Creating an eye-catching book cover is the last task you have to do before you publish your book. Before you can create a book cover, you first need to find out what are the requirements for designing a professional-looking book cover for Amazon KDP and Draft2Digital.
Draft2Digital’s Cover Art Requirements
It is very easy to design a cover for Draft2Digital because they have very few requirements. The only thing they require is that you provide a JPEG image at 1600 x 2400 pixels to upload to their website. This can be done very easily and I will show you how in a while.
Amazon KDP’s Cover Art Requirements
Amazon KDP goes more in depth in terms of what they require to get the ideal cover art for your book. KDP accepts JPEG and TIFF file type for book cover images. However, the recommended file type to use is JPEG. The ideal size of your book cover should be 2560 x 1,000 pixels, although KDP does allow the minimum image size of 1,000 x 625 pixels. But bigger is better!
If you decide to design your book cover art with a white background, Amazon KDP suggests that you include a medium grey narrow border so that it doesn’t fade into the background when your book is listed on Amazon.
Now that we have covered each site’s cover art requirements, the next step is to show you how to create a compelling book cover to upload to Amazon KDP and Draft2Digital.
Create a Book Cover
When I first started self-publishing, I actually designed my book covers using Microsoft PowerPoint and Paint. Now I know that there are better and much easier ways to create ideal cover art images for my books.
There are many websites that offer free and low cost book cover creator services. For example, Amazon KDP has its own cover creator software that you can use to design your book cover for free. Canva also offers a free book cover maker that is user-friendly. There are other sites that offer cover art creator services but these are the two that I normally use.
Before you create your ideal book cover, you may be considering using a picture as part of your cover art. This is something you have to be careful with because you do not want to risk copyright infringement because you used someone else’s image without their permission.
There are plenty of websites that offer free images that are royalty-free. Be sure to check out their terms and licenses before downloading any images. Make sure that these sites offer Creative Commons Zero licenses so that you can use the images for commercial purposes. The free stock image sites that I recommend are:
Once you have found and downloaded the image you want to use for your book cover, the next step is to create the cover art for your book. The following steps will show you how to create a book cover using Canva’s book cover maker.
Create a Book Cover Using Canva
- Go to Canva.com and create a free account.
2. On the Create a Design page, you can either select Book Cover or click on Custom Dimensions.
If you choose Custom Dimensions you will need to enter the width and height of the e-book you want to design. According to Amazon KDP’s required book size, enter the minimum image size of 625 pixels for the width and 1,000 pixels for the height. Then click Create New Design.
Canva will open a new tab with a blank page and a library of book cover templates on the left side.
3. Choose a template from Canva’s library to work with.
If you would rather work with a blank page, upload your own photo or choose from Canva’s stock images. Select Uploads and click on Upload an Image or Video. Under Upload From, choose Device. Select the image you want to upload from the appropriate folder on your hard drive and click Open. The image will be uploaded to Canva’s image library.
4. Select the image and it will appear on the blank page. Adjust the image to fit the page how you want it. Select Elements if you want to add shapes, charts, grids, and other elements.
5. Next, select Text to add a heading and subheading to your book cover page.
6. Select Styles and choose a color scheme and style headings for your book cover.
7. When you are satisfied with the way your book looks, click on Download at the top right corner and select the file type JPG. This is the file type that Amazon KDP would accept. Click Download and then save the image to your hard drive in the appropriate folder.
Now you have a completed book cover to upload to Amazon KDP.
In the next blog post, you will learn how to upload your manuscript and your book cover to publish on Amazon KDP. Then in a later blog post, I will show you how to upload your manuscript and book cover on Draft2Digital.
