Make Book Covers for Paperbacks

Affinity Publisher: Steps for Making a Book Cover

  1. Download the book cover template from KDP.
  2. Open Affinity Publisher and create a new document
  3. Remember to check the box (Under VIEW) that says Show bleed — this is important because later it will affect your exporting of the final PDF book cover. … If your background page color is white, this is easy to not notice.
  4. set to print … document-unit set to inches …. image placement policy is linked … number of pages is 1 (unlike Indesign the number is 3) … Layout size in inches is the height and the width of the cover times two plus spine-width. … color profile is CMYK … margin is optional for example .5 inches … bleed is 0.125 for all 4 sides (top, bottom, left, right) — then hit OK
  5. Now place the book cover template (from KDP) by Image > place … use the PDF or the PNG …
  6. in the Layers panel — Lock template Layer, move it to the top … then you can place the other layers underneath it …
  7. File > place — choose the cover image and place it precisely on top of the template
  8. Press Z for Zoom to look carefully that you placed the cover image precisely on the bleed lines
  9. After your front cover image is placed, fill in the back cover and spine with one rectangle that you drag out … use eyedropper to get a color from the font cover, and fill in your back rectangle to make the color of the back cover
  10. Now add the book title to the front cover … text tool to make a text box and drag it across the entire width ….
  11. type in the title words and you can center it — button on top bar — and change the size and the font style … If you have “favorite fonts” you can bring up your favorite font menu, to save time scrolling through all the fonts…. You can change the “leading” from the character palette … and you can change the text color.
  12. On the back cover, place your logo … when you place you can click or you can drag to get the precise size.
  13. Add the spine text.
  14. Export by File > export … PDF Press Ready … dpi is 300 … check the box that says “include the bleed” … Area: whole document … EXPORT button …
  15. DONE ! … but proofread it carefully

Inkscape: How to Make a Book Cover (video)