How to Create a Kindle Book from PDF or Word Document
You have a manuscript — maybe a Word document, maybe a PDF — and you want it on the Kindle Store. Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) makes self-publishing surprisingly straightforward, but the formatting process trips up most first-time authors. This guide walks you through it start to finish.
What Amazon KDP Actually Accepts
As of 2026, KDP accepts EPUB, DOCX, KPF (Kindle Package Format), and PDF for upload. MOBI is deprecated — Amazon stopped accepting new MOBI uploads in 2023. The best path for most authors: upload EPUB or DOCX.
EPUB produces the most consistent results because it is the format Amazon internally converts to its own KF8/AZW3 format. DOCX works well for simple manuscripts but can produce unexpected formatting in complex layouts.
Path 1: Starting from a Word Document (Recommended)
Word documents give you the most control over the final result. The key insight most people miss: your Word formatting directly determines the Kindle formatting. Sloppy Word formatting = sloppy Kindle book.
Before converting anything, clean up your manuscript. Use Heading 1 style for chapter titles — this is how Kindle generates the table of contents. Use Normal style for body text. Remove all manual spacing and use paragraph styles instead.
Step 1: Format Your Manuscript Properly
Use page breaks (Insert → Page Break) before each chapter heading — never hit Enter 20 times to start a new page. Apply consistent font sizes through styles, not manual formatting. Remove headers, footers, and page numbers — Kindle handles these automatically.
For fiction, keep it simple: chapter headings in Heading 1, body text in Normal, italic for emphasis. For non-fiction, you can use Heading 2 and Heading 3 for subheadings, and they will appear in the Kindle table of contents.
Step 2: Prepare Your Cover
Kindle covers need to be 2560 x 1600 pixels minimum (1.6:1 ratio). Save as JPG or TIFF, under 50 MB. Your cover appears as a thumbnail on Amazon — make sure the title is readable at small sizes. Bold fonts and high contrast work best.
Do not embed the cover in your manuscript. Upload it separately through KDP. If you need a professional cover but have a limited budget, tools like Canva have Kindle cover templates that produce solid results.
Step 3: Convert to EPUB
Convert your DOCX to EPUB using iformat.io's DOCX to EPUB converter for simple manuscripts. For more control over styling and metadata, use Calibre (free) — it lets you customize CSS, edit the table of contents, and set metadata.
For a detailed walkthrough of the conversion process, see our DOCX to EPUB formatting guide and manuscript to EPUB publishing guide.
Step 4: Preview with Kindle Previewer
Download Kindle Previewer (free from Amazon). Open your EPUB file and see exactly how it looks on every Kindle device — Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Fire, Kindle app on phone and tablet. Check chapter breaks, images, table of contents, and formatting.
This step catches 90% of problems before you publish. Pay special attention to the table of contents, first chapter appearance, and any images. If something looks wrong, fix it in your DOCX and reconvert.
Step 5: Upload to KDP and Publish
Create a free account at kdp.amazon.com. Click Create New Title → Kindle eBook. Fill in title, author, description, and keywords. Upload your EPUB and cover image. Set your price and publish.
Amazon reviews new titles within 24-72 hours. Once approved, your book appears on the Kindle Store worldwide. You can update the content anytime — just upload a new version through the KDP dashboard.
Path 2: Starting from a PDF (Harder but Possible)
PDFs use fixed layout — every element has an exact position on the page. Kindle uses reflowable text that adapts to screen size. These two approaches are fundamentally incompatible, which is why PDF-to-Kindle conversion is messier.
The best approach: convert PDF to DOCX first using iformat.io's PDF to Word converter, then clean up the formatting and follow Path 1. Direct PDF upload to KDP produces fixed-layout books that look odd on smaller Kindle screens.
PDF to Kindle Workflow
Step 1: Convert PDF to DOCX. Step 2: Open in Word, fix formatting issues — reconnect heading styles, remove extra line breaks, reposition images. Step 3: Convert cleaned DOCX to EPUB. Step 4: Preview and publish.
What most people overlook: scanned PDFs (which are essentially images of pages) produce terrible results. You need OCR first to extract the text, then significant manual cleanup. For scanned manuscripts, it is often faster to retype than to fix a bad conversion.
Common Formatting Problems and Fixes
Missing table of contents: Kindle generates it from Heading 1 styles. If you manually typed chapter headings without using styles, the TOC will be empty. Fix: apply Heading 1 to each chapter title.
Images disappearing or misplaced: Embed images inline with text, not floating. Resize to under 2 MB each. Use JPG for photos, PNG for graphics with text. Center them in their own paragraph.
Fonts looking wrong: Kindle readers override your fonts with their own. Do not rely on specific fonts for your layout. Use bold and italic for emphasis, not font changes.
Pricing Your Kindle Book
KDP offers two royalty tiers. 70% royalty for books priced $2.99-$9.99 (delivery costs deducted). 35% royalty for books outside that range. Most self-published authors price between $2.99 and $4.99 for fiction, $4.99 and $9.99 for non-fiction.
Key Takeaways
Start from DOCX if possible — it converts to Kindle best. Use Heading 1 for chapter titles (this makes or breaks the table of contents). Always preview with Kindle Previewer before publishing. PDF to Kindle requires converting to DOCX first and cleaning up formatting. Amazon accepts EPUB, DOCX, and KPF — MOBI is deprecated. Cover must be 2560x1600 pixels minimum.