# What is a book spine?

The spine is the outside edge of a book where the pages are gathered and bound. Its width is the page count times the thickness of the paper: 0.002252 in per page on KDP's white paper and 0.0025 in on cream. KDP prints spine text only on books of more than 79 pages.

Last reviewed 30 October 2026. Web page: https://chapbook.ink/glossary/spine/

## What it means in practice

The spine belongs to the cover file, between the back and front panels, so the cover cannot be finished until the page count is. Change the interior or the paper and the cover has to be made again.

Keep spine text at least 0.0625 in from the spine's edges, and at least 7 point, as KDP asks. Text on the front and back must stay out of the spine area entirely. Standard color paper prints from 72 pages, so a shorter color book has to use another paper.

## How Chapbook uses it

The [Paperback cover](/manual/launch-and-export/#make-the-paperback-cover) row sizes the spine from the interior's own page count and the paper you pick. The title and your name go on the spine only when KDP allows it and the spine is wide enough for type of 7 point. The preflight report gives the width, and says why it is blank when it is.

The free [KDP spine and cover template](/tools/kdp-spine-calculator/) works out the same sizes for any page count.

## Made with Chapbook: Slow Money

Slow Money: What a family bakery taught me about pricing, patience and staying small, by Rosa Almeida. Nonfiction book, 9,273 words, 37 pages. A sample generated from one brief and exported unedited; it is not a customer's book. Read every page: https://chapbook.ink/examples/bakery/

The brief:

> Twenty years of running a two-shop family bakery: the decisions about price, growth and hours that kept it small and solvent. Promise: A clear-eyed account of how a small business stays small on purpose, with the numbers and rules of thumb that made it work. Reader: A small-business owner weighing a second location, a price rise, or a loan. Voice: First person, narrative chapters that each end with what the author would tell a friend; a fictional family, bakery and town; no invented statistics beyond the bakery's own illustrative numbers.

The outline the planner proposed:

1. Prologue: The Second Oven (585 words)
2. The First Price Rise (1,250 words)
3. The Loan We Did Not Take (1,101 words)
4. The Second Shop, and Why Not a Third (1,186 words)
5. Hours, and the Cost of Being Open (1,085 words)
6. The Wholesale Account We Let Go (1,142 words)
7. Hiring Family and Paying Them Properly (1,216 words)
8. What the Numbers Said Each January (1,179 words)
9. Epilogue: Small on Purpose (478 words)

## Questions

### How wide is the spine of a 104-page book?

On KDP's white paper at 6 × 9 in, a 104-page book has a spine of 0.234 in, and its full cover is 12.484 × 9.25 in with bleed. The paper you choose changes the width, so check KDP's calculator before you print.

### Can a thin book have spine text?

Not at KDP. KDP prints spine text only on books of more than 79 pages. Below that, the spine stays blank.

## Sources

- [Amazon KDP, “Create a Paperback Cover”](https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201953020)
- [Amazon KDP, “Paperback Submission Guidelines”](https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201857950)