book_cover_design v1.0.0

name: book_cover_design description: Design a book cover that sells the right book: audit the genre shelf first, build title and author hierarchy that survives thumbnail size, design the spine and back cover for print, lock series consistency rules, and run a print preflight for trim, bleed, spine, barcode, and resolution. Use when designing or fixing a front cover, a full paperback or hardcover wrap, an ebook cover, or a series cover system, or when a cover reads as the wrong genre or fails at thumbnail size.

Book Cover Design

Purpose

A cover has two jobs at once. It has to tell the right reader, in about a second, that this is the kind of book they already buy. It also has to survive real production: thumbnail grids, a narrow spine, a barcode box, trim drift, and 300 dpi print. This skill does both jobs in order: shelf research first, concept second, layout third, print preflight last. It covers fiction and nonfiction, ebook and print, single titles and series. For music release art use the album cover skill instead. This one is for books.

Workflow

1. Lock the book facts before any design. Record title, subtitle, author name exactly as it will appear, trim size, format list (ebook, paperback, hardcover), final page count if print exists, paper type, binding, platform (KDP, IngramSpark, or another printer), series position, and the one sentence promise of the book. If the page count is not final, design the front cover only and leave the wrap until the interior freezes. A page count change moves the spine and breaks a finished wrap.

1. Audit the genre shelf. Pull 20 covers from the book narrow subgenre: 10 current category bestsellers and 10 recent releases with real review counts. Lay them out as retailer thumbnails in one grid. Score each one for subject, setting shown or implied, people shown or not, palette, title type style and case, author name size and place, and series marks. Write two things down: the shared pattern readers expect, and the open lane the pattern leaves. The full pattern notes and scoring prompts are in references/genre-shelf.md. Design to the shared pattern first. Use the open lane for the one fresh element, not for a whole new language.

1. Write the cover brief. One page, before opening a design tool. It states the subgenre and shelf pattern, the audience promise in one sentence, the single visual idea, the palette (two to four colours), the hierarchy order, the spine and back cover plan, and the series rules if any. A worked fictional brief is in references/worked-cover-brief.md. If the brief cannot be written in plain words, the concept is not ready. Concepts that try to show the plot, the cast, the setting, and a symbol at once fail at thumbnail size every time.

1. Pick one visual idea. One subject carries the front cover: one figure, one object, one place, or a pure type treatment. Support the title, do not compete with it. Use only art you own or licence, at print size and resolution. Check stock art against the shelf audit: if the same photo already sits on three competing covers, pick different art. Set type in a layout tool, never baked into generated or stock art, so spelling stays exact and the same lettering can run on the spine and back cover.

1. Build the hierarchy and run the thumbnail test. Decide the reading order and size each element for it.

• New or little known author: title first and largest, author second, subtitle, tagline, or series line third and smallest.
• Author led book, where the name is the reason to buy: author first, title second. Use the shelf audit to judge this, not hope.
• Use at most two typefaces: one for title, one for author and supporting lines. Match type style to the shelf pattern for the subgenre.
• Keep strong contrast between type and the art behind it. If the art is busy where type sits, add a plain band, a shadow that stays subtle, or move the type.
• Shrink the finished front cover to about 120 px wide, then to about 60 px wide. At 120 px the title and the genre signal must read. At 60 px the title shape and dominant colour must still separate it from neighbours. If the title fails, enlarge it, shorten the line breaks, or simplify the art. Do not fix a weak thumbnail by adding more elements.
• Check greyscale and a quick colour blind simulation if the title relies on colour contrast alone.

1. Design the spine as its own cover. The spine is the only part most shelf and library readers see.

• Run the calculator in scripts/cover_calc.py for a planning number, then lay the spine out on the platform template for the final page count, paper, and binding.
• Reading order on the spine: title, author, publisher mark at the foot if there is one, volume number in a fixed place for a series.
• Keep spine type inside the safe width: spine width minus clearance on each side. KDP asks for at least 0.0625 in clear on each side of spine type. IngramSpark asks for 0.0625 in each side on spines 0.35 in and wider, 0.03125 in on narrower spines.
• Respect the no text floors: KDP prints spine text only on books with more than 79 pages, IngramSpark offers no spine text below 48 pages. Below the floor, carry colour or a simple mark across the spine and put no words there.
• Avoid a hard colour edge exactly on a fold line. Fold position drifts a little in binding and a sharp edge shows the drift. Blend colour across the spine where the design allows it.

1. Build the back cover to close the sale. Order matters more than decoration.

• First: a hook line or a short promise, in the largest back cover type.
• Second: a short blurb that sells the same promise as the front cover. Do not summarise the whole plot.
• Third: proof, only if it is real. Use a named review quote, a prize the book actually won, or a sales fact you can source. Leave the space empty rather than inventing praise.
• Fourth: a short author line and photo if the shelf pattern uses one.
• Last: the barcode area, planned from the first sketch. Reserve the lower right of the back cover, 2 in by 1.2 in, at least 0.25 in from spine and trim, on a plain white box. Keep faces, text, and busy art out of it. Full barcode rules are in references/print-specs.md.
• Keep all back cover text at least 0.25 in inside trim. That clears the stricter IngramSpark type safety and the KDP minimum.

1. Lock series rules on book one, or fix them on the next book. Write the rules down as a short system, not a mood.

• Fixed across the series: trim size, title typeface and placement, author name treatment and placement, art style, recurring element or badge, spine layout and alignment, back cover grid.
• Varied per volume: dominant colour inside a shared family, central image or object, title words, volume specific motif.
• Test the system three ways: full size, retailer thumbnail, and spines lined up in a row. A reader should spot the family at thumbnail size and still tell volumes apart on the shelf.
• If an older series has no system, build the system on the next cover and re-cover the backlist to match when the budget allows. Do not leave three different looks running and call it a series.

1. Export ebook and print as separate files. Never send one file to both jobs.

• Ebook front cover: 1600 px wide by 2560 px high, ratio 1.6 to 1, JPEG or TIFF, RGB, under 50 MB for KDP. That is the ideal size in KDP help, with a minimum of 1000 px high by 625 px wide. Add a thin medium grey border if a very light cover would vanish on a white store page.
• Print full wrap: one PDF spread, back cover plus spine plus front cover, CMYK, 300 ppi raster art at placed size, fonts embedded. Bleed and geometry per platform in references/print-specs.md.
• Keep the editable source file, the art licences, and the font licences with the exports. A flattened PDF alone cannot be fixed when the page count changes.

1. Run the preflight pass and order a proof. Work the Output Contract checklist line by line. Check the file at 100 percent size, check the thumbnail again from the exported file rather than the design canvas, scan the printed barcode on a proof copy with a phone, and read the spine on the proof copy from a few feet away. Fix geometry errors first: wrong spine, missing bleed, text in the trim zone, and barcode faults reject files and ruin print runs. A pretty cover with a wrong spine is a failed cover.

Output Contract

Every cover job leaves with:

• A one page cover brief: book facts, shelf pattern, open lane, audience promise, single visual idea, palette, hierarchy order.
• The shelf audit sheet: 20 covers scored, shared pattern in plain words, and the one deliberate break if any, with its reason.
• Front cover files: ebook image at the platform size in RGB, and the editable source.
• Print file if print exists: full wrap PDF in CMYK on the platform template, plus a preflight record with trim, final page count, paper, spine width, full wrap size in inches and pixels at 300 dpi, bleed used, and colour mode.
• A thumbnail check note: what reads at about 120 px wide and what drops out, in two lines.
• Spine and barcode checks: spine text allowed or correctly left blank, safe width used, barcode size, clearance, colour, and ISBN match all confirmed.
• Series rule sheet if the book is in a series: fixed elements, varied elements, and the volume number treatment.
• Proof result: proof copy ordered, barcode scanned, spine read, trim checked. No proof, no launch claim for print.

Use the calculator to fill the preflight record:

python3 scripts/cover_calc.py --trim-w 6 --trim-h 9 --pages 300 --paper white
python3 scripts/cover_calc.py --trim-w 5.5 --trim-h 8.5 --pages 240 --paper cream --json
python3 scripts/cover_calc.py --self-test

The 6 by 9 example above, 300 pages on white paper, should return a spine of 0.6756 in and a full wrap of 12.9256 in by 9.25 in, 3878 px by 2775 px at 300 dpi. If it returns anything else, the script or its inputs are wrong and the preflight stops there.

Operating Rules

1. Shelf before sketch. No concept work until the genre audit exists. A cover that reads as the wrong genre is wrong even if it looks good alone.
2. One visual idea, two typefaces at most, four colours at most on the front. Limits are the design.
3. Thumbnail is the real size. Full size is the detail check. Judge the cover in the order a buyer meets it.
4. Final page count first, wrap second. Recalculate the spine and regenerate the platform template after any interior change that moves the page count.
5. One platform, one template. KDP, IngramSpark, and hardcover templates do not substitute for each other, even at the same trim size.
6. No invented proof. No fake review quotes, fake prize lines, fake bestseller claims, or borrowed blurbs on the back cover or anywhere else.
7. Rights before layout. Every photo, illustration, and font needs a licence that covers commercial print and ebook use. Record the licence with the source file.
8. Type stays live in the layout file. Do not bake title or author lettering into art, and do not trust lettering rendered inside a generated image.
9. If quality and deadline conflict, ship the ebook cover on time and hold the print wrap for a correct spine and a proof. A wrong print run costs more than a short delay.