Crossword book generator for Amazon KDP

What kind of crossword this makes

Not the dense newspaper kind, where every square is checked and the setter needs a dictionary of obscurities to make it close. These are themed crosswords — 8 to 22 answers on one subject, laid out in the open, interlocking shape that KDP crossword books actually use, with a plain-language clue for each. A solver who knows the theme can finish one; a solver who does not learns the theme. That is the whole appeal of the category, and why they sell to the same readers as word search books.

Every one of the 1,460 built-in clues was written by hand for this tool, definition-style — "Reef-building sea creature", "Tradesman who cuts keys" — with no clue containing its own answer and no trivia a general reader could not reasonably know. The clue list is checked by the test suite for both of those, every build. Paste your own list as word — clue lines and your clues are used instead; a pasted word without a clue is reported by name and left out rather than given an invented one.

Grades

Grids are numbered the conventional way — one number where an answer starts, across or down — and the clue lists carry the answer length in brackets. Each puzzle draws its own answers from the theme, so a fifty-puzzle book is fifty different grids. Solutions are the filled grids, 6 to a page at the back.

What a book costs to print, and earns

Page count is title, copyright, one puzzle per page, a divider, solutions 6 to a page, and four notes pages, rounded to an even number. Printing is KDP's flat rate up to 110 pages, then about a penny a page. Royalty calculator for other prices and trims.

The rules every KDP interior has to meet

Page size equal to the trim, margins that grow with the page count, fonts embedded, 24 to 828 pages and an even count, a cover whose spine width is page count × paper thickness with nothing added. The tool lays every book out to these; if you would rather know them yourself, they are all in the guide, with the numbers.