After reviewing the Amazon KDP print-on-demand process, and finding it wanting, I thought I’d better provide a guide to the Cover Creator do’s and don’ts.
To begin…
If you have already published an ebook with KDP:
- Log in to KDP
- Go to your Bookshelf
- Find the ebook for which you want to create a paperback version and click ‘+ Create Paperback’
If you have not published with KDP before but have an ordinary Amazon account, go to the website:
And sign in with your Amazon ID and Password. If you don’t have an Amazon account, click the big, yellow ‘Sign Up’ button and follow the registration instructions.
Once you’ve logged in to KDP, click the ‘+ Paperback’ button as shown below:
To work…
You should now be looking at the first page of the paperback setup screen. New authors will need to fill in the required details before they click ‘Save and Continue’ at the bottom of the screen. Existing authors will find the details already filled in using the details from the ebook.
Page 2 of the setup contains more questions, and down near the bottom half of the page you’ll find the Cover Creator option:
Click the yellow, ‘Launch Cover Creator’ button if you want to use the app to create a cover for your book.
[Note: if you already have a cover, you can upload it by clicking the ‘Upload a cover you already have…’ radio button instead. Covers must be in PDF format and they must be the appropriate size for whichever trim size you have chosen – i.e. for the physical dimensions of your book, including the spine]
You should now be looking at the ‘How to Use Cover Creator’ window:
This is essentially just an overview of the process. Click the ‘Continue’ button.
Next, you will be asked to choose a background picture for your cover. You have three options – use a free, KDP image, use your own image or skip this step:
Point at the options to see a description of that option. If you want to use your own image, click ‘From My Computer’ and select the appropriate file to use in the templates. If you’re not ready to select an image yet, click ‘Skip This Step’. You will be prompted later to select an image for the cover. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be using the free images from the KDP gallery.
From Image Gallery…
The images in the KDP gallery are organised in categories. When you select one of the main categories listed on the left hand side of the window, the sub-categories will display on the right hand side. In the example shown below, the main category selected is ‘Backgrounds’:
Clicking one of the sub-categories will take you to the actual images. In the example shown below, I clicked on one of the images from the ‘Abstract’ sub-category:
Alternatively, I could have typed a keyword into the search box to narrow down my search.
Once you find the image you want, click the orange ‘Use this Image’ button.
Cover Creator inserts the chosen image into all of the available templates and displays them for you to choose the one you like the best:
Click the left and right direction arrows to see all the available templates [11]. When you find one you like, click it.
You should now be looking at the ‘Quick Tutorial’:
This is just a simple overlay that explains the purpose of the buttons, icons and guidelines. Click the ‘Dismiss’ button to get rid of the overlay.
While the overlay is helpful, it completely ignores the most basic elements of the screen – i.e. how to enter your own blurb on the back cover!
When you dismiss the tutorial overlay, this is what you will see:
The triangular orange alerts are there to tell you how to replace the nonsense text with real text. Point to an alert to see a description of what it’s about. Generally, to replace the nonsense text, simply click in the relevant paragraph. This will clear all text and allow you to type, or copy/paste, the correct text onto the cover.
Easy, right? Not quite. For reasons I can’t fathom, the default font size for the paragraphs is not the same as the text shown. For example, the font for the author bio is huge, so before you type in the blurb, you have to set the font style and size via the editing bar as shown below:
Click the small down arrow to display the list of available fonts. Click a font to select it.
Next, click the small down arrow next to ‘Auto Fit’ and select a font size because…auto fit doesn’t work and the font is still huge. As far as I could tell, selecting the size of the font is a case of trial and error. The alignment options seem to work, as do the font colour and drop shadow options, but no matter what I tried, the Bold and Italic options remained greyed out.
Once you have all the back cover text entered properly, click on the ‘Author Photo’ icon. You will see two options – ‘From My Computer’ and ‘Skip This Step’:
Down the very bottom, in tiny blue letters, you should also see a link to the ‘KDP image guidelines’. -grinds teeth- Clearly this screen has been re-used without adjusting for context. Clicking this link does provide some very important information about cover images – i.e. if you choose to use your own image – but it provides absolutely nothing about the Author Photo. Luckily, Cover Creator resizes the Author Photo to fit automatically.
But… All photos are not equal. First I tried a photo of 527 x 532 pixels, and it worked perfectly. Then I tried a much smaller one – 157 x 202 pixels. Cover Creator inserted it into the available space but came back with a problem. It thought the photo was less than 300 DPI. Actually, both photos were 300 DPI so the size had clearly triggered some glitch.
For your information, the following photo size seems to work well:
500 x 500 pixels or
1.667 x 1.667 inches or
42.33 x 42.33 millimeters
With the blurb and Author Photo taken care of, it’s time to edit the rest of the template. First up are the template colours. Click the paintbrush tab beneath your cover:
This will display an editing bar:
The options on the left allow you to select each colour individually from a pallet of colours. The options on the right are colour sets that work well together. If you are choosing your colours individually, be very careful that the background and font colour are a good contrast to each other. If they are too similar, the text will be very hard to read.
The next tab is the layout tab:
Clicking this tab displays a selection of preset layouts:
And finally, there’s the font tab:
This option is for Title, Sub-title [if you want one] and Author Name. It provides a series of font ‘sets’:
Click the left and right arrows to see all the sets, and try them out. Click one to select it.
[Note: I’m not sure if the fonts were all very similar or I’m just going blind, but they all looked the same the me. Of course, this might be a display glitch…]
If you want to insert a sub-title, you have to click around the cover until the sub-title text box suddenly appears. Kind of lame. Type in your sub-title.
Although finding the sub-title is not intuitive at all, one nice feature is that you can select any piece of text – e.g. Title, Sub-title, Blurb, Spine etc – and change its colour using the Text Colour option on the editing bar:
You can also change the font and font size, which makes me wonder why you’d bother with a Text tab in the first place. -shrug-
When you’ve finished tweaking the cover, click the ‘Preview’ button and sit back while the system puts the finished preview together. Depending on how big the cover files are, this can take a while.
If you’re satisfied with the appearance of the cover, click the ‘Save and Submit’ button at the bottom of the preview screen:
The cover file will be saved automatically, and you can continue with the rest of the setup for your print book.
I hope this helps,
Meeks
November 20th, 2018 at 12:55 am
Meeka, thank you for the above. Please could you tell me, if I wish to go wide with my book, what happens to the cover I’ve used in Kindle Cover Creator. Do I have to submit a different cover to the retailers? Are there copyright issues? I cannot seem to find any answers in Kindle’s T&C’s.
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November 20th, 2018 at 7:55 am
Hi Poornima. I don’t have personal experience of the Cover Creator covers as I always make my own, but as you’re using their template AND their free photo, I assume you’d have to make a new cover if you go wide [just as you have to get a private ISBN].
My suggestion would be to find a free image on :
http://www.freeimages.com
and build your cover from that. Or…build a new cover on one of the free, online apps such as Canva:
https://www.canva.com
It’s been a while since I played with Canva, but I’m pretty sure you can use their own free images or use your own free image in building the cover.
Best of luck!
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November 20th, 2018 at 8:52 am
Hi Meeka, thank you for your prompt reply. Yes, you are right- I cannot use the Cover Creator image. I’m currently in talks with a cover designer, so hopefully, if that works, I can use that cover to go wide & get my own ISBN too.x
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November 20th, 2018 at 9:09 am
I’m so glad you got it sorted. Going wide can be a lot of work, but worth it in the end, imho. 🙂
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May 12th, 2018 at 6:12 pm
Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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May 13th, 2018 at 8:34 am
Thank you ladies!
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May 12th, 2018 at 6:00 am
Reblogged this on Plaisted Publishing House and commented:
Nicely done. How To: KDP Covers
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May 12th, 2018 at 10:00 am
Thanks, Claire. Much appreciated!
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May 12th, 2018 at 4:27 pm
This post is great. 🙂
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May 13th, 2018 at 8:34 am
:D:D
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May 13th, 2018 at 8:51 am
https://giphy.com/gifs/smile-the-hobbit-gandalf-dYTfJZ2dCQBhK
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May 15th, 2018 at 12:13 pm
LMAO! That website is fantastic. And I just realised where I first saw the UK actor who plays Dr Watson in Sherlock…LOTR. I seriously didn’t make the connection between the two until just a few seconds ago. 😀
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May 15th, 2018 at 7:39 pm
😀 When i realised the top Elf in LOTR was the bad guy in The Matrix…I laughed..It can be strange when you suddenly recognise someone in a movie.
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May 15th, 2018 at 10:03 pm
So true! Must say Hugo Weaving is great at every role he turns his hand to. Did you ever see him in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert?
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May 15th, 2018 at 10:34 pm
You’re kidding me…No way…LOL I’ve seen some of the movie, can’t say i noticed him in it…lol
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May 15th, 2018 at 11:21 pm
He’s one of the ‘girls’. Not bad in tights but his legs are a bit thin. 😀 😀
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May 15th, 2018 at 11:30 pm
LOL
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May 13th, 2018 at 8:53 am
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May 11th, 2018 at 10:09 pm
Thanks for this helpful information. 🙂 — Suzanne
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May 12th, 2018 at 10:02 am
My pleasure, Suzanne. 🙂
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May 11th, 2018 at 12:29 pm
Helps? It’s brilliant! 😀
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May 11th, 2018 at 3:30 pm
lol – thanks! :D:D
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May 11th, 2018 at 11:05 am
Thank you, Meeks. It was very thoughtful and generous of you to take the time to put together this detailed and informative post ❤️
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May 11th, 2018 at 3:32 pm
Very welcome Tina! I love sharing information and I’m always thrilled when something I’ve written actually helps someone else. -hugs-
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May 11th, 2018 at 7:12 am
Thanks, Andrea! 🙂 Sharing…
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May 11th, 2018 at 3:33 pm
-hugs- Thanks, Bette. 🙂
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May 11th, 2018 at 6:58 am
Good tutorial. Thank you for writing it.
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May 11th, 2018 at 3:34 pm
Nada. 😀 Btw I was soooo impressed by the artwork you do. Would love to know more about the techniques.
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May 17th, 2018 at 2:12 pm
Alot of it is staging.
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May 17th, 2018 at 8:35 pm
lol – okay
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May 18th, 2018 at 4:23 am
🙂
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May 11th, 2018 at 2:58 am
That was helpful, Andrea, though I’m going to stick with my cover designer. At least I know I can just upload. That’s easy. I have lots of questions about the interior since ebook interiors seem so bland to me, and print books have so much we can do creatively. Do you know if the text can be modified once it converts to print format? Like adding drop caps or changing fonts? You’re so good at these technical challenges, and I figure I’m going to need to know this in time. 🙂
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May 11th, 2018 at 3:47 pm
lol – I love your cover designs. Hang on to that designer!
For ebooks, I convert StoryBox [like Scrivener] epub files to Kindle compatible .mobi files in a free program called Calibre so they’re clean but not fancy. For print books, I import the file into Word and do a fair bit of formatting. The critical first step is to decide on the physical size of your book. This gives you your ‘trim size’. Then there are look up tables that tell you what the page setup for that trim size should be in Word. Once you’ve changed the paper size and margins of the Word manuscript to the desired trim size, your page count will change. After that, you sort out your front matter and back matter. Finally, you put a section break at the start of the actual chapters so your page numbers can start at ‘1’.
lol – have I lost you? Check your email as I’m going to send you an e-copy of How to Print Your Novel with CreateSpace. Ignore the last half if you don’t want to use CreateSpace. The first half should help with the Word setup though. 🙂
-hugs-
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May 12th, 2018 at 1:33 am
I love Createspace and totally get all the formatting options. But thanks for sending me the guide – there’s likely something new that I didn’t know too! I was wondering about the direct conversion in Amazon from ebook to print book (not using Createspace). I have no idea how that works in terms of adding formatting flair. And I’m afraid to try it! I suppose I could do some research. Ha ha. 🙂 Thanks, my friend. ❤
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May 12th, 2018 at 10:00 am
Welcome. 🙂
Re converting from KDP ebook straight to print…I wouldn’t. 😦 For starters, normal ebooks don’t have page numbers [because they ‘flow’]. It is possible to put page numbers into ebooks, but ONLY if you use the fixed formatting available in Kindle Textbook Creator. The trouble with Textbook Creator is that it requires a PDF file and you have to manually experiment with the size of the font in that file because this type of ebook cannot be resized. You can pinch and zoom, like with a mobile phone, but that gets old very quickly. You can see this in action in the textbook I sent you. Took me ages to get a size that seemed ‘okay’ to me. Ditto drop caps. For now, ebooks are very ‘vin ordinaire’ in terms of layout and formatting. For print, you’ll get a much more professional result if you reformat in Word, convert to PDF and upload the PDF.
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May 12th, 2018 at 11:29 am
Thanks. That’s what I thought and that’s why I worried. Amazon keeps asking me to convert my ebooks directly to print and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Lol. I’ll stick with Createspace as long as it’s around. 🙂
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May 13th, 2018 at 8:38 am
Yup. Definitely the way to go. 🙂
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May 11th, 2018 at 12:49 am
You’re putting great content out for people looking to go this route. Off to spread the word…
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May 11th, 2018 at 7:23 pm
I saw your tweets…THANK YOU!
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May 10th, 2018 at 11:05 pm
This was a very informative post and the step by step instructions was excellent. I’ve used CreateSpace for all three of my paperback books but never tried to make my own cover. Perhaps I’ll try sometime. Please don’t take my comment as critical, but I kept thinking while I read your post, why would someone go through all this effort to save a few dollars. There are professionals out there that have won awards for their covers and their prices are reasonable. They are reasonable as long as you use an established image from the millions available. Of course, if you want an original, be prepared to pay. For less than $200 I get a professional cover for my ebook and paperback in pdf format to upload. Book covers can make or break your sales and at my level, I don’t want to take a chance on my own creation. Thanks for your post.
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May 11th, 2018 at 7:29 pm
lol – no offence taken Chuck! And thanks for your comments. Just one thing though, the Cover Creator app for CreateSpace is a bit different [unless it was updated in the last 6 months. The instruction I gave are for the Amazon KDP version.
I take your point about covers. They are incredibly important, but sometimes even two hundred dollars is too big an investment. 😦
I wish you all the best for your publishing journey.
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May 10th, 2018 at 9:38 pm
Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady.
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May 11th, 2018 at 7:30 pm
Thank you! -hugs-
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May 10th, 2018 at 8:59 pm
Thank you for another great tutorial. Michael 😉
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May 11th, 2018 at 7:31 pm
You’re welcome, Michael. Happy weekend!
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May 11th, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Thank you very much! Wish you also a great weekend! Michael
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May 12th, 2018 at 10:01 am
lol – I’m there already. It’s turning into a lovely autumn Saturday. 🙂
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May 10th, 2018 at 8:58 pm
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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May 10th, 2018 at 6:03 pm
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
Another great step-by-step tutorial from Meeks 😀
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May 10th, 2018 at 8:52 pm
Thanks Chris! Btw I enjoyed those links you gave me too.
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May 10th, 2018 at 9:18 pm
Good, Meeks 👍😃❤️
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