Should You Choose White, Cream, or Groundwood Paper for Your Print-on-Demand Book?

Whether to choose white or cream paper is a decision about how your pages look: white for photographs and detailed images, cream for text-heavy books such as novels. Groundwood, a lighter-weight paper that platforms such as KDP and IngramSpark offer for black-and-white interiors, is a different kind of decision, about printing cost and emissions, and it comes with conditions.

What Paper Options Do Print-on-Demand Platforms Offer?

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark are print-on-demand services: each prints copies of your book as they are ordered, rather than in an advance print run. Both offer three kinds of interior paper (the paper for the pages inside the book, as opposed to the cover) for books printed in black ink (which includes grayscale images, meaning pictures made of shades of gray): white, cream, and groundwood. Groundwood is the lightest of the three. It takes its name from how its pulp is made, by grinding wood mechanically rather than breaking it down with chemicals, and it is the kind of paper used for mass-market paperbacks, the small, inexpensive paperback format.

Platforms state paper weight in two ways. Basis weight is the US measure: the weight in pounds (written “lb” or “#”) of 500 sheets of the paper at a standard sheet size. GSM, or grams per square meter, is the metric measure. Different kinds of paper are weighed on different standard sheet sizes, so pounds do not convert to GSM at a fixed rate, and GSM is the easier figure to compare. A lighter paper is not always a thinner one, which matters when your cover is made, as the spine section below explains.

The two platforms describe their papers in similar terms, but the figures differ:

KDP’s figures come from its Print Options page, which gives ranges because paper weight “varies based on printing location.” KDP offers groundwood in every paperback trim size (the finished page size, such as 6″ × 9″) for books sold on Amazon; its Expanded Distribution is narrower, as explained below. IngramSpark’s figures come from its trim sizes page, which limits cream and groundwood to smaller trim sizes: up to 6.14″ × 9.252″ for a paperback and 6.14″ × 9.21″ for a hardcover. Its setup screen describes the groundwood option as “38lb Eggshell paper (mass market-like),” and it spells its cream paper “creme.”

These two are not the only platforms offering groundwood. Barnes & Noble Press’s paper stock page, for example, lists a 38 lb groundwood paper for black-and-white interiors only, alongside its cream and white papers.

On KDP and IngramSpark, white is the only paper for a color interior. KDP prints color ink on white paper, which it says “shows a higher contrast for images and graphics,” and its Premium Color option (the higher-quality of its two color options) uses a heavier 60–71 lb (88–105 GSM) white. IngramSpark’s trim sizes page likewise lists only its white papers for color printing.

White or Cream Paper: Which Suits Your Book?

The choice between white and cream paper comes down to what is printed on the page. White gives the strongest contrast between black ink and paper, while cream gives a warmer, softer page for long stretches of reading. The two papers also give different spine widths, which the spine section below covers.

When white paper is the better choice

White paper suits books whose interiors include photographs, charts, diagrams, or any image a reader needs to see clearly. Black ink stands out most sharply against white, so fine detail in graphics and grayscale (black-and-white) photographs holds up better than on a tinted page. If you are publishing a cookbook, a how-to guide, a textbook, or a photography book, white is the paper to start from.

When cream paper is the better choice

Cream paper suits text-heavy books: novels, short story collections, memoirs, biographies, poetry, and narrative nonfiction. Its warm tone slightly lowers the contrast between ink and page, which gives a softer look over hundreds of pages of text. Cream is also the traditional choice for novels in the larger paperback and hardcover formats, so a novel printed on it looks the way readers expect such a novel to look.

When Should You Choose Groundwood Paper?

Groundwood paper, the lightest of the white, cream, and groundwood papers, is worth considering for a black-and-white book that is mostly text, when a lower printing cost and lower emissions matter to you more than the look of white or cream. Both of those benefits are ones KDP states for its own groundwood; on IngramSpark, check the cost for your own book, as the cost section below explains. Groundwood is not simply a third shade to pick on looks, because it comes with eligibility conditions, and switching a published book to it can mean a new cover.

What groundwood looks and feels like

KDP describes its groundwood as having a “textured feel,” and IngramSpark’s setup screen calls its own groundwood an “Eggshell” paper, eggshell being an off-white shade. Neither description is a measurement, and the two platforms’ papers are not stated to be the same stock.

Show-through is the faint shadow of printing from the other side of a page, and a paper’s resistance to it is called its opacity. KDP says its groundwood’s “higher opacity and textured feel make pages easier to read and turn,” without giving figures. Even so, KDP keeps heavily inked books off groundwood, as the next section explains, so read the opacity claim as applying to pages that are mostly text. It is KDP’s description of its own paper rather than a published test, so judge it on a proof copy (a printed copy you buy to check your book), ideally beside a copy of the same pages on the paper you would otherwise choose.

Which books can use groundwood

Groundwood is for black-ink interiors only, and on KDP it is not open to every black-ink book either. KDP’s Groundwood Paper page excludes books with heavy ink coverage (pages carrying large areas of dense printing) “to prevent the ink from showing through the pages,” without saying how much coverage counts as heavy. If printing problems appear, “KDP reserves the right to change the paper to cream or white to ensure quality.” The page does not say what happens to your cover in that case.

IngramSpark’s File Creation Guide has a broader reservation that applies to every paper, not only groundwood. Where a book has pages heavily inked on one side and nearly blank on the other, its printer may move the interior to a heavier paper and adjust the cover for the new spine.

Two more KDP conditions matter for longer or more widely distributed books. KDP’s Paperback Submission Guidelines set a different maximum page count for each paper: at 6″ × 9″, up to 828 pages on white, 812 on groundwood, and 776 on cream. And if you use Expanded Distribution, KDP’s option for making your paperback available to bookstores and libraries beyond Amazon, eligibility on groundwood depends on your trim size. KDP’s Expanded Distribution page lists black ink on groundwood as eligible at four trim sizes: 5″ × 8″, 5.25″ × 8″, 5.5″ × 8.5″, and 6″ × 9″. It also warns that changing your paper type can change your eligibility.

What KDP’s carbon claim means

KDP makes two separate environmental claims for groundwood, and they are worth keeping apart. The Groundwood Paper page says choosing groundwood “reduces the carbon footprint of your printed book,” and that this was independently verified by a standard type of study that measures a product’s environmental impact, comparing groundwood with KDP’s standard uncoated paper; the page gives no figure. A note beside the groundwood option in KDP’s title setup (the screens where you enter your book’s details) puts the reduction at “at least 15% fewer CO2-equivalent emissions compared to other paper types” (CO2-equivalent means greenhouse gases counted as carbon dioxide), and adds that for the book’s remaining emissions, Amazon applies “high-quality carbon credits.” A reduction lowers what printing the book emits. A carbon credit pays for emissions to be cut or removed somewhere else, to balance what remains. An accurate summary is that groundwood cuts some of a book’s printing emissions and Amazon offsets the rest.

How groundwood ages

How groundwood ages is an open question: we could find no measured comparison of how it holds up against cream over years of handling. The wider question of how print-on-demand paperbacks wear, including covers that curl, is covered in our look at how durable print-on-demand paperbacks are.

Who groundwood suits

Groundwood suits a black-ink paperback such as a novel, a chapter book for young readers, or a short nonfiction title, where you want KDP’s lower print cost or its lower emissions. If you choose groundwood for a new book, have the cover built for it from the start. For a book already published on white or cream, check first whether switching would mean a new cover file, as the switching section below explains. Choose white instead if your book has color, photographs, or large dark images. Stay with white or cream if you want a hardcover on KDP, or if you would rather not have groundwood’s textured feel.

Does Your Paper Choice Affect Printing Cost?

On Amazon KDP, white and cream paper cost the same to print, and groundwood paper costs slightly less. KDP’s Paperback Printing Cost page sets out its formula: a fixed charge for each copy printed, plus, for books over a set length, a charge for each page. KDP subtracts that printing cost from your royalty on each sale, so a lower printing cost means a slightly larger royalty per copy. White and cream share the same rates. For groundwood, KDP says printing costs are “approximately 5% lower per page compared to cream and white paper,” and the lower rate applies automatically to any title already printed on groundwood.

The saving on a whole copy is smaller than 5%, because for books long enough to pay a per-page charge (on Amazon.com, those over about 110 pages), the discount applies to that per-page charge only. For those books the fixed charge is the same on every paper, so the saving grows as the page count rises. Shorter books pay a fixed charge and nothing per page, and for them KDP sets a fixed charge on groundwood about 3% lower. KDP’s rates vary by marketplace (the Amazon store where a copy is bought, such as Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) and change from time to time, so check the current table for your own trim size and page count before you decide.

Here is a worked example at the Amazon.com rates on that page in September 2026, for a 300-page, 6″ × 9″ black-ink paperback. On white or cream, multiply 300 pages by $0.012 and add the $1.00 fixed charge, which gives $4.60 a copy. On groundwood, multiply 300 by $0.0114 and add the same $1.00, which gives $4.42. The saving is $0.18 a copy, about 3.9% rather than 5%.

On IngramSpark, compare the papers in its print cost calculator rather than assuming groundwood is the cheaper option. At least one author has reported that groundwood cost more than cream for a hardcover on IngramSpark.

How Does Your Paper Choice Change Your Spine and Cover?

White, cream, and groundwood papers each have their own thickness, so the same book has a different spine width on each one. Printers call a paper’s thickness its caliper. KDP publishes it on its Paperback Submission Guidelines as a figure per page, which you multiply by your page count to get the spine width. Your page count here is the number of pages in your finished print file, with each side of a sheet counted as one page, not the page count of your manuscript in a word processor.

KDP’s three figures for black-ink paperbacks are:

• White paper: page count × 0.002252 inches
• Cream paper: page count × 0.0025 inches
• Groundwood paper: page count × 0.00235 inches

Take a 300-page novel. On white paper, multiply 300 by 0.002252 to get a spine of about 0.676 inches. On cream, multiply 300 by 0.0025 to get 0.750 inches. On groundwood, multiply 300 by 0.00235 to get 0.705 inches. On KDP, then, groundwood sits between the other two: thicker than white, and slightly thinner than cream. That is the point about weight and thickness in practice. Groundwood is the lightest of KDP’s three black-ink papers, yet a groundwood book is thicker than the same book on white.

Your cover wraps around the spine, so the spine width sets the size of the whole cover file. Settle your paper before your cover designer builds that file. KDP’s cover calculator works out the full cover size for you, and our guide to calculating book cover spine width explains the calculation step by step.

IngramSpark’s papers have their own thicknesses, so KDP’s figures do not carry across. IngramSpark’s cover template generator, in the “My Tools” section of your IngramSpark dashboard, works out the spine for the paper you select.

Can You Switch Paper After Your Book Is Published?

On Amazon KDP, you can switch the paper of a black-and-white paperback after it is published, including to or from groundwood. KDP’s Print Options page lists the switches allowed: cream to white, cream to groundwood, and white to groundwood, each in either direction. KDP says updates typically take up to 72 hours to appear, and that “depending on your book’s page count, you may need to upload a new cover file.” What you cannot change is the ink: KDP locks the ink type after publication “due to ISBN requirements,” so a color version of a black-and-white book has to be set up as a separate book. Before any switch, KDP asks you to review your cover in its Print Previewer, the on-screen check of your files, to make sure it still displays correctly.

For a switch to groundwood, KDP’s Groundwood Paper page gives the page counts at which the cover must change. A book moving from cream to groundwood needs a new cover file with an adjusted spine above 350 pages; a book moving from white to groundwood, above 525 pages. Those two numbers look unrelated, but they describe about the same amount of spine movement. You can see it by working both through with KDP’s figures:

• A 350-page book moving from cream: multiply 350 by 0.0025 to get a spine of 0.875 inches. On groundwood, multiply 350 by 0.00235 to get 0.8225 inches. Subtract one from the other: the spine gets narrower by 0.0525 inches.
• A 525-page book moving from white: multiply 525 by 0.002252 to get about 1.182 inches. On groundwood, multiply 525 by 0.00235 to get about 1.234 inches. The spine gets wider by about 0.051 inches.

Both come to about a twentieth of an inch (1.3 mm). Our reading of KDP’s figures, which is not a rule KDP states in these words, is that a switch needs a new cover once it moves the spine by roughly a twentieth of an inch. The page counts save you the arithmetic. Notice the direction, too: a cream book moving to groundwood gets a narrower spine, not a wider one, even though KDP’s page puts the adjustment down to “the thickness of groundwood paper.”

For a short book, a switch to groundwood is usually simple. A 200-page novel on cream loses 0.03 inches of spine on groundwood, well under that line, and one author who switched several short chapter books reported needing no spine change on any of them. If you have several books to convert, KDP’s bulk update tool, linked from the Groundwood Paper page, changes the paper on many titles at once, but it lists “only titles that don’t require cover updates.” A book over the threshold for its paper does not appear there, so it has to be updated on its own, with a new cover file.

Whether a switch is worth making is a sum you can do before you start. On KDP, the saving from moving to groundwood is a few percent of the printing cost of each copy ($0.18 a copy in the cost example above), and it builds up only as copies sell. A new cover file may mean paying your designer again. One author whose novel was above the threshold kept the original paper rather than pay the design company again for a new spine. KDP also warns that if you order a copy straight after a change, you “may receive a copy from inventory that was printed before the changes,” because a copy printed for an order that is later canceled stays in inventory until sold. That copy may not show the new paper.

On IngramSpark, changing paper can move the spine as well, and IngramSpark’s guide to uploading print-ready files says a changed spine width needs an updated cover file. The same guide asks you to contact IngramSpark’s support to change the interior paper of an existing title.

Pick white or cream by what is on your pages, check that your trim size and page count fit the paper you choose, and treat groundwood as a separate question about cost, emissions, and eligibility. Whichever you choose, settle the paper before your cover is built, because the spine is measured from it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does cream paper make a book look thicker?

On KDP, cream paper makes a book slightly thicker than white paper does. On KDP’s published figures, a 300-page book is about 0.074 inches wider at the spine on cream than on white. That is too small to notice on a shelf but large enough to matter to the cover, so a cover built for white will not fit the same book printed on cream. KDP’s groundwood paper, the lighter third option, falls between the two.

Can I use cream paper for a book with a few black-and-white images?

Cream paper works for a book with a few simple images, but the images take on a warm tint. Line drawings, maps, and chapter-opening ornaments generally look fine on cream. Photographs and detailed grayscale images lose some contrast and can look muddy, so if image clarity matters, white paper is the safer choice.

Is KDP’s groundwood the same paper as IngramSpark’s?

Neither platform says whether its groundwood is the same paper as the other’s, and they state different weights: KDP lists its groundwood at 45 lb (60 GSM), and IngramSpark lists its own at 38 lb (56 GSM). Treat each platform’s figures separately, including the spine width, and build each cover with that platform’s own tool: KDP’s cover calculator or IngramSpark’s cover template generator.

Can I print a coloring book or a photo-heavy book on groundwood paper?

Groundwood is for black-ink interiors only, so a book printed in color cannot use it on either platform. A coloring book printed in black ink can go on groundwood at KDP, provided its pages are not so heavily inked that KDP’s Groundwood Paper page excludes it; that page does not say how much ink counts as heavy, and KDP reserves the right to move a title to cream or white if printing problems appear. IngramSpark’s File Creation Guide sets no ink rule specific to groundwood, though its printer can move a book with pages heavily inked on one side and nearly blank on the other to a heavier paper. A black-ink book with many photographs or large dark areas risks counting as heavy ink coverage, and it is better on white in any case, where images keep their contrast.

Do I need to reformat my manuscript when switching paper?

Usually not. Switching paper leaves your interior file (the formatted pages of your book) as it is: the text layout, margins, and page count stay the same. What can change is the cover, because the spine width depends on the paper, so check whether you need a new cover file before switching. Also check the maximum page count for the new paper: on KDP it is lower on cream and groundwood than on white at each trim size, and a book over the new limit would have to be shortened. On IngramSpark, cream and groundwood come only in smaller trim sizes, so a larger book printed on white cannot move to either without a new trim size, which does mean reformatting.