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Amazon KDP book descriptions accept only 12 HTML tags — br, p, b, em, i, u, h4, h5, h6, ol, ul, li — up to 4,000 characters. Paste your text below and copy clean, Amazon-safe HTML instantly.
What if every choice you didn't make led to a different life?
Nora Seed has run out of reasons to stay. But between life and death lies a library, and every book on its shelves is a life she could have lived.
Start reading today.
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Amazon’s book description field accepts 12 formatting tags, up to 4,000 characters including the tags themselves. Everything else is removed silently at upload.
| Tag | Use |
|---|---|
<br> | Line break |
<p> | Paragraph |
<b> | Bold text |
<em> | Emphasis (italic) |
<i> | Italic text |
<u> | Underline |
<h4> | Heading (largest allowed) |
<h5> | Sub-heading |
<h6> | Smallest heading |
<ol> | Ordered (numbered) list |
<ul> | Unordered (bulleted) list |
<li> | List item |
| Tag | Why it fails |
|---|---|
<h1> | Reserved by Amazon — use <h4> for your largest heading |
<h2> | Reserved by Amazon — use <h4>–<h6> instead |
<h3> | Reserved by Amazon — use <h4>–<h6> instead |
<div> | Layout containers are not supported — use <p> |
<span> | Inline styling wrappers are stripped |
<a> | Links are not allowed in book descriptions |
<img> | Images are not allowed in the description field |
<table> | Tables are removed — use a <ul> or <ol> list |
Heading levels h1, h2 and h3 are reserved by Amazon’s page layout — use <h4>–<h6> for your own headings.
Your Amazon book description is one of the few places where formatting genuinely moves the needle — a wall of unbroken text converts far worse than a punchy hook, a bolded promise, and a tidy bulleted list. But Amazon does not let you use the full power of HTML. The KDP description field runs every submission through a strict allow-list, and anything outside it vanishes the moment you save. Knowing the rules up front saves you from the all-too-common surprise of a mangled listing going live.
In 2026 the supported set is small and stable: br, p, b, em, i, u, h4, h5, h6, ol, ul, li. That gives you paragraphs and line breaks for structure, bold and italic/emphasis plus underline for inline emphasis, headings from <h4> down to <h6>, and ordered or unordered lists. For the vast majority of book descriptions, that is everything you need: a heading to grab attention, a couple of short paragraphs, and a bulleted list of what the reader gets.
The single most common formatting mistake is reaching for <h1> or <h2> for a big, bold title. Those levels are reserved by Amazon’s own page template — using them on the product page would clash with Amazon’s layout and SEO structure — so they are simply not on the allow-list. When you submit a description that leans on them, the tags are stripped and your carefully sized heading collapses into plain paragraph text. The fix is to start your headings at <h4>: it is the largest heading Amazon renders inside a description, and it looks bold and prominent in context. Likewise, layout tags like <div> and <span>, links, images, and tables are all removed — there is no way to add a clickable link or an image to the description itself.
Amazon caps the description at 4,000 characters, and this is where authors get caught out: the HTML tags count toward the limit, not just the visible words. Wrapping a sentence in <p>…</p> spends seven characters before a single word is read; a bolded phrase adds another seven. Heavily formatted descriptions can therefore burn hundreds of characters on markup alone. The formatter above counts characters on the cleaned, Amazon-safe HTML — exactly what Amazon measures — and warns you as you approach the cap, then flags it if your text had to be trimmed.
Paste plain text or messy HTML copied from Word, Google Docs, or an AI draft. The tool strips every disallowed tag, removes all tag attributes (which Amazon ignores and which can carry unsafe code), shows a live preview of how your description will read, and gives you a single clean block to copy straight into the KDP description field. Format once, copy, paste — and your listing renders the way you intended.
KDP supports a small allow-list of formatting tags: br, p, b, em, i, u, h4, h5, h6, ol, ul, li. That covers paragraphs, line breaks, bold, italic/emphasis, underline, headings (h4 through h6), and ordered or unordered lists. Any other tag — including h1, h2, h3, div, span, links, images, and tables — is stripped out.
Amazon reserves the top three heading levels for its own page layout, so h1, h2 and h3 are not on the description allow-list and get removed. Use <h4> for your largest heading and <h5>/<h6> for smaller ones — these render and are fully supported.
Up to 4,000 characters, and the HTML tags count toward that total. A bolded word like <b>great</b> spends seven extra characters on the tags alone, so heavy formatting eats into your limit. This formatter shows a live character count measured on the cleaned HTML so you know exactly where you stand.
Yes — paste your text or HTML, copy the KDP-ready result, and use it. No signup, no watermark. The formatter strips every disallowed tag and all tag attributes locally in your browser, so what you copy is clean, Amazon-safe HTML.