Footers Inside Margins

[mcg]

Hello! I have a manuscript that keeps getting rejected by Amazon's KDP. The reason given is that "text is outside the margins." I have adjusted the margins on the parent pages, and all the footers are inside them. But I still get the rejections. Any suggestions?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Are they within the net margins of the KDP page? It doesn't matter if they're inside your ID layout margins if those margins (plus a smidge for text descenders) is near or into the actual printing/trim margin. And note it may be on the left or right of the text frame as well as the bottom.

Download the specific page template for your trim size and use it to set your ID margins, and tuck them in a bit (1/16" or 2-3pts) at the bottom to be safe.

[mcg]

Thank you! I'll give it a try. MC

[mcg]

Well, I downloaded the templates and realized that I was way ahead of the steps to repour all my manuscript into these templates. However, it was helpful to see that they are dated November, 2023. And since I first uploaded my manuscript in September, 2023, I realized that Amazon had changed their template. So I took the second part of your advice...I went through page-by-page and pulled every single text and art frame away from the margin lines. I pulled them just enough so they weren't touching the margins. I did have to change the bottom margins so they would include my footers. And then I moved the footer text frames---on the parent pages--so they weren't touching the bottom margin. On my photo essay pages, I removed the footers and went with blind folios, because they were interfering with all the art on the page, if I moved them at all. So I deleted the footers on the photo essay parent pages. The combination of all of these things did the trick. After 3 weeks of struggling with the problem, the Amazon system finally accepted my files. THANK YOU!!!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, KDP does change things, often, and with little notice and quite often without updating anything corresponding — I actually expect a link in help or resources to point to something at least partially outdated.

But the takeaway here is that KDP is an almost 100% automated system, and there's zero human judgment about, say, a tiny text descender going outside a page margin. It's all black and white, on/off, 1|0, pass-fail. If they say something is outside a margin, nudge the whole element inside the margin by the smallest visual gap you can achieve. And so forth.

There is no point in trying to argue it. I have a couple of legendary battles with them over such nits, and the exchanges got absurd enough for an SNL skit... and never, ever resolved in my favor. You can't win against the machines.