KDP Cover Dimensions
A Kindle ebook cover is 1600 × 2560 pixels — 1600 wide, 2560 tall, a 1.6:1 ratio. A paperback cover is one wrap whose width depends on how many pages the book has. Everything below is the detail behind those two sentences.
Kindle ebook cover
| Use this | 1600 × 2560 px |
|---|---|
| Ratio | 1.6:1 (height to width) |
| Minimum accepted | 1,000 px on the shortest side |
| File type | JPEG (.jpg/.jpeg) or TIFF (.tif/.tiff) |
| Colour | RGB |
| Front only | No spine, no back cover, no bleed |
The ratio matters more than the pixel count, because Amazon never crops your cover — it pads it. Upload something squarer and the store shows your book with grey bars down both sides, next to competitors that fill their frame. That single detail does more to make a cover look self-published than any choice of font.
The reason for 2560 pixels of height rather than something smaller is that one file has to survive two very different jobs: a thumbnail about sixty pixels wide in search results, and a near-full-screen image on a tablet. The thumbnail is the one that sells the book, and it is why cover designers set titles far larger than looks sensible at full size. Shrink your cover to sixty pixels and read it. If you cannot, neither can anybody browsing.
Paperback cover
A paperback cover is not three files. It is one image containing back cover, spine and front cover in that order, left to right, with bleed around the outside edge. Its height is your trim height plus bleed top and bottom; its width is:
back cover + spine + front cover + bleed on both sides
Trim size and bleed are fixed once you pick them — 0.125 inches of bleed on the outer edges. The spine is the part that moves, because it depends on how thick the book is:
spine width = page count × thickness of one page
For KDP's white paper that thickness is 0.002252 inches, which is the figure our KDP page estimator uses. A 300-page paperback on white stock therefore has a spine of about 0.676 inches. Cream and colour stock are thicker, so the same manuscript printed on cream needs a wider spine and a wider cover with it.
Two things trip people up here. Page count means printed pages, so a book with 150 sheets of paper has 300 pages — every leaf is two. And your page count is not known until the interior is final, which is why the cover is the last thing to make, not the first: change your font size and the spine changes with it.
Get the exact wrap from KDP, not from arithmetic. KDP's cover template generator takes your trim size and page count and returns a PDF with the fold lines, bleed and safe areas already drawn. It accounts for paper stock and for the tolerance the press works to. Use it as your bottom layer and design on top; the numbers here are for understanding what it gives you, not for replacing it.
Common trim sizes
Trim size is the finished page size, and it decides both how many pages your manuscript becomes and how thick the spine ends up. These are the sizes most fiction is printed at, with the rough words-per-page our estimator assumes:
| Trim | Words per page (approx.) | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| 5 × 8 in | 280 | Mass-market feel, poetry, novellas |
| 5.25 × 8 in | 270 | Trade fiction |
| 5.5 × 8.5 in | 260 | Trade fiction, memoir |
| 6 × 9 in | 250 | The default for most novels |
| 7 × 10 in | 220 | Non-fiction, workbooks |
| 8.5 × 11 in | 180 | Manuals, large format |
A smaller trim fits fewer words on a page, so the same novel becomes a thicker book — which raises the print cost and the minimum price you can list at. That is the real trade-off behind the choice, and the page estimator shows it for your own word count.
What actually gets covers rejected or ruined
- A front cover uploaded as a paperback. The commonest rejection, and an easy one to make when you already have the ebook cover finished.
- A square-ish ebook cover. Not rejected — worse. It goes live with grey bars around it.
- Type in the bleed. Anything within 0.125 inches of the trim edge may be cut off, and "may" means it will be on some copies and not others.
- Spine text on a thin book. Under 100 pages it is not permitted; just over, it needs generous margins or it prints around the fold.
- A cover made before the interior was final. Any change to font, margins or front matter changes the page count, and the page count sets the spine.
- A title that only works at full size. The thumbnail is where the decision gets made. Test at sixty pixels wide.
Making the cover
Our AI book cover generator exports at 1600 × 2560 px, which is the ebook spec above — generate the artwork from a description or upload your own image, set the title and author type with a genre template, and download the finished JPEG. It needs no account, and there is no watermark.
It produces the ebook cover, not the paperback wrap. For print, take the artwork it gives you into KDP's template as the front-cover panel, or use the Kindle & KDP formatter to prepare the interior first so your page count — and therefore your spine — is settled before you design.
KDP cover questions
What size should a Kindle ebook cover be?
1600 × 2560 pixels — 1600 wide, 2560 tall. That is a 1.6:1 height-to-width ratio, which is the shape Amazon uses everywhere it shows your book. Save it as JPEG or TIFF in RGB. Anything squarer gets letterboxed with grey bars in the store, which is the single most common way a good cover is made to look amateur.
What is the minimum cover size KDP accepts?
1,000 pixels on the shortest side. It will upload and it will pass review, but it is not what you want: the same file has to work as a 60-pixel-wide thumbnail on a phone and as a full-screen image on a tablet, and 1,000 pixels is visibly soft on the second. Use 1600 × 2560 unless you have a reason not to.
How do I work out the spine width for a paperback?
Multiply your page count by the thickness of one page. For KDP's white paper that is 0.002252 inches, so a 300-page book has a spine of 0.676 inches. Cream and colour stock are thicker, so the same page count gives a wider spine. Page count means printed pages, not sheets of paper and not manuscript pages — every leaf is two pages.
Does a paperback need one image or three?
One. A paperback cover is a single image — back, spine and front side by side, laid out as one file with bleed around the outside. Uploading a front cover on its own is a rejection, not a warning. An ebook cover is the opposite: front only, no spine, no bleed.
Can I put text on the spine?
Only above 100 pages. Below that the spine is too narrow for KDP to guarantee where the fold lands, so spine text is not allowed. Just above the threshold, keep the type well inside the spine: the trim tolerance is about 0.0625 inches either way, and a title centred to the millimetre can still print onto the front.
RGB or CMYK?
RGB for ebooks, always — they are only ever shown on a screen. For paperbacks KDP accepts both and converts to CMYK for printing, and the conversion is where saturated blues and bright oranges lose their punch. If a colour matters to you, that is the reason to order a proof copy rather than trust the preview.
Why does my cover look blurry in the Kindle store?
Usually the upload was resized from something smaller, or the image was saved as a JPEG twice. Export once from the original at 1600 × 2560 rather than scaling a finished JPEG up — enlarging a compressed image adds size without adding detail, and the store shows the result at full width on a tablet.
What about hardcover?
Same idea as a paperback and different numbers: the wrap is wider because the boards overhang the pages, and the spine uses a different thickness per page. KDP's template generator is the only sensible source for these — ask it for your trim size and page count and it hands back a PDF with the fold lines already drawn.