Large print books: the font size that qualifies (14, 16 or 18 point) and what it does to page count

Which font size counts as large print: the standards side by side

Large print starts at 14, 16 or 18 point, depending on the standard: the floor rises from Ingram's book guidelines (14) through the UK's accessible-format standard (16) to the American Printing House for the Blind (18). None of them is a law for books in general, and they were written for different jobs, which is why guides that quote one of them disagree with guides that quote another.

APH draws the sharpest line. Its guidelines say: "A document is not actually 'large print' unless it is in a font size 18 points or larger", and "Print smaller than 18 points or larger than 12 points is known as 'enlarged print.' It does not meet the requirements of large print." The UKAAF minimum standard sets "16 point for large print, ideally minimum of 18 point", and 12 point, ideally 14, for clear print, the standard for ordinary documents.

Ingram's guidelines, the ones a self-publisher meets when listing a large print edition through IngramSpark, are the loosest on size and the strictest on style. The size must "not be below 14 point", "14-18 point is typically considered large print", and "16-point font is recommended"; the font must be sans serif, with no italics, bold, underlining or large blocks of capitals.

The 14-point figure has an official origin in the United States. The US Postal Service's Domestic Mail Manual, section 703.5.2.2, lets "reading matter in braille or 14-point or larger sightsaving type" travel free as Free Matter for the Blind, and the Library of Congress's National Library Service cites it as "the minimum size for large-print materials".

KDP has no large print rule, and a large trim is not large print

Amazon KDP sets no font size for large print: its only rule is "a minimum font size of 7 points" for every paperback. That sentence is on KDP's Paperback Fonts help page, and no KDP help page we read on 4 November 2026 mentions large print at all. Guides that state a "KDP minimum of 16 point for large print" are repeating a convention, not an Amazon requirement.

The likeliest source of the confusion is KDP's own term "large trim". On KDP's Paperback Printing Cost page a large trim is a page "more than 6.12 inches (155.5 mm) in width or more than 9 inches (228.6 mm) in height", and it costs more to print. It describes the paper, not the type: a 6 × 9 inch book set in 18 point is large print on a regular trim, and a 7 × 10 inch book in 11 point is a large trim in ordinary print. The trim size chooser marks which of KDP's sizes are large trims.

So the size you set is your decision, guided by who the book is for. If the edition is called "Large Print" on the cover or in the title, 16 point is the lowest size most of the standards above accept, and 18 point is the size none of them rejects.

Why 18 point in one font is not 18 point in another

A point size measures the type's body, not the letters you see, so the same size looks larger in Verdana than in Times New Roman. A point is 1/72 inch, and an 18-point font is designed on an 18-point (0.25 inch) square. How much of that square the lowercase letters fill, the x-height, is the designer's choice, and lowercase letters are most of what a reader sees.

APH sets a target in letter height rather than points: a font's x-height and t-height should be one eighth of an inch (APH writes 1/8"), which is 3.175 mm. To show how far fonts differ, the lowercase x was measured for this guide in the font files that ship with Windows.

Two results stand out. Verdana at 16 point has taller lowercase letters (3.08 mm) than Times New Roman at 18 point (2.84 mm), so a 16-point Verdana book can read larger than an 18-point Times one. And of the fonts here, only Verdana, Tahoma and Arial reach APH's 1/8 inch x-height at 18 point; a serif book face such as Palatino or Times needs 19 to 20 point to match it.

That is the practical reason the specialist guidelines name sans serif fonts. If a book is set in a serif face for its look, choosing the size from the x-height rather than the point number keeps it honest: about 19 point for Palatino gives the letter height that 17.5 point gives in Arial.

What large print does to page count

Going from 11 point to 18 point multiplies the page count by about two and a quarter to nearly three, because larger type fits both fewer lines on a page and fewer words on each line. The figures below come from the same layout model the words per page calculator uses for book pages: a 6 × 9 inch page, 0.75 inch margins all round, single spacing in the font's own line height, and paragraphs of about 60 words with a half-inch indent.

The ceiling matters for long books. KDP's printing cost table stops at 828 pages for a black-ink paperback, and its Print Options page gives black-ink page ranges of 24 to 828 on white paper and 24 to 776 on cream for its regular sizes (the trim size chooser lists them for every size, 6 × 9 included). A 120,000-word novel in 18-point Palatino needs about 932 pages of text on 6 × 9, which no paper allows; it needs a larger trim, a smaller size or two volumes.

Line length comes with the page. APH recommends lines of 39 to 43 characters, and a 6 × 9 inch page with 0.75 inch margins gives a 4.5 inch line: about 39 characters in 18-point Arial or Palatino and about 34 in 18-point Verdana, by the same font metrics. The same type on an 8.5 × 11 inch page runs to about 60 characters, which is why simply choosing a big page does not make a large print book.

The table leaves out chapters starting on new pages, part-empty last pages and front matter, which the book page count calculator allows for at ordinary sizes (10 to 12 point). For a large print edition, the words per page calculator sets book pages at 14 and 16 point; for 18 point, set one sample chapter at the real size and enter its words and pages there, and it scales the result to the whole book. A longer book also needs a wider inside margin on KDP; the KDP margin calculator shows the gutter for the new page count.

What the extra pages cost on KDP

Because print-on-demand is priced per page, a large print edition costs about twice as much to print as the ordinary one, and that comes straight out of the royalty. KDP's Paperback Printing Cost page gives the amazon.com figures for a black-ink, regular-trim paperback of 110 to 828 pages as $1.00 a book plus $0.012 a page, and the Paperback Royalty page the formula: "(Royalty rate x list price) – printing costs = royalty", at 60% from a list price of $9.99.

The table shows why large print editions are usually priced above the ordinary paperback. Real page counts will be somewhat higher once chapters and front matter are added, so read these as the floor. The KDP printing cost guide has the figures for other marketplaces and the minimum list price for a given page count.

Setting up a large print edition: a checklist

Choose the standard first, then the font by its x-height, then check the page count against your printer's limit. The steps below follow the published guidelines; where they differ, the stricter one is named.

1. Size. 16 point at least for anything labelled large print; 18 point to meet APH and ACB.
2. Font. A sans serif such as Verdana, Tahoma or Arial meets Ingram's rule and reaches APH's 1/8 inch x-height at 18 point. Headings larger still: APH and ACB use 20 and 22 point.
3. Emphasis. No italics (APH, UKAAF and Ingram all say so). APH offers bold, underlining, quotation marks or a contrasting colour instead; UKAAF rules out underlining and Ingram rules out bold and underlining too, so quotation marks are the option every guideline accepts.
4. Spacing. APH: line spacing 1.25, lines of 39 to 43 characters, block paragraphs with space between. ACB: left-aligned with a ragged right edge, and 1-inch top, left and right margins.
5. Paper. Non-glossy (UKAAF and Ingram), off-white or cream to cut glare (ACB); never grey text or paper (APH).
6. Label it. Ingram asks for a large print badge on the cover or a label on the spine, the font and size in the description, and the large print flag set when the title is listed.
7. Count the pages. Set a sample chapter at the chosen size, enter its words and pages in the words per page calculator to scale it to the whole book, check the result against the page limits, and work out the new spine on the KDP cover size calculator.

What this guide does not cover

This guide compares published large print guidelines and works out what they mean for a printed book's size, page count and cost. It is not a guide to accessible documents in general, to large print in ebooks (where the reader chooses the size), or to braille and audio formats. The x-heights were measured from the Windows versions of each font; other versions of a typeface can differ slightly. The page counts are estimates from a layout model, for pages of text only, and the printing costs are KDP's amazon.com figures as read on 4 November 2026.

Simple Online Counter is a free set of browser-based counters and calculators for writers and others. Its words per page calculator, book page count calculator and trim size chooser work in the browser and keep your figures on your device; they are not affiliated with APH, ACB, UKAAF, Ingram, the Library of Congress or Amazon.