White or cream paper?
Two options, and most authors pick one at upload without thinking about it. It is worth two minutes, because the paper changes how the book reads, how thick it is, and — through the spine — what your cover has to be.
What each one is for
Cream — some printers call it natural — is the traditional stock for novels and most narrative nonfiction. It is a warm off-white. Under a lamp it is easier on the eye than a bright page: less glare, and less contrast between the type and the paper behind it. It also makes a book feel like a book. Pick up almost any novel on your shelf and the paper is cream.
White is standard for textbooks, workbooks, cookbooks, photography and anything with images. It holds detail — hairline rules, small type, screened halftones — and it does not tint a picture. Reference books are white for the same reason: the page is being scanned for a fact, not read straight through for an hour.
If your book is words on a page, cream. If your book has pictures in it, white. That settles most of the decision. The rest of this guide is what hangs off it.
Cream is thicker than white
Here is the part nobody warns you about. Paper bulk is the thickness of a single page, and cream bulks more than white.
At Amazon KDP:
- White: 0.002252 inches per page
- Cream: 0.0025 inches per page
Same manuscript, same trim, same page count, and a physically thicker book. On a 300-page novel:
- White: 300 x 0.002252 = 0.6756 inches
- Cream: 300 x 0.0025 = 0.75 inches
That is 0.0744 inches of extra spine — a shade under 2 mm — purely from the stock. It works out to about 0.025 inches per hundred pages, and it accumulates: a 500-page book on cream is more than an eighth of an inch thicker than the identical book on white.
Which means it changes your cover
A spine is page count times paper bulk, so changing the paper changes the multiplier, and a changed spine moves the whole wrap. See How to calculate spine width for the arithmetic printer by printer.
Switching that 300-page book from white to cream widens the wrap by 0.0744 inches. The front panel shifts right by the same amount, which puts a centered title visibly off-center and pushes artwork toward the fold. The error is far larger than any printer's trimming tolerance, and most printers check the declared page count against the wrap width and refuse the file outright.
In the Cover Maker. Paper color is a setting, not a recalculation. Switch white to cream and the spine, the wrap width and the guides all move with it, at whichever printer you chose. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
Cream tints everything printed on it
Ink sits on the paper; the color of the paper stays underneath. On cream, black type reads warm rather than stark, which is exactly why novels use it.
The same effect is unhelpful to pictures. A grayscale photograph on cream is not a gray photograph — the white in the image is the paper, so highlights come out ivory and the whole picture reads faintly sepia. Tinted chart fills shift. A logo specified as a neutral gray is no longer neutral.
If the interior contains photographs, screenshots, diagrams with fills, or anything where a white is meant to be white, print on white and stop thinking about it. A handful of solid black line drawings is fine on cream — solid black on a warm page looks intentional rather than faded.
When the book is both
A memoir with eight family photographs in the middle is the common case, and there is no perfect answer. Ask what the images are doing.
If they are incidental — a few snapshots readers will glance at once — cream serves the 300 pages of text and the photos will look acceptably warm. If the images are the point, or if anyone will judge the book by them, go white and accept a slightly brighter reading page. You cannot split the difference: one interior is printed on one stock, and there is no white section inside a cream book.
It is a decision per edition, not per book
Paper color belongs to one printed edition. An ebook has no paper at all. A large print edition is its own interior and can be set differently — white is often the better choice there, because the contrast between black type and a bright page is part of what makes large print legible.
Decide it before you finish the cover
The order is the same as everything else in print: lock the interior, get the real page count, choose the paper, then build the cover.
Do it backward and you will design a beautiful wrap, change your mind about the stock at upload, and discover that the spine you drew is the wrong width. The Interior Formatter settles the page count and hands it to the cover; the paper you pick is the other half of the same sum.
Tell the printer what you actually used
Two last practical points.
Not every printer offers both at every trim. Availability varies by company, trim size, and whether the interior is black-and-white or color. Some combinations run white only. Check the stock is offered at your trim before you design around it.
The paper you choose must be the paper you declare. The printer sizes its own template from the settings in your book setup, not from your file. Build a cream spine, upload the title as white, and the wrap is wrong even though your arithmetic was right. Print one copy and look at it before you order any more — see Ordering a proof copy.
In the Cover Maker. Choose white or cream alongside the printer, and the spine is computed from your real page count on that exact stock, with live trim, bleed and safe-area guides redrawn around it. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Print PDF preflight · More: Ordering a proof copy · How to calculate spine width · Choosing a trim size