Publishing on Kindle: Guidelines for Publishers

9.3.2 Body Text Must Use Defaults

The body text in a reflowable Kindle book (fiction and non-fiction) must be all defaults. Amazon
encourages content creators to use creative styles for headings, special paragraphs, footnotes, tables of
contents, etc., but not for body text. For guidance on using embedded fonts, refer to section 9.3.8. The
reason for this is that any styling on body text in the HTML will override the user’s preferred default
reading settings. Users report such behavior as a poor reading experience. Here are the most important
points:
 The body text font should be set in the CSS using the font-family attribute. Body text must
use the default font size (1em) and line height. Body text should not use the <font size="…">
tag or the font-size and line-height attributes in CSS.
 Body text should not be primarily bold or italicized. Selected parts of the text can be bold or
italicized for emphasis. This guideline only prohibits a book from being entirely bold, for example.
 Body text should not have an imposed font color throughout the book. If you prefer to use
imposed font color in some sections of your book, do not use too light or too dark a color. Light
colors will not display with enough contrast on devices set to white backgrounds or on E-reader
devices. Dark colors will not display well on devices set to black backgrounds. See the W3C
recommendation described here for maintaining a readable contrast ratio between text and
background colors. For grays, use colors within the hex value range of #666 to #999.
o To determine if a color falls within this range, convert your color to RGB values using a
tool such as http://hex-color.com/. Plug the resulting three numbers into the following
formula: 𝑌 = (0.2126 ∗ 𝑅) + (0.7152 ∗ 𝐺) + (0.0722 ∗ 𝐵). If the value of Y falls within a
range of 102 and 153, this color will create a good customer experience across Kindle
devices and applications.
In a book with Enhanced Typesetting enabled, Kindle readers can be sure that any text of any color
that appears above any background color will be legible. Font colors will adapt automatically to
provide sufficient contrast with either the device color theme chosen by the reader or to the
background color of any element. In the below example, the same colors (“yellow”, “black”, and
“orange”) were applied to both the font and their background container; notice how the font color
changes to provide readable contrast with the background. To learn more about Enhanced
Typesetting, see section 15.

 Body text must not have a black or white background color. Customers report this as a bad user
experience because it can create an awkward, boxy reading experience when the device

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 Publishing on Kindle: Guidelines for Publishers

background is set to a different color and because the text can become invisible when a user
changes the background color setting on their device and the font color automatically inverts.
 Body text should not have a forced font face. Make sure that you have followed guidelines in
section 9.3.8 Using Embedded Fonts. Not following these guidelines could lead to customers not
having the ability to change their preferred reading font.
 Body text must not use non-breaking spaces in place of normal spaces in between words in
paragraphs.
 Body text must not have an imposed left/right margin or padding throughout the book. If there are
paragraphs that do require left/right margin to differentiate them visually from body text, such as a
recipe list or a block quote, margins applied to these sections should be specified as percentages
rather than ems or point values.
 The following font fixes will be applied in during the upload process:
o The font size used in the majority of the content will be normalized to 1em.
o The font-family used in the majority of the content will be moved to the root tag (body
text).
o Forced font colors used in body text will be removed so the user may change the color of
the text.
9.3.3 Formatting Paragraphs
For body text, either indents or extra line spacing must be used to distinguish paragraphs for customers.
Amazon recommends using the text-indent attribute in the CSS to set indent values of no more than
4 ems for body paragraphs.
To change the space before or after each paragraph, use the margin-top or margin-bottom styles
respectively in the CSS. We recommend using em values for these attributes.

Never use the height property to control the size of elements containing text or instances of overlapping
text may occur in your book. The height property should only ever be applied to images in reflowable
books.

9.3.4 Avoid Using Fixed Values for Most Elements

Avoid using fixed values such as points and pixels for CSS properties such as font-size, width,
height, margin, padding, and text-indent. To enable rendering across various screen sizes and
resolutions, specify these values in ems or percentages.

9.3.5 Margin and Padding Formatting

When using left or right margin and padding CSS properties, specify the values in percentage (%)
instead of em units. This ensures that the margins do not grow too wide with large font sizes and impair
reading. Margins should be assigned values of 0 or greater to keep content from falling off the edge of the
screen or overlapping other content. Always set left and right margins to 0 for normal body text to allow
users the full range of margin selection using device defaults. Top/bottom margins should be specified in
ems so that spacing between paragraphs is easily distinguishable at any font or device size.

9.3.6 Drop Caps

Elements such as drop caps should be specified using percentages or relative units (positive or negative)
instead of fixed values such as points and pixels. The top of the drop cap should be aligned with the body
text. To create drop caps, Amazon recommends using the following sample CSS:

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 Publishing on Kindle: Guidelines for Publishers

Example:

p.para {
font-size: 1em;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-top: 0;
text-align: justify;
text-indent: 0;
}
@media amzn-kf8
{
span.dropcaps
{
font-weight:normal;
font-size:320%;
float:left;
margin-top:-0.3225em;
margin-bottom:-0.3245em;
}
}
@media amzn-mobi
{
span.dropcaps
{
font-size:3em;
font-weight: bold;
}
}
<p class="para"><span class="dropcaps">T</span>his is a sample

To verify that the drop caps display as intended, test the book as described in section 8.1, Testing Kindle
Books. The following is an example of a drop cap formatted using this method in a book with Enhanced
Typesetting enabled (to learn more about Enhanced Typesetting, see section 15):

Small font setting Large font setting

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 Publishing on Kindle: Guidelines for Publishers

9.3.7 Use CSS for Page Breaks

Do not insert blank lines of text to create page breaks. Use the CSS page-break-before and page-
break-after attributes. Alternatively, place each section of content that should appear after a page
break in a new HTML document.

9.3.8 Using Embedded Fonts

Kindle supports embedded fonts within the eBook. These fonts can be either Open Type (OTF) or True
Type (TTF). Kindle does not recommend the use of Type 1 (Postscript) fonts. To provide Kindle
customers with the best possible reading experience, reflowable books that use Type 1 fonts are
rendered using Kindle fonts by default. On KF8-enabled devices and applications, customers have the
option to turn publisher-provided fonts on or off.

It is the responsibility of the publisher to secure the appropriate license rights for fonts. Unless embedded
fonts are necessary to convey intent, Amazon recommends using the default set of fonts installed on
Kindle devices and applications because they have been tuned for high quality rendering.

When selecting a font, consider usability for visually impaired readers and select a simple, clear font
which will contrast well against all tablet and E-reader backgrounds.

Kindle also supports a monospaced font. Content in the following tags will be rendered in monospaced
font: <pre>, <code>, <samp>, <kbd>, <tt>, <font face="courier">, <font
face="monospace">.

With the exception of <pre>, the tags listed above do not change the text alignment. If the content in
these tags should be right-aligned, wrap the tags listed above in a <div> styled with CSS using text-
align:right.

9.3.9 Customizing Font Selection

The primary or main font in a book should be set at the <body> level. If you prefer to use additional text
styling such as bold or italics, ensure that the styles are set on the text rather than the font so that any
font that the customer selects correctly displays these styling elements. Below are examples of both
correct and incorrect implementation of customizing fonts in a Kindle book.

Incorrect HTML Code Correct HTML Code

<html> <html>
<body> <body style="font-family:PrimaryFont">

<p style="font-family:PrimaryFont"> Primary <p>Primary font content</p>

font content</p>
<p style="font-family:SecondaryFont">
<p style="font-family:SecondaryFont"> Secondary font content</p>
Secondary font content</p>
<p>Primary font content</p>
<p style="font-family:PrimaryFont"> Primary
font content</p> <p>Primary font content</p>

<p style="font-family:PrimaryFont"> Primary </body>

font content</p> </html>

</body>
</html>

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 Publishing on Kindle: Guidelines for Publishers

The same behavior can be achieved by using CSS classes as shown below.

Incorrect CSS Code Correct CSS Code

body{ body {
font-size: asize; font-family: PrimaryFont;
} font-size: asize;
}
.indent {
font-size: asize;
.indent {
font-family: PrimaryFont;
font-size: asize;
}
}
.sidebar-text {
font-family: SecondaryFont; .sidebar-text {
font-weight: bold; font-family: SecondaryFont;
} weight: bold;
}

When coding fonts, make sure that HTML tags are closed correctly to avoid an override conflict. When
there is an override conflict, the font files within the book will be intentionally removed to provide Kindle
customers with the best possible reading experience when they select the font settings.

For example:

Incorrect HTML code Correct HTML code

<html> <html>

<body style="font- <body style="font-family:PrimaryFont">

family:PrimaryFont">
<p>Primary font content</p>
<p>Primary font content</p>
<div style="font-
<div style="font- family:SecondaryFont">
family:SecondaryFont">
Secondary font content.
Secondary font content.
</div>
<div style="font-family:ThirdFont">
<div style="font-family:ThirdFont">
Third font content
Third font content
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Primary font content</p>
<p>Primary font content</p>
</body>
</body>
</html>
</html>

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