One of the most popular ways to publish many works these days is through e-book platforms like the Kindle, or rather, the Kindle Direct Publishing (abbreviated to KDP) division of Amazon.

It’s simple, it’s relatively cheap, and helps you keep a decent amount of any profits that you make on your published works.

However, KDP has a standard to meet when it comes to publishing work. You can’t simply submit a single page with 10 words on it, after all. That would be a waste!

So, what exactly is that number? Is it a high one? Is it difficult to meet?

Well, that’s what this guide is here to show and explain to you!

The number of pages that you need to submit to KDP might be 24, but there’s a lot that can affect that minimum size limit.

That’s what we’ll explain here, along with other statistics that you may find helpful when it comes to uploading and publishing through Amazon’s publishing platform.

Minimum Page Number For Kindle Books

So, as we established in the introduction, the minimum number of pages that you can submit a work for uploading is usually around 24 pages, but how exactly is that determined?

Well, KDP has a system that calculates the number of pages needed for a book to be sold, either in a physical format or on Kindle.

Based on the overall size of the manuscript’s files, KDP then estimates how many pages you will need for your manuscript, with them rounding up to the next number if or when it’s necessary for your manuscript file.

So, technically at least, this means that 24 isn’t the minimum number of pages that you need to publish.

But considering that there is a minimum threshold for all submitted work to meet, it’s virtually impossible to submit a file that would fill less than 24 pages. So, that is the effective minimum.

Maximum Page Number?

The fact that there is a minimum file size quota for KDP-published works might make you wonder what exactly the maximum file size is in terms of sheer page numbers.

Well, very interestingly, there isn’t a stated number by Kindle Direct Publishing themselves, but they are usually limited by the options that you can print to book in.

In this way, you aren’t so much limited by the file size of your manuscript, but by what your printed options are.

Generally speaking, the options for smaller books have larger maximum page numbers, with the largest printed size being 828, while other options have 776 or 600 being the maximum.

(For those still curious, there is no printed option for kindle books that is smaller than 24 pages, regardless of ink and formatting options.)

Maximum Pages For E-Books

However, if you’re not printing your books physically, and you aren’t limited by a physical page count, how big can you go with your Kindle book? That’s a little trickier, as there has been no stated maximum size of an electronic book.

However, if we’re still measuring submissions to KDP by their file sizes, that might give us at least a ballpark to work within.

While the file size limit largely seems to apply to images for book covers, KDP does have a maximum file size of 650 MB of data. Any larger, the file will not upload to the publishing platform.

Translating this into a pure manuscript format would mean that the absolute maximum number of pages that you could submit in 650 MB would be roughly 8,000 pages.

Now, that is an insanely large number of pages, especially for a single uploaded novel.

To put that number into perspective, a book with 8,000 pages would almost certainly be the single largest novel to ever be published, and would still be in the top 5 longest novels if we were to include novel series as whole entries!

It’s not much of a surprise that Amazon doesn’t state this outright. Most novels will be a fraction of that amount, so it makes sense that there would be no need to set a limit for a single upload!

Of course, there are other aspects of a book that can take up this much space. Books that contain audio or images can often reach this file size, which cuts into your overall page total.

How Long Are Kindle Books On Average?

So, after discussing those mind-bending numbers, let’s take a look at a more realistic statistic that you’ll likely be thinking about when it comes to uploading work to Kindle: how long are kindle books in general?

Well, many kindle books are also printed into physical books, so are often limited by the number of pages that physical books are.

Generally speaking, the average length for a Kindle book can be anywhere from 40,000 to 75,000. However, we can still often divide Kindle books into average group sizes by the genres that they inhabit.

After all, some genres are known to be much shorter than others for their particular subject matter, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, and so on.

For Example:

• A novel will often be slightly longer, often averaging out at around 80,000 to 100,000 words.
• How-To books are best when kept brief and to the point, so will often be much shorter overall.
• Graphic novels and comics, an increasingly popular format for stories and e-books
• Short Stories and Poetry often have much smaller word counts. The sweet spot is anywhere from 2,500 to 20,000 for a short story, and poetry is best divided into separate pages, rather than word count.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Books Can You Publish On Kindle? 

Amazon has not stated an upper limit to the number of works that you can publish on kindle, so it seems like you can publish effectively to your heart’s content.

The only thing that you may need to keep track of is that KDP only allows for 500 submitted works to be allowed in the draft/submitted stage, so try not to front-load your submissions!

What Genre of E-Book Sells The Best On Kindle?

While we don’t exactly recommend simply tailoring your work to what sells the best on Kindle, it can certainly be helpful to understand what sort of books are often bought and published on Kindle.

Generally speaking, the most popular types of books that you’ll find sold on Kindle are books on spirituality or religion, followed closely by Memoirs and Biographies, then followed books and works on business and finances, self-help and improvement, then health and food.

As you can see, these works cover a wide range of topics, so there’s plenty of material to work with here!

Final Notes

So, there you have it! 24 Pages is the minimum size that your Kindle book will be, at least in terms of pure page count.

However, when it comes down to it, many works will often exceed this number, so it’s not a figure that you’ll have to worry about when it comes to your published pieces.

In the end, a book is as long as it needs to be, so try and write to a length that just feels right for yourself and the genre that you’re working on. You’ll often find that you’re closer to the sweet spot than you think!