It is possible to upload a flawless interior and a perfect cover and still have a book held up — not by the files, but by the words around them. KDP reviews your metadata: the title and subtitle, the author name, the description, the keywords and the categories. These are how readers find the book and how Amazon understands what it is, and they have rules. The mistakes below are the ones that most often delay an otherwise-finished book.
Promotional phrases in the title or subtitle
The title and subtitle are for naming and describing the book, not advertising it. Words like "bestseller", "free", "#1", "sale" or "discounted" do not belong there, and a subtitle padded with search terms — A Novel of Mystery Suspense Thriller Crime Detective — reads as the keyword-stuffing it is. KDP can hold or remove books whose titles carry promotional claims or repeated keywords.
Keep the title and subtitle to what is actually printed on the cover. Which leads to the rule that catches more authors than any other:
A title that does not match the cover
The metadata title must match the title on your cover and title page exactly — same words, same subtitle, same author name. A book called The Long Field on the cover but entered as The Long Field: A Heartwarming Family Saga in the metadata is a mismatch, and mismatches get flagged. Decide the exact title once and let it be identical everywhere: cover, title page, and every metadata field.
Contact details or pricing in the description
The book description is sales copy, but KDP keeps it clean of certain things: no web addresses, email addresses or phone numbers; no references to pricing or promotions ("on sale this week"); no requests for reviews; and no pointing readers to other shops. These are common reasons a description is rejected or quietly stripped.
Write the description to do one job — make a reader want the book — using up to a few thousand characters of plain, well-formed copy. Light formatting (a little bold, some line breaks) is allowed and helps it read; contact details and price talk are not.
Keyword slots used badly
KDP gives you a set of keyword fields, and they reward real search phrases — the words a reader would actually type — not a repetition of your title or a list of famous authors. Putting another author's name or a trademarked series in your keywords ("for fans of [famous series]") is against the rules and can be acted on. Repeating words you have already used in the title wastes the slot, because KDP already indexes those.
Treat each slot as a different way in: a genre, a theme, a reader situation, a setting. Distinct phrases reach more searches than variations on one.
Misleading or careless categories
Categories place your book on Amazon's shelves. Choosing ones that do not fit — a gentle cosy mystery filed under graphic horror to chase a smaller, easier chart — is the kind of thing that gets books removed, and it puts the book in front of the wrong readers, who leave the reviews wrong placement earns. Choose the categories that honestly describe the book, even where a less accurate one looks less crowded.
The rule underneath all of them
Every mistake above is a version of one principle: metadata must describe the real book, honestly, and agree with itself. The title matches the cover; the description describes the actual contents; the keywords and categories are true. KDP's metadata rules are, almost entirely, enforcement of that single idea — so when you are unsure whether something is allowed, ask whether it is accurate, and you will usually have your answer.
A finished book deserves metadata as considered as its pages. It is the quietest part of publishing and one of the easiest to rush — and, fortunately, one of the easiest to get right once you know that accurate is the whole test.
Where Folio Format fits
Some of this can be caught before you ever reach KDP. Folio Format checks the title and description you write in the studio against common metadata triggers — promotional phrases such as "bestseller", contact details, over-length text and keyword-stuffing — and flags them as you work, as part of being designed to help you catch common publishing issues before upload. The keyword and category choices still happen in KDP's own dashboard, against the honesty rule above; the point is simply that the text you carry across from the author's composing room has already had a second read.
Last checked 26 May 2026. Always confirm current Amazon KDP and IngramSpark specifications before uploading final files. Folio Format is designed to help users export KDP-ready files and catch common publishing issues before upload; it makes no claim about platform acceptance.