Four ways to make a KDP puzzle book, compared
People arrive at puzzle books from four directions: a monthly subscription suite, a free browser generator, doing it by hand in Word or Canva, or this tool. Each is the right answer for somebody. Here is what each one actually costs and produces, so you can pick on purpose. Claims about Puzzle Press are checkable on this site; claims about the other routes are kept to what they say about themselves, quoted where it matters.
The free generators have got better, and this page used to describe them as making one puzzle at a time. Several now bulk-generate a whole set with answer keys, free, with no watermark and no account — PuzzleForge is the clearest example. So the line between them and this tool is not how many puzzles you get. It is whether what comes out is puzzles or a book.
| Subscription suites | Free browser generators | By hand | Puzzle Press | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay | Monthly or yearly, for as long as you publish. Book Bolt Pro: $19.99/month billed annually (12 Sept 2026). | Nothing. The good ones carry ads instead, and ask for no account. | Your time — a 50-puzzle book is a day or two the first time. | Free to use; $19 once removes the watermark. No subscription. 30-day refund. |
| What comes out | Puzzle pages, usually as images or a PDF, to place into a book template. | A set of puzzles with answer keys — often a browser print to PDF, which is why PuzzleForge's own FAQ tells you to "choose Save as PDF as the printer". No title page, no copyright page, no page numbers, no even page count. You assemble the book. | Whatever you build. | The complete interior PDF — title, copyright, puzzles, solutions, notes pages, page numbers — and the matching cover. |
| KDP geometry | Templates for common trims; margins are usually yours to check. | Page size, yes — commonly three of them. Inside margin by page count, bleed, and KDP's 24-page minimum and even page count are on you, and a print-to-PDF will not embed fonts the way KDP asks. | You look every rule up and apply it, on both page sides. | Page size, gutter by page count, gutter side, bleed, embedded fonts, even page count — applied automatically and shown on screen. |
| The cover | Separate cover designer, usually included; spine width entered by hand. | No. | KDP's own cover calculator plus a design tool. | Full wrap generated from the book's own page count — spine width, bleed and barcode area worked out. |
| Puzzle correctness | Varies by tool; rarely stated. | Rarely stated either way. Duplicate words and two-solution sudoku are the classic one-star review, and no free tool I can find says what it checks. | Only if you check every grid twice. | Every word once (checked in all eight directions), no nested words in a grid, filler screened, every sudoku one solution, every maze one route — by construction. |
| Grading | Sometimes, per puzzle. | Per puzzle difficulty, not a graded book. | Manual. | Graded books: easy at the front to expert at the back, level printed on each puzzle. |
| Where your words go | Their servers. | The best of them are client-side too, and say so. Check the one you use. | Your computer. | Your browser. Nothing typed is uploaded — terms. |
| Best for | Publishers making many book types (journals, planners, colouring) who want one login for everything. | Puzzles for a worksheet, a newsletter, or a book you are happy to lay out yourself. If you do not need a cover and do not mind assembling the interior, a free generator is the right answer and you should use one. | A one-off book where you want every page unique. | Puzzle books specifically — word search, sudoku, mazes, criss-cross, themed crosswords — from zero to an uploadable file. |
For scale: Book Bolt, the best-known suite, listed its Pro plan at $19.99 a month billed annually ($239.88 a year; shown as "$0.66/day") and Premium at $29.99 a month billed annually, each with a 3-day free trial, on its pricing page on 12 September 2026. Puzzle, crossword and sudoku tools are listed under Pro. Prices change; check the page. Puzzle Press is $19 once — less than one month of the plan that includes puzzle tools.
When a subscription is the better deal
If you publish a spread of low-content books — planners, journals, colouring books, puzzle books — and put out several a month, a suite with research tools, templates and a cover designer earns its fee. Puzzle Press does one thing. If puzzle books are a sideline in a bigger catalogue, the suite probably wins.
If puzzle books are the thing, the arithmetic goes the other way. A subscription is paid for every month you are publishing, including the months you are only fixing typos — Book Bolt's annual Pro plan is $239.88 a year; $19 once is $19 once. And the suite still leaves you to assemble the book and check the geometry, which is the part that gets manuscripts rejected.
When a free generator is enough
For a single puzzle — a classroom worksheet, a party favour, a page in a newsletter — a free generator is exactly right, and Puzzle Press is overkill. The trouble starts at fifty: fifty images to place, fifty solutions to keep in order, page numbers, a divider, four notes pages, an even count, the gutter swapping sides, fonts embedded. That is not puzzle work; it is layout work, and it is where the free route stops being free.
When by hand is right
A hand-made book can be anything: illustrated mazes, themed pages, a story between puzzles. Generators cannot do that and this one does not try. If you go this way, the guide has every KDP rule with the numbers, and the margin and spine calculators give you the exact figures for your page count. They are free and do not need the tool.
What Puzzle Press does not do
Dense newspaper-style crosswords, cryptograms, dot-to-dot, colouring pages: no. Themed crosswords with clues and criss-cross fill-ins: yes. Illustrated or themed page designs: no. Journals, planners, anything that is not a puzzle book: no. Cover artwork beyond a clean typographic wrap with a puzzle motif: no — many publishers make their cover elsewhere and use the spine figure from here. It makes word search, sudoku, maze, criss-cross and themed crossword books that are correct and print-ready, and stops there.
See it rather than read about it
There is a finished book of each kind on the site, made with the tool and not touched afterwards — and the tool itself is free to try, no sign-up.
Make a book freeWord search book (PDF) · sudoku · mazes · a cover · 60-second video