KDP tools / Cover workflow

KDP Cover Tool

Create, build, check and export your KDP cover without doing the print math yourself. Tell us about the book once; the trim, spine, bleed and safe areas follow from it.

What are you starting with?

Pick the one that describes your book right now.

  • I need a cover

    No artwork yet, or nothing you want to publish. Start from your title, genre and the feel you are after, and get a front cover you can then wrap for print.

    Start a Cover
  • I already have a front cover

    An ebook cover, a Canva export, a designer file, artwork from another tool. Bring it in and build the back, the spine and the bleed around it, then export the wrap PDF.

    Upload My Cover
  • I already have a full cover

    A finished back-spine-front PDF, from a designer or your own layout. Have it measured before Amazon does — including which book the page size actually fits.

    Check My Cover
  • I only need the size, or a template

    Exact wrap size and spine width at any of the 16 standard KDP paperback trims, and a template cut to them in PDF, PNG or SVG — to lay the cover out in your own design tool.

    Get Size & Template
Book specs

One book, one set of specs

Four things about your book decide every number on the cover. You give those four; everything else is computed from them, every time one of them changes.

You own these

Binding
Trim size
Final page count
Paper
Derived from them
Effective KDP pages300
Spine width0.676″ · 17.2 mm
Full wrap size12.926″ × 9.250″
Bleed, every outside edge0.125″
Front / back text-safe inset0.125″
Spine text0.551″ band
Barcode reserve2 × 1.2″
BACK COVERFRONT COVER
Spine: 0.6756 in

Change one book spec and the cover geometry updates with it — in the calculator, in the wrap builder, in the preview, in the checks and in the exported file. There is nowhere for a stale spine width to be stored, because a spine width is never stored.

I already have a front cover

Bring the front artwork and we compose the back, spine and bleed around it. These specs carry over.

Build paperback wrap →
I want the template and the pixel sizes

A marked PDF, PNG or SVG template at this trim, plus the 300 PPI canvas size.

Open the full calculator →
The workflow

One workflow, whichever door you came through.

  1. 01

    Book specs

    Binding, trim, page count, paper. Read out of your interior PDF if you have one.

  2. 02

    Cover

    Generate the front cover here, or bring the one you already have.

  3. 03

    Full wrap

    Back, spine and front composed on one page, with bleed and the guides drawn live.

  4. 04

    Check & export

    Geometry, artwork, text and barcode measured — on a wrap built here, or one you bring — then one print-ready PDF.

What we handle

The print math, and the checks on the file it produces.

Nothing on either list is something you have to look up, and nothing on the right is a promise — every row is a check that actually runs, on a wrap built here before the download is offered, or on a finished PDF you bring to the preflight checker.

Computed from your specs

  • Cover dimensionsBack trim + spine + front trim across, trim height down, plus 0.125" of bleed on every outside edge.
  • Spine widthEffective page count × your paper's caliper. Odd counts are rounded up to KDP's even sheet, and you are told when they were.
  • Bleed0.125" added on all four outside edges, so the printer's cut lands in artwork rather than in white.
  • Safe areasThe inset your front and back copy stays inside, and the clearance spine text keeps from each fold.
  • Barcode reserveAmazon's 2 × 1.2" area, 0.25" in from the back cover's spine-side bottom corner, kept clear of your copy.
  • Spine-text eligibilityAmazon prints spine text from 80 pages up. Below that the spine is left blank rather than set and rejected.
  • Print resolutionYour pixels over the inches they have to cover at your trim — reported as a number, not as a verdict.
  • Page-count eligibilityAmazon's window is per trim AND per paper. All 16 standard paperback trims are carried, including the five whose windows are tighter.
  • Exported PDF geometryThe finished file is reopened and measured — one page, at the physical size this book needs — before the download is offered.

Checked before you export

  • Full wrap dimensionsBack trim + spine + front trim, plus bleed on every outside edge, measured against the trim you chose.
  • Spine against page countEffective KDP pages × the caliper of your paper. Odd counts are rounded up, and you are told when they were.
  • Page count is printableAmazon's page window is per trim AND per paper — cream reaches 776 pages at 6 × 9 and stops at 550 at 8.5 × 8.5.
  • Artwork print resolutionYour pixels over the inches they have to cover, at this trim and this fit. A number, not a verdict.
  • Artwork reaches the bleedWhether the front panel is covered edge to edge, or whether the extended background will show beside it.
  • Original artwork preservedHow much of the cover you added falls outside the printed panel — zero unless you chose to crop.
  • Back copy inside the safe areaEvery laid line measured against the text-safe inset, not just the column it was flowed into.
  • Spine text — Amazon's ruleWhether Amazon prints on the spine at all at your page count. Reported as their rule, because it is.
  • Spine band holds readable typeWhat is left after the fold clearance, against 8 pt. A MakeMyBookCover recommendation, kept separate from Amazon’s.
  • Barcode area kept clearThe 2 × 1.2" reserve in the back cover's spine-side bottom corner, checked against every line of copy.
  • No font dependencyEvery character is drawn as an outline, so there is no font in the file to be missing, substituted or wrongly subset.
  • Single-page PDFMeasured on the file that was actually produced, after it was written — not on what the renderer intended.
  • Physical page sizeThe exported page reopened and measured against the size this book needs, before the download is offered.
Start from what you already have

Two ways to reach a paperback wrap.

Which one you use depends only on where the front cover came from. The KDP maths — trim, page count, paper, spine, bleed and the barcode reserve — is the same on both.

Generated here

Project → Publish → Paperback wrap

Covers made here live in a project. Open Publish, pick the version your files should be made from, and the wrap is built from it while you set trim, page count and paper. This is the guided path: a back-cover headline and blurb, spine text, and four looks — Classic, Elegant, Bold and Modern — each with its own back-cover composition and type pairing, all drawn live with the bleed and text-safe guides on screen. The back panel is a solid colour taken from your cover’s own dominant tone, adjusted only as far as the back-cover text needs to stay readable on it. Building, formatting and exporting the wrap uses 0 AI Generations.

GenerateRefinePublishPaperback wrap
Start a cover project

Already have a front cover

Free Ebook→Paperback Converter

A front cover from anywhere else — a designer, another tool, an older book — goes through the standalone converter instead. Upload it, give trim, page count and paper, a short back-cover blurb and spine text, and pick serif or sans. Simpler by design, over a back colour sampled from your cover. No project or paid plan required; export uses 0 AI Generations.

Upload a front coverConverterPaperback wrap
Open the free converter
What you get

The files, named exactly.

eBook

A single front-cover image.

  • 1600 × 2560 PNG — the dimensions Amazon recommends for a Kindle cover
  • PNG or JPG, from a cover generated here
  • A rectangular cover generated here prints at 6 trims, 5 × 8 in to 7 × 10 in; a square one at 2, 8.25 × 8.25 in to 8.5 × 8.5 in

Paperback

A single-page full wrap: back, spine and front on one page.

  • One PDF page at the exact physical size your trim, page count and paper work out to
  • Artwork embedded as the original bytes rather than resampled
  • No font dependency — every character is drawn as a filled outline
  • Buildable end to end at all 16 standard KDP paperback trims
  • A marked PDF, PNG or SVG template at any of them, for laying the wrap out yourself
  • Any front artwork you bring, whoever made it — the wrap is composed around the file

No hardcover file. A case has its own trim list, its own boards, hinges and outside wrap, and its spine is not page count × paper caliper — so nothing on this page composes or exports one, and no calculator here may be pointed at a hardcover. Fit existing front artwork to a KDP hardcover case — geometry for all 5 hardcover trims

What costs anything

The print side is free. Only new AI pictures are metered.

1 AI Generation = 1 successful new visual. Text and typography changes, exports and wrap formatting use 0. Failed or result-less requests use 0. Signing up gets you 3 free AI Generations, valid 7 days, with no card; clean downloads and commercial rights start at $19 as a one-time purchase, not a subscription.

How AI Generations work

1 AI Generation = 1 new AI visual result

An AI Generation is used only when a new result actually succeeds. Failures, timeouts, cancellations and retries of the same request never consume the final allowance.

Uses 0 AI Generations

  • Title text changesRe-lettering, not a new picture
  • Title typographySame
  • Front cover export — PNG and JPGA file format, not a picture
  • Paperback Full Wrap formatting and PDFDeterministic layout of art you already have
  • Solid back panel on the wrapIt is a rectangle
  • Re-downloading anything you already madeYou already paid for it
  • Failed, cancelled or result-less requestsNothing was created

Uses 1 AI Generation, on success

  • Each cover in the first generationOne new AI visual each
  • A new concept or variation in the projectOne new AI visual
  • A described visual change in RefineOne new AI visual
Where the numbers come from

Checked against Amazon’s published KDP specifications.

Where the rules come from

Trim sizes, page-count windows, paper calipers, bleed, the spine-text threshold and the barcode reserve are transcribed from Amazon's published KDP help pages for the Amazon KDP, US store (kdp.amazon.com), last compared against them on 2026-08-27. Other Amazon marketplaces publish different catalogues.

Amazon retains final review

Our checks cover what we can measure in your file. They say nothing about your interior, your metadata, your categories or what a human reviewer makes of your cover art. Look at the exported PDF in KDP's Print Previewer and order a proof before you launch.

The wrap builder runs in your browser

Your cover is read, the wrap is composed and the PDF is written on your own machine. There is no upload step and no account. Your settings are kept in this browser so you can come back to them; the artwork itself is never stored, here or anywhere.

Colour space

KDP's print guidance recommends CMYK, and the exported wrap is sRGB. The visible risk is a colour shift on saturated inks. The reliable check is a physical proof copy.

Rights, and what you may sell

A paid download of a cover generated here is the clean file and carries commercial rights. Free previews are watermarked, 1080px-wide evaluation copies — publish from a paid download. The calculators and the wrap builder produce your own file from your own artwork, so nothing about them changes what you already hold.

AI disclosure is a question KDP asks you

KDP does not blanket-ban AI-generated covers; during title setup it asks you to declare AI-generated content. Answering that is your step, not ours — we can only tell you what the file contains.

Sources · Create a Paperback Cover ↗ · Trim Size, Bleed and Margins ↗

Quick utilities

Need a focused publishing proof?

The paperback calculators return dimensions and marked templates, then carry trim, paper and effective page count into the Paperback Wrap Builder. The hardcover tool instead fits front artwork you already have to an independently calculated case and reports the crop, extension and quality evidence. It creates no print-ready hardcover file.

FAQ

Before you start

Do I need the final page count?

For the wrap, yes — the spine is your final page count multiplied by the caliper of the paper you chose, so a draft number gives you a spine wrong by exactly the difference. Use the count from your formatted interior PDF. Odd counts are rounded up to KDP's even sheet, and you are shown when that happened. To look up dimensions you can type any number and change it later.

Can I upload a cover made in Canva, or by a designer?

Yes — that is what the wrap builder is for. A JPG or PNG front cover from anywhere goes in, and the back, spine and bleed are composed around it. The default keeps every pixel of the file you brought: where its shape does not match the paperback panel the background is extended beside it rather than the artwork being cut, and if you choose to crop, the cropped area is shown to you first.

Can I upload my interior PDF?

You can point the wrap builder at it and it reads the page count exactly rather than making you count. The file is parsed in your browser through its page tree — nothing is uploaded, no text or images are extracted, and your manuscript never touches our servers. If the pages all measure the same and match a trim we can build, the trim is set for you as a suggestion.

Is an account required?

Not for the print side. The two calculators, their templates and the whole wrap builder — including the final PDF export — work signed out, because they run on your machine and there is nothing to bind to an owner. Generating a cover with AI does need an account: you get 3 free AI Generations, valid 7 days, no card.

What files do I actually get?

From the generator, a 1600 × 2560 PNG front cover — the dimensions Amazon recommends for a Kindle cover. From the wrap builder, one PDF page carrying back, spine and front at the exact physical size your book needs, with no guides or crop marks in it. From the calculators, a marked template in PDF, PNG or SVG to lay the cover out yourself.

What happens if my page count changes?

Change the number and the wrap reflows in front of you: the spine widens or narrows, the front and back panels move, the guides follow, the checks re-run and the export uses the new geometry. Nothing has to be rebuilt, because no dimension is stored — every one of them is computed from trim, page count and paper each time.

Does MakeMyBookCover guarantee Amazon approval?

No, and nobody can offer you that. What we check is measurable: wrap dimensions, spine against page count, bleed coverage, artwork resolution, text inside the safe areas, spine fit, the barcode reserve, and the physical size of the PDF after it is written. Amazon retains final review, and their print review is human-staffed.

Does KDP require AI disclosure?

KDP asks you to declare AI-generated content during title setup — it is a question in their flow, not a barrier, and answering it is your step. Their published guidance also asks that you hold the rights you need to the cover; a paid download here is the clean file and carries commercial rights, while free previews are watermarked evaluation copies.

Is hardcover supported?

Partly, and the boundary is worth stating exactly. Everything on this page is paperback: all 16 standard trims, for dimensions, templates and a finished wrap PDF. Hardcover is a different physical object — its own trim list, boards a little larger than the pages, a hinge beside each side of the spine, an outside case wrap, and a spine that is not page count × paper caliper — so none of the paperback tools may be pointed at one. What does exist is a separate hardcover tool at /paperback-to-hardcover-cover: it calculates the case geometry for all 5 KDP US hardcover trims and fits front artwork you already have to it, showing the crop, the resolution and the background extension involved. It does not compose a back cover or a spine, and it does not export a hardcover file.