My Puzzle Book GeneratorMake a KDP paperback cover that fits
KDP asks for your cover as its own PDF. It is not one front page, but one wide image: the back, the spine and the front, side by side. Get the size right and the upload passes first time.
My Puzzle Book Generator makes the interior. The cover you design in a separate tool. The app does give you the two numbers every cover depends on: the trim size and the page count. Write them down. You also need your paper type, usually white.
Here is how the size works. The height is your book's height plus a bleed of one eighth of an inch at the top and the bottom. The width is the back, plus the spine, plus the front, plus one eighth of an inch of bleed on each side. The spine is the tricky part. Its width depends on your page count and your paper. More pages, wider spine. That is why you finish the interior first and make the cover last. Change the page count, and the cover has to change too.
You do not have to do the sum yourself. Search for the KDP cover calculator. Choose paperback, your ink and paper, your trim size, and enter the page count. It gives you the full cover size and a template to download. The template shows exactly where the spine is, where the barcode goes, and the safe area where text must stay.
Open your design tool and make a page of exactly that size. Put the template in as a bottom layer, so you can see the lines. The front is the right half. Put your title, a bright picture and the age group there, big enough to read as a small thumbnail on Amazon. The back is the left half. Add a short line about what is inside, and keep the barcode box in the bottom right corner empty, because KDP prints the barcode there. Text on the spine only works on thicker books. KDP allows it from about eighty pages. Remove the template layer and download a print PDF at high resolution. Keep the colours bold and the title short. A busy cover with small text disappears among the other books on the search page.
No design tool? KDP's own Cover Creator builds a cover from a layout, with the right size already worked out. It is simple, but it works.
Upload the cover, check it in the previewer, and your book is complete. Next, see the full route in From idea to Amazon, make a puzzle book in one afternoon.
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