KDP Content Guidelines: A Pre-Publish Checklist

KDP will not politely rewrite a stuffed title or a “#1 bestseller” claim for you. Content guidelines and metadata guidelines are the rules Amazon publishes for what may appear in your book content, cover, and product details. Break them and you risk delayed publishing, suppressed discoverability, or a title that comes down after it was live.

This post is a pre-publish checklist of the rule families that actually block or damage listings—not every line of every help page, and not legal advice about third-party IP. Use it as a last pass before you click Publish. For an automated read of title, subtitle, description, and the seven keyword boxes against the same public rule families, use the free KDP Listing Checker.

Not affiliated with Amazon. Amazon, Kindle, KDP, and related marks are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. SmartKDP is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon. Rules below paraphrase public KDP help pages. Confirm against the live pages before you publish—wording and enforcement change.

Not an Amazon-verified result. Any automated check (including ours) is a reading of published help pages, not Amazon’s review decision. A clean report is not approval.

What “content guidelines” means on KDP

KDP maintains overlapping layers authors mix up:

Layer	What it governs	Primary help pages
Content Guidelines	Book content, cover art, and product description at a policy level	Content Guidelines
Metadata Guidelines	Title, subtitle, series, description, author, keywords, categories, cover match, ISBN	Metadata Guidelines for Books
Keywords help	How to fill the seven backend keyword boxes	Make Your Book More Discoverable with Keywords
Description help	Description craft + supported HTML	Write a Book Description

The durable checklist below is organized by rule family—the categories Amazon’s metadata page uses—so you can scan fields in dependency order: identity fields first, then description and keywords, then cover match.

1. Title / subtitle / series  →  identity, no promo/rank stuffing
2. Author / contributors      →  real people who worked on this book
3. Description                →  pitch the book; no ads, reviews, contact info
4. Keywords                   →  accurate phrases; same ban families
5. Categories + audience      →  honest fit, not manipulation
6. Cover                      →  matches metadata; not a clone of another book

1. Title and subtitle

Rule of thumb: the title field is only the actual title as it appears on the cover. Subtitle is optional additional content information. Title and subtitle together must be fewer than 200 characters, and the subtitle follows the same guidelines as the title.

Prohibited patterns (metadata guidelines)

Amazon’s title list is explicit. Strip these before you finalize the wrap:

Family	Examples of what to remove
Generic keyword stuffing	Repeating “notebook,” “journal,” “gifts,” “books,” etc. as filler
Other people’s brands	Unauthorized other titles, authors, or trademarked terms
Fake involvement	Suggesting a person or entity contributed who did not
Sales-rank claims	“Bestselling,” “#1,” rank language—even if true elsewhere
Ads / promotions	“Free,” other promo language in the name
Invalid placeholders	Only punctuation; or only “unknown,” “n/a,” “blank,” “none,” etc.
HTML	Tags in title/subtitle fields

Collections: if you publish multiple stories as one book, metadata and cover should honestly say so (e.g. collection/compilation language) rather than looking like a single story.

Print: title must appear on the cover (spine or front) and match title-setup metadata.

2. Series

Series name, when used, must follow book title guidelines. Do not jam book titles or keyword spam into the series field. Low-content and public-domain books have series eligibility limits—check KDP’s series help if that is your product type.

3. Author and contributors

• Primary author may be a pen name if it does not impair buying decisions.
• Contributors fields are for people who worked on that specific book (editors, illustrators, translators, etc.)—not search keywords.
• Translations: credit translator and original author as KDP requires.
• No HTML in author fields.

4. Description

Think of the description as a short pitch for the book’s content, not a landing page for your marketing stack.

KDP says it cannot accept (among other items)

From the metadata guidelines’ description section:

• Pornographic, obscene, or offensive content
• Phone numbers, physical addresses, email addresses, or website URLs
• Reviews, quotes, or testimonials
• Requests for customer reviews
• Advertisements, watermarks, or promotional material
• Time-sensitive information (tour dates, seminar schedules, etc.)
• Availability, price, alternative ordering information (other sites, “order now” patterns)
• Spoiler information for BMVD-style listings
• Keyword/tag stuffing as description content

HTML is allowed only within what KDP supports—see the description help page and our post on HTML tags that work. There is a character budget for the description field (HTML tags count); stay inside it rather than pasting novel-length back matter into the product description.

Practical test: if a sentence could appear on a paper back cover without a shopping cart, it probably belongs. If it is a promo, a review request, a URL, or a price, it probably does not.

5. Keywords (the seven backend boxes)

Keywords must describe this book. Amazon’s metadata guidelines prohibit keyword references to:

• Other authors
• Books by other authors
• Sales rank (e.g. “bestselling”)
• Advertisements or promotions (e.g. “free”)
• Anything unrelated to the book’s content
• HTML tags

The keywords help page also steers you toward accurate 2–3 word phrases and away from misleading or manipulative terms. Do not use the boxes to re-run the title word-for-word if that wastes the only discovery surface you control after publish (title is hard to change; keywords are editable).

For slot craft and the byte-budget pattern observed in the form, see The 7 KDP Backend Keyword Boxes, Explained and KDP Keyword Mistakes.

6. Categories and primary audience

• Choose up to three categories that fit the book’s central content for the marketplace and audience you selected.
• Inaccurate categories that mislead or manipulate customers are explicitly rejected as a customer-experience problem.
• Answer the sexually explicit cover/title question honestly—it affects children’s category eligibility.
• Reading age is optional but matters for children’s discoverability when you claim that audience.

7. Cover image match

Metadata guidelines: title, subtitle, author name, and series information on the cover should match the corresponding metadata fields. Covers that mislead by closely resembling another book’s layout, color scheme, fonts, and/or images are not allowed.

Run this check after the name is locked, not before—renaming after the wrap is designed is pure waste.

Field checklist (print this)

Use as a final pass. Every “no” is a fix before publish.

Title / subtitle / series

• Title string equals cover (and spine if printed there)
• Subtitle is real content detail, not a second keyword dump
• Combined title + subtitle under the published character limit
• No bestseller/rank language
• No free/promo language
• No unauthorized author, title, or trademark references
• No HTML or placeholder junk
• Series name follows title rules (if used)

Description

• Sells the book’s content, not a sale event
• No URLs, emails, phone numbers, or physical addresses
• No review quotes, testimonials, or “please leave a review”
• No price, stock, or “buy elsewhere” ordering info
• No time-sensitive promo tour dates
• Only supported HTML; within the description character limit

Keywords

• Seven boxes are accurate descriptors
• No other authors or other books
• No rank or promo phrases
• No unrelated traffic bait
• No HTML

Categories / audience / cover

• Categories fit the actual book
• Explicit-content and reading-age answers are honest
• Cover text matches metadata fields
• Cover is not a look-alike of another book’s design

How to use the KDP Listing Checker

1. Open the KDP Listing Checker.
2. Paste your title, subtitle, description, and keyword boxes as they will appear in KDP.
3. Read findings by field. Prefer fixes that remove banned families (promo, rank, other brands, contact info), not synonym tricks.
4. Treat a clean report as “our rules found nothing”—not Amazon approval. Re-check live help pages for edge cases.
5. After metadata is clean, confirm cover match and manuscript quality separately (file preflight is a different gate).

For full listing order (including fields this checklist only touches lightly), see A KDP Listing Optimization Checklist.

What this checklist does not cover

• Interior file quality (fonts, margins, reflow) — Guide to Kindle Content Quality and print formatting help
• Copyright / IP ownership of the manuscript — separate from metadata stuffing
• Trademark clearance of a series brand — use Book Trademark Checker and counsel; different system
• Review policy for soliciting reviews off-listing — Amazon’s customer review rules

Date every policy claim against the help page you used. This post was written against KDP metadata guidelines as last read in the tooling corpus (sources verified in-repo as of 2026-08-04); always open the live page before a high-stakes publish.

FAQ

What are KDP content guidelines?

They are Amazon’s published rules for acceptable book content, covers, and related product information. Metadata guidelines are the field-level rules for titles, descriptions, keywords, and more. Both sit under KDP’s program policies help section.

Can I put “bestselling” in my title if I was a bestseller?

KDP’s metadata guidelines prohibit reference to sales rank (with “bestselling” as the example) in the title field. Treat rank claims as banned in title, subtitle, and keywords regardless of whether the claim is true somewhere else.

Can I put my website in the book description?

Metadata guidelines list website URLs among information KDP cannot accept in the description. Put site calls-to-action in the interior or other allowed channels, not in the product description field.

Are reviews allowed in the description?

No. Reviews, quotes/testimonials, and requests for customer reviews are listed among information KDP cannot accept in the description.

Do keywords have the same rules as the title?

They share major ban families (other authors/books, rank, promos, unrelated terms, HTML). Keywords also require accuracy to the book’s content. Title has extra constraints (cover match, generic stuffing, placeholders).

Will the Listing Checker guarantee Amazon accepts my book?

No. It is a heuristic and rule-based screen of published help-page patterns. Amazon reviews more than metadata. See the tool’s methodology and disclaimer.

What should I fix first if I am short on time?

Remove rank and promo language from title/subtitle/keywords, strip URLs and review asks from the description, then fix cover–metadata mismatch. Those are high-frequency, high-visibility failures.

Related tools and guides

• KDP Listing Checker — free pass over title, description, and keywords
• KDP Description Generator — draft a description after the rules are clear
• A KDP Listing Optimization Checklist — full field order
• KDP Keyword Mistakes — keyword-specific ban patterns
• Which HTML Tags KDP Supports — description formatting
• All free KDP tools

Disclaimer

Amazon, Kindle, KDP, and related marks are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. SmartKDP is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon. This article paraphrases public KDP help for education. It is not legal advice and not an Amazon review decision. Always confirm current wording in your KDP account and on live help pages before you publish or appeal a decision.