Print Book DEsign

Print Book Design and Ebook Cover Design Differences

Print book cover design has to be tackled differently from an Ebook cover. A print book has a back cover and spine, it has ‘substance’ and tactile qualities. An ebook cover design on the other hand is just a digital rendition on a screen, generally at a very tiny size. Unless you are an established author, it is important to make sure that your cover ‘works’ at a small size. Too much detail and too much text will also make the cover messy.

Print Book Design font legibility

Bear in mind that sales messages and reviews can be placed within the description on the web page rather than the cover. Fonts and colours need careful consideration too. Many fonts, especially serif, don’t hold up well at small sizes. If you haven’t created a title for your book yet, you might find it useful to come up with something simple to add to the cover’s visibility. It’s also worth checking your title on Amazon to see if there are other books with the same title and compare. Also look at covers in the same genre. Don’t make your book look similar, make it stand out from the crowd.

Print Cover formatting

If you are planning to submit your own print cover to Amazon KDP make sure you follow these guidelines.

For artwork pricing look at my Costs. For Amazon print pricing view here: KDP Pricing

Please note, if you intend using a different publisher, they will have different specifications for bleed and paper thickness.

Cover Templates

You can also download a Cover-template form KDP. Decide on book size, paper thickness then add in your number of pages. For the barcode – you can supply your own or let KDP automatically add one.

Print on Demand

Print on Demand (POD), is a great way to self-publish.

100% of the rights to your book are retained by you.
Your book gets published when you want it published.
You become a published author of a physical book!
You choose your royalties rather than negotiating with a traditional publisher.
Your book is printed only if someone orders it. You don’t have to fill your spare room or garage with boxes of them.
You choose your own cover design.
Having both an ebook and a printed book gives you more credibility as an author and also gives you a wider potential readership.
If you want to edit your book, it’s very straightforward and doesn’t involve wastage.
You can sell it on your POD’s website (Amazon for instance) AND your own if you have one.

Some Disadvantages

You will have to sort out all your own marketing.
Colour interiors are VERY expensive.
No choice in cover material, embossing, flaps or print inside front and back covers.
Only two grades of paper for interiors, both on the thin side. The cream is slightly heavier.

Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

There are several POD publishers but Amazon KDP has a distinct advantage as you can imagine. It lets you set up the whole process yourself if you’ve got the time and inclination, but even using a professional, the process is relatively inexpensive. you can also integrate it with your ebook version.

If you have created your book interior, their calculator will tell you how thick your spine should be depending on paper type and number of pages. Note that books with less than 102 pages are not thick enough for a spine. KDP suggests 130 pages is safer. This can usually be easy to achieve with a largish font size, large margins and a few empty pages. Improving your manuscript will give you good advice on how to start the project.

And for the cover, KDP now lets you choose your book size, enter the number of pages and you can download a template in various formats to work from

Bear in mind that producing a print version and ebook at the same time can be very cost effective. Take a look at my Costs page. For more information or questions you may have, just give me an outline of your requirements and send me an Email.