Bleed

Bleed is artwork or color that extends past the edge where a printed page will be trimmed. Printers cut stacks of pages, and the blade can drift slightly. If an illustration stops exactly at the trim line, a thin white sliver can show at the edge. Extending the art beyond the line, into the bleed area, means the cut always lands on artwork.

On KDP, interior bleed is 0.125" (3.2 mm) on the top, bottom and outside edges. No bleed is added on the inside edge, where pages are bound. A book with bleed therefore has a PDF page size 0.125" wider and 0.25" taller than its trim size: an 8.5" × 8.5" picture book with bleed has 8.625" × 8.75" pages. Covers need bleed on all four sides.

Why it matters for indie authors

Any book with images, color or backgrounds that run to the page edge needs bleed: picture books, comics, cookbooks with full-page photos and nearly every cover. Text-only novels usually don’t. On KDP, bleed is a setting for the whole interior. If even one page bleeds, the entire PDF has to be set up with bleed, and you choose the bleed option when you upload.

Bleed also comes with safe margins. With bleed, KDP requires at least 0.375" between the trim line and any text or important detail on the outside edges, so nothing that matters is lost in the cut.

Example

A picture book author is making an 8.5" × 8.5" book. Her illustrations fill pages of 8.625" × 8.75", with the scene painted all the way into the bleed, while faces, page text and other key details stay well inside the safe margin. She selects the bleed option on KDP, checks the previewer, which shows where the trim falls, and orders a printed proof before publishing.

For visual books, AIBookWriter produces the print PDF with bleed for you.

Common mistakes

• Making the page the same size as the trim while art runs to the edge. There’s nothing left to trim into.
• Text in the bleed or too close to the trim. Anything there can be cut off.
• Stretching art to fill the bleed instead of extending the scene, which distorts the picture.
• Mismatched settings. Uploading a bleed PDF with the no-bleed option selected, or the reverse, gets the file flagged.
• Forgetting the cover. The full-wrap cover needs bleed on every side, and its width changes with the page count.