detra

Amazon's KDP requires fonts to be embedded in the cover for paperback and hardcover books.

Seems a bit useless for paperback/hardcover book cover design then, since I need effects to make them look good, but then I can't embed the required fonts to make them work correctly unless I use the workaround I mentioned.

After noticing that my finished pdf had only a single font embedded, I did some trial & error and noticed that certain effects are to blame. Or rather, most of them. The only ones that don't cause any issues, even when cranked up to the max, are Outer Glow and Outer Shadow. If I apply anything else (unless the values are set to 0 and therefore don't do anything), the font for said text won't be embedded and I can't select the text in the pdf either. The only workaround I found was to include a duplicate text layer without any effects applied, but I don't know if that will cause any visual issues during print.