Photo plates that look like a Picador hardback. Family-tree foldouts. Letters and journal entries set as documents, not body text. Memoir is the most layout-sensitive non-fiction we format. We treat it that way.
Drop your manuscript and we run the same 30+ checks Amazon does, line by line, in under a minute. You get a clear /100 score, every failure point flagged, and the exact fix for each one. Whether you book us, do it yourself, or hire someone else — running this first means you don't pay for a service you didn't need.
"Will my memoir pass KDP review?"
Accepts .docx, .pdf, .epub · up to 200 MB · files never stored, deleted after 24h
Run the KDP Readiness Score →The format choice that matters most. We can deviate if your project needs it — but here's the working benchmark.
Acceptable alternatives: 6×9 in or 5.25×8 in · all are KDP-approved trim sizes
5.5×8.5 is the modern memoir trim — Hisham Matar, Maggie O'Farrell, Helen Macdonald all sit here. It's slightly taller and wider than a novel, gives photo plates a generous home, and signals 'literary memoir' rather than 'mass-market fiction'.
Memoirs typically have 30-80 image plates — all pre-flighted at 300 DPI, B&W-optimised for print interior, sRGB for EPUB.
The six things that make memoir formatting different from generic novel formatting.
Trad memoirs use 8 or 16-page photo plate inserts on coated paper. KDP doesn't do coated inserts, so we integrate plates into the text block at 300 DPI with framing that respects the photo.
Set in a distinct face (often a slab or a typewriter) so the reader knows it's a document, not your narrator's voice. Indented block, dated header, source attribution.
Set as 300 DPI image plates. Foldout family trees flattened to a verso/recto spread. Place-name maps redrawn vector-first for crispness at print.
Italic, indented, attributed below the quote in small caps — Picador-style. Permissions log kept for anything still in copyright.
Author photo placed at the standard back-matter slot, B&W treatment for print interior, full-colour for the dust-jacket if you go hardback.
If your manuscript names living people, we'll flag any layout choice (pull-quote, dedicated chapter heading, photo caption) that could be read as a public claim — for you to confirm before press.
Whatever the book type, this is what every order includes.
KDP-compliant margins, mirrored gutters scaled to your page count, 0.125-inch bleed where needed, embedded fonts, 300 DPI image pre-flight, semantic page-break logic.
Optimised for every Kindle device including phone reading. Clean chapter recognition, working drop caps, scene-break ornaments, properly-linked TOC, semantic ordered/unordered lists.
Spine width auto-calculated from your final page count. Cover supplied to KDP-template spec for paperback, hardback or both. Full-bleed art tested against KDP's print profile.
Side-by-side viewer to comment on specific pages. Most books need none; complex non-fiction sometimes needs both. Additional rounds £19 each.
If KDP rejects your file for a formatting reason, we fix it free. We've never had a rejection — but the guarantee is the principle.
You send a Word file (or PDF, Google Docs, RTF, ODT, EPUB, plain text). We send back finished files. No software to install, no learning curve.
From £69 for print-ready PDF. £119 for print + Kindle. Picture-book and complete packages from £179.
Order your formatting → ← All book types