How to design a book cover without hiring a designer

Step by step

1. Pick a genre preset. Choose from 90+ presets across 15 genres, from thriller and romance to cookbooks and travel.
2. Add your title, subtitle and author. Give each its own font, colour, size and effect, and drag them into place.
3. Add artwork. Upload your own background image, or keep a clean typographic design.
4. Export. Download a front cover for ebooks, or a full wrap for paperbacks with Pro.

Open the Cover Designer

Rules that make covers work

Readable as a thumbnail. Shrink your cover to the size of a postage stamp. If you can't read the title, make it bigger. Match your genre. Look at the top 20 in your category and borrow their colours and type styles, so readers instantly know what kind of book it is. One focal point. One strong image beats several small ones.

Free vs Pro

The free version gives you one design in every genre and exports with a small Postscript watermark. Pro ($24.99 once) removes the watermark and unlocks every design, style and font, plus KDP wrap covers with spine and back.

Common cover mistakes

Too much text: the front needs the title, author and maybe a short subtitle or tagline, and nothing else. Fonts that are too thin to read at thumbnail size. Using a photo you don't have the rights to: use your own photos or images licensed for commercial use. And designing without checking your genre, so the book looks like something it isn't.

Ebook cover vs paperback cover

An ebook only needs the front. A paperback needs a full wrap (back, spine and front) sized for your trim size and page count. Design the front first, and once your interior is final, make the wrap.

Questions