Word search book generator for Amazon KDP

What goes wrong in word search books

Word search is the biggest low-content category on Amazon, and its reviews are unforgiving about a small set of faults that are easy to make and easy for a solver to spot:

• A word appears twice. Crossing words, or the random filler letters, accidentally spell a second copy — and the answer key only marks one.
• One word hides inside another. CAT inside CATALOG in the same grid is found twice.
• Filler letters spell something rude. Random letters do this more often than you would think.
• The same list, twice. A short theme list reused across fifty puzzles produces near-identical grids.

Puzzle Press checks every grid after placing the words: each word must occur exactly once in all eight directions, nested words are removed from the list before placement (you are told which and why), filler letters are screened against a blocklist, and each puzzle draws a word list not used earlier in the book — if the theme is too small to supply enough different lists, you are warned before you download, not after. These are checks, not hopes; the same tests run on every book.

Themes, or your own words

32 built-in themes: Animals, Food & Cooking, Travel & Places, Garden & Nature, Under the Sea, Space, Christmas, Sports, Music, In the Kitchen, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine's Day, Birthdays, Weddings, American States, On the Farm, Dinosaurs, Camping, Fishing, Cars & Driving, Weather, Jobs & Careers, School Days, New Baby, Coffee & Tea, Birdwatching, Flowers, Desserts, Games Night, At the Beach. Every list is published in full at /word-lists, free to use anywhere. Or paste your own list — one per line or comma-separated — and name it; the name prints on every puzzle. Thirty to sixty on-topic words is enough for a fifty-puzzle book; each puzzle draws a different subset, and the tool warns you if the list is too short to avoid repeats or if a word is too long for the grid.

Grades

Grid size is automatic from the word list (usually 15×15 to 17×17), or set it yourself. Large print switches to 8.5 × 11 with bigger letters and a grid sized for them, the format that sells to older readers.

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.