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Free KDP Paperback Cover Creator

Turn the ebook cover you already have into a print-ready Amazon KDP paperback cover — back, spine and front at exact full-bleed size — in a few minutes.

Create your cover — free → Takes about 3 minutes

100% free No signup No watermark Files never leave your browser

Anatomy

What you get: a full-wrap cover

A paperback cover is one continuous sheet: back cover, spine and front cover printed together, then wrapped around the book block. Below is the exact geometry the creator exports for a 6 × 9 in book with 300 pages on white paper — every proportion drawn from the same math that sizes your PDF.

KDP barcode BACK FRONT SPINE 0.6756" 12.9256 in 9.25 in bleed 0.125 in safe zone 0.25 in inside trim
  • bleed edge — trimmed away
  • trim line — final book edge
  • safe zone — keep text inside
  • spine folds

Three steps

How it works

  1. 01

    Upload your ebook cover

    Drop in the PNG or JPEG you already use for Kindle. We read its size, extract a five-color palette and suggest the best-matching trim size.

  2. 02

    Set trim size & page count

    Pick a trim (6 × 9 in is the default), enter your final page count and choose white or cream paper. The spine width is computed live from KDP's own formula.

  3. 03

    Download a print-ready PDF

    One click renders a 300-DPI full-wrap PDF at the exact size KDP expects, with vector text and your barcode zone kept clear.

Features

Everything KDP checks, handled

  • Exact KDP dimensions

    Full-wrap size computed from KDP's published rules, including 0.125 in of bleed on every outside edge. A 6 × 9 in book with 300 pages exports at 12.9256 × 9.25 in.

  • Live spine calculation

    Pages × paper thickness (0.002252 in/page white, 0.0025 in/page cream), recomputed as you type, with a plain-English verdict on spine text.

  • 8 back-cover templates

    Blurb, review quotes, author bio, series header and more — every thumbnail rendered live with your own cover and palette, never a generic preview.

  • Palette from your own cover

    Five dominant colors are extracted from your upload in the browser, so the back and spine always match the front.

  • 300-DPI PDF with vector text

    Images are rendered at 300 DPI and all type is embedded as vectors — spine and blurb text stay razor-sharp at any print size.

  • Private by design

    Everything runs in your browser. No upload, no server, no account — your cover file never leaves your device.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What size will my PDF be?

The exact full-wrap size KDP expects for your book: 2 × trim width + spine width + 0.25 in of bleed wide, and trim height + 0.25 in tall. For a 6 × 9 in book with 300 pages on white paper that is 12.9256 × 9.25 in (3,878 × 2,775 px at 300 DPI). The download page shows your exact dimensions before you export.

Is it really free?

Yes. No signup, no trial, no paid tier for the PDF. The tool is made by the team behind PaperbackCover, an AI cover design product — this free tool is how we introduce ourselves to authors.

Does the PDF have a watermark?

No. The exported PDF contains only your cover — no watermark, no logo, no hidden metadata. It is yours to upload straight to KDP.

What page count do I need?

Use the final page count of your formatted interior file — the number KDP reports when you upload your manuscript. KDP accepts 24–828 pages on white paper and 24–776 on cream. If your interior isn't final yet, an estimate works — you can re-export in seconds when the count settles.

Can I put text on the spine?

KDP only prints spine text on books with 79 or more pages. Below that, the tool disables spine text and explains why. Even above the threshold, thin spines are tight: under about 0.25 in there is little room, so we keep spine type 0.0625 in clear of each fold, per KDP's rules.

Should I choose white or cream paper?

Cream is the convention for fiction and memoir; white suits nonfiction, workbooks and anything with images. It also changes your spine: cream paper is thicker (0.0025 in/page vs 0.002252 in/page), so a 300-page book has a 0.75 in spine on cream but 0.6756 in on white.

Will my cover art be cropped or stretched?

Never stretched. Your cover is scaled — proportions intact — to fill the front panel edge-to-edge, including the 0.125 in bleed. If its shape differs slightly from your trim size, the small overflow past the panel edge is trimmed off evenly; the preview shows exactly what prints. If the difference is more than about 5%, the preflight checklist flags it so you can check that nothing important sits near the edges (and remember the safe zone: keep must-keep detail 0.25 in inside the trim line).

What DPI is the exported PDF?

Raster artwork is rendered at 300 DPI — KDP's recommended resolution — and all text is embedded as vector type, which has no DPI limit. If your uploaded image is too small to reach 300 DPI at your chosen trim, the tool warns you (it never blocks the download).

Can I use the PDF for IngramSpark or Lulu?

Not yet. Today the tool follows Amazon KDP's spec exactly — spine formula, bleed and barcode zone all differ slightly at other printers, so we'd rather say "KDP only" than let a file get rejected. IngramSpark support is on the roadmap.

The details

What is a full-wrap cover?

Your ebook cover is a single front image. Print needs more: KDP asks for one PDF that contains the back cover, the spine and the front cover side by side, at the exact physical size of your book plus bleed. That single sheet is the full wrap. It reads left to right as back → spine → front, because the sheet is wrapped around the book — what's on the left of the file ends up on the back of the book.

The wrap's size depends on three things you choose: trim size (the finished page size, 6 × 9 in being the most common), page count, and paper type. Change any of them and the file dimensions change — which is why a template made for someone else's book will not fit yours.

How spine width is calculated

KDP's formula is simple multiplication: pages × paper thickness. White paper is 0.002252 in per page and cream is 0.0025 in per page. A 300-page book on white paper gets a spine of 300 × 0.002252 = 0.6756 in. The same book on cream would be 0.75 in — thicker paper, wider spine.

Spine text has its own rule: KDP only prints it on books of 79 pages or more, and requires 0.0625 in of clearance between the text and each fold. Try the spine width calculator to see your number instantly.

Bleed, trim and safe zones

Printers cannot cut with perfect precision, so KDP requires 0.125 in of bleed — extra artwork beyond the finished edge — on every outside edge of the wrap. The trim line is where the cut lands; anything between trim and bleed is thrown away. The safe zone sits 0.25 in inside the trim line: keep titles, blurbs and anything you can't afford to lose within it, because the cut can drift either direction.

One more reserved area: KDP prints its barcode in a 2 × 1.2 in zone at the bottom-right of the back cover. This tool keeps that zone clear automatically and shows it hatched in the preview, so nothing you write ends up underneath the barcode. If you'd rather build your cover in Photoshop or Canva, grab a blank cover template with the guides burned in — or check your exact file size with the cover size calculator. Your source image should be at least 1,838 × 2,775 px for a sharp 6 × 9 in front cover at 300 DPI.

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