, PDF export will subset all fonts, and thus embed only the glyphs that actually appear in the document. My TWAG is that this process is missing some phantom glyph somewhere, and KDP is detecting it.
Change this setting:
to, say, 25%, or even 5%, so that any font used will not be subset. This will considerably increase the size of the PDF, though.
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Wow, @v2theg, such a crazy experience you've had. Thanks for sharing it with us. I've uploaded countless PDFs to KDP, a book with these embedded subset fonts being the most recent one. I've never had a rejection. Unless this is something brand new with them, “Embedded Subset” has never been cause for a rejection. AFAIK, a subset tag means only those characters that are actually used in the document are stored in the PDF. The instruction to “Print to PDF” instead of Export is also very strange, and I've never done that. I do export using PDF/X-1a compliance and check that in Preflight. I'll be uploading a new book in a month or so, and I'll let you know if I experience any problems!
(Another somewhat related issue is that Acrobat shows these as Type 1 fonts when they are clearly not. I've asked for an explanation on why this is happening, and hopefully we'll see a fix one day.)
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