KDP cover template: how to build a cover file Amazon accepts the first time

Amazon's KDP cover template is a downloadable PNG or PDF built from four numbers: trim size, page count, paper type and ink type. Change any one of them and the template changes with it, because spine width is calculated from page count and paper thickness. A cover built against the wrong template will be rejected or, worse, printed with the spine text sliding onto the front.

Generate the template before you design, not after. Go to KDP's cover template generator, enter your trim size, page count, paper colour and ink type, and download the zip. Inside you get a flat wraparound layout covering back cover, spine and front cover in a single canvas, with bleed already included.

Read the zones. The pink or shaded areas are no-go regions: bleed at the outer edges that will be trimmed away, and the barcode block on the lower right of the back cover. Nothing you care about should sit inside either. The white area is safe.

Spine text is the most common failure. Amazon only permits text on the spine when the book has 79 pages or more, and even then the safe text area is narrower than the spine itself because of binding drift. Keep spine type at least 0.0625 inches from each spine edge and centre it.

Resolution is the second failure. The whole wraparound must be 300 DPI at final size. A front cover that looks crisp on screen at 1600 pixels wide is roughly 5.3 inches at print resolution — too small for a 6x9 book. Design at print dimensions from the start rather than scaling up later.

Colour mode matters for paperback. Export CMYK for print and keep the ebook cover separate in RGB. A cover that was designed in RGB and converted late often prints noticeably duller than it looked, particularly deep blues and vivid reds.

Flatten before you upload. Submit a single-page PDF with fonts embedded or outlined, no layers, no crop marks, and no transparency. Transparency is the quiet cause of unexplained processing errors.

Finally, use the previewer, but do not trust it for colour. The KDP previewer is reliable for geometry — it will show you a spine that is off-centre or text creeping into the bleed — and unreliable for exact colour reproduction. Order a proof copy for anything colour-critical.

Manucheck's Cover Analyzer checks the front cover against the parts of this that are testable before you get to KDP: readable title at thumbnail size, contrast, font pairing, genre signalling and clutter. It will not replace the template — nothing does — but it catches the design problems the template cannot see.