Paperback Book Covers  Many self-published authors start off with ebooks and eventually decide to publish a hard cover or paperback book too.  The benefits are tremendous as Amazon will automatically pair your ebook with the paperback on Amazon and it looks very professional to have both available, not to mention the satisfaction of having a paperback copy of your book in your own hands.

Another benefit is that the paperback page count is displayed for the ebook too – so your ebook can look a bit thicker.

In order for me to design a paperback cover for Amazon’s KDP paperback platform I need:

1.  The chosen book size – for example 5 x 8, 6 x 9 or 5.25 x 8
2. The paper color – cream or white (cream is slightly thicker than white)
3. The page count – this is most important as it determines the spine width
4. The back blurb

I ask $75 to provide you with a full wrap PDF paperback print-ready cover.  

To see samples of covers please visit my Paperback Cover Design Portfolio:

Another option is to publish through Ingramspark.  Please refer to the Ingramspark cover page for information on how to do this.

Remember Paperback Book Covers

•  are designed strictly in 300 dpi, not 72dpi as some ebook covers may be.
• have a back and spine in addition to the front of the book – and thus comes in a double-page layout – the back page is not only visible in the physical edition, but Amazon displays the back cover too.
•  are normally designed in CMYK colour mode and not RGB due to requirements of printers – this generally results in a slight change in the colour of the book cover compared to the ebook cover that needs to be in RGB for digital display.
• do not need lettering to be as bold as in the ebook format – in fact the ebook letters need to be scaled down at times otherwise they can really look out-of-place and exaggerated.
• can have more detail than ebook covers, as they are not viewed in thumbnail size
• must have bleed lines around to allow for slight printing shifts –  no important images or text should be placed inside this bleed area – often one needs to shift things in a bit from the ebook cover.
• may have an ink percentage limit (such as 300%) depending on the publisher/printer you use.
• may have different proportions to the ebook depending on the book size you choose (i.e. the cover may end up wider or narrower than the ebook)