[rjwse@aol.com]

I am converting an EPUB to PDF with calibre which lets me set offset inner margin. It does this with CropBox. To get the correct-looking output of (1) 6x9 (2) inner 1 inch margin (3) 1/2 inch other 3 margins you have to do the following: (1) set book at 6.5x9 (2) top and bottom at 1/2 inch (3) left and right at 1 inch (4) tell it to offset half inch. The output looks correct. However, the internals of PDF are not the same. Amazon does not recognize CropBox.

To solve this I instructed calibre to make a PDF without offset with top and bottom 1/2 inch, side margins at 3/4 inch. The output looks good, but without desired inner margin offset. To get that I have to reprocess this PDF with a Linux terminal command using PDFJAM (which has no GUI). The command is:

#script below makes 6x9 with 3 half-inch and inner one-inch margins. 1.pdf (with 3/4 inch side margins) outputs 1-inner.pdf in same directory. Run terminal in same directory.

pdfjam --twoside --papersize '{6in,9in}' --suffix inner --offset '.25in 0in' ~/1.pdf

The calibre conversion method for creating an offset margin states not all software accepts cropbox. It may be that Amazon is too unforgiving or it might be better if calibre's way of doing this were changed.

images show calibre insturctions both ways and resulting outputs. Amazon will accept the PDFs but the margins will not work.

Best regards, Pop