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Have feedback? Can't find your answer in our Help pages?
Contact UsFixing errors or formatting with book descriptions
If your book description isn't displaying correctly, here's how you can solve any issues, whether it's HTML related or the formatting is off.
Troubleshooting book description errors
If you get an error, such as "Description may not contain invisible characters" or "Please fix the highlighted issue," this means there are hidden or unsupported characters in the HTML source code. This can happen when copying and pasting content directly from a document into KDP. Sometimes it'll copy over unsupported HTML characters.
To fix this, we recommend manually typing in your book description. Alternatively, you can review the source code of your book description and ensure you only use supported HTML from our Help article.
To review the source code of your book description:
- Go to your KDP Bookshelf.
- Click the ellipsis button ("...") next to the book you want to edit.
- Select Edit [book] details.
- Scroll down to the Description section.
- Click Source.
- Review the HTML against our supported characters.
Solving formatting issues
If your book description isn't appearing as you intended on Amazon, it's most likely due to HTML used in the source code. Even if you didn't manually add any, this can happen if you copy & pasted directly from another document into KDP.
For example, if you notice all your content is bolded when it shouldn't be, check the source code. Are there Header tags being used, where they shouldn't be? Is there an opening tag and a closing tag to all formatted text?
For a full list of supported HTML, please review this list.
