Creating a book cover can be a bit daunting considering the various measurements and safe areas that go into it. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to simplify the process with the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing template calculator. Then we’ll bring that template into Affinity Publisher and create a book cover template with all of the text areas, bar codes, and art content set in their respective safe areas.

What You’ll Learn in This Tutorial

1. How to use Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing calculator to determine the width of the spine.
2. How to import the template into Affinity Publisher and set up guides.
3. How to place key elements like text boxes and bar codes.
4. How to add art to the cover.
5. How to export the file for printing.

What You’ll Need

You will need some cover assets, fonts, and other material for this tutorial. I’ll be working with assets from Envato Elements. I’ve created a collection with all of the assets I’m going to be using that you can access on Envato Elements.

You’ll also need the Amazon KDP cover template calculator. You don’t need an Amazon account to use it. The author or publisher should also have some information such as ISBN, bar code, blurb, and any other images or assets.

1. How to Calculate the Size of Our Book Template

The first step to creating a book cover template in Affinity Publisher is getting some information about the book. Obviously we need to know the dimensions, which may differ by publisher, but the publisher or author should have specific numbers for you. We also need to know the number of pages and the type of paper that it will be printed on, since that will affect the width of the spine. We may need to know if it will be a hardcover or paperback, the paper type, reading direction, and interior trim size. Since I’m using Amazon’s KDP calculator for this, it asks for information specific to Amazon’s publishing platform. Different publishers may have different requirements. If you don’t know that information yet, you can always follow along with my settings and tweak the design later.

For this tutorial, I’m going to be creating a cover template for Dune by Frank Herbert and using the following settings in Amazon KDP:

• Cover: Paperback
• Interior type: Black and white
• Paper type: Cream paper
• Reading direction: left to right
• Units: Millimeters
• Interior trim size: 127mm x 203.2mm

When you click Calculate dimensions, the calculator will return a page with detailed measurements and a visual guide representing what the measurements relate to on the book cover. There’s also a button that you can click to download the book cover template as a PDF. Go ahead and download the template.  Amazon provides a zip file containing both a PDF and PNG version of the template. Either will work, but the PDF will allow you to snap your guides in Affinity Publisher more easily.

2. How to Set the Page Size, Margins, and Bleed

Now that we have the information from Amazon KDP, we can begin creating our book cover template in Affinity Publisher. We may need to adjust some settings in Publisher to keep it from rounding the detailed dimensions that KDP gave us, though. 

Step 1

Before bringing the PDF in, go to the Affinity Publisher 2 menu and click Settings. (On Windows, you will find the settings under the Edit menu). Click on the User interface section on the left, and then, under Decimal Places for Unit Types, set the Milimeters decimal places to 3. If you chose a different unit type in Amazon KDP, of course, adjust that unit type instead.

Close the Settings menu and quit out of Affinity Publisher to make sure the changes apply. In macOS, make sure to either use Command-Q or go to the Affinity Publisher menu and select Quit. Clicking the red x button will close the window, but the application will still be running. On Windows, just click the red x button in the top-right corner of the window.

Step 2

We can now create a book cover template file in Affinity Publisher. Go to File > New. I recommend using one of the Press ready templates. We will customize the size, but this will set up the color space settings for us. I’ve selected A3 as that will also set the units to millimeters. We can leave most of the settings at the defaults, but let’s plug in the numbers from KDP to set the page size, margins, and bleed. Bleed is important but often ignored. Printers typically can’t print all the way to the edge of the page, so bleed is included to ensure that there are no awkward slivers of unprinted paper around the edge when the paper is trimmed down to its final size. 

In the Page width field, you can paste the width from the Full cover measurements in KDP.

Fortunately, Affinity Publisher allows us to type math expressions directly into any field, and it does the math for us. In my case, the full cover width is 286.51, and the bleed is 3.17. There’s a bleed on both the left and right sides, so we’ll double that. In the page width field, type 286.51 – 3.17 * 2. As soon as you click out of the width field, Affinity Publisher will instantly calculate the expression for us. Following “order of operations”, Publisher will calculate the multiplication first, making it 286.51 – 6.34, and then calculate the subtraction to give us 280.17. 

In the Page height field, we will again calculate the full cover height 209.55 minus the bleed, 3.17 times 2. Type 209.55 – 3.17 * 2, and you should get 203.21 for the Page height. 

On the Pages tab, we can turn off facing pages, since we’ll only be using one page.

On the Margins tab, tick the chain button to link all margin fields, and then type 3.17 into any of the fields, and all four should then update to 3.17 when you click out of the field you typed in.

Do the same on the Bleed tab: make sure all the fields are linked, and then type 3.17 into any of them to update all four at once. 

Finally, click Create to make our book cover template, and immediately save it with a recognizable title. I’ll name my file Book Cover Template. 

3. How to Snap to the Book Cover Template

Step 1

Instead of importing the book cover template from Amazon KDP, we will open it in Affinity Publisher as a separate file and paste all of the pieces into our Book Cover Template file. This will give us access to all of the individual vector shapes so that we can snap to them.

When the PDF opens, select all of the layers in the Layers panel by clicking the bottom layer, holding Shift, and clicking the top layer. Then right-click the top layer and select Group. Let’s rename this group to “KDP Template” and then right-click it and select Copy. Switch back over to the Book Cover Template file in the tab bar at the top. Click the Layers panel and paste the “KDP Template” group by pressing Command-V.

With the template group in our Book Cover Template file, we now just need to center it and make sure that the guides line up. Select the KDP Template group, click the Alignment button, and then select both the Vertical and Horizontal align center options. The Align to option for both of these should default to Spread, but double-check that they’re aligned to the Spread. Click Apply.

You can then lower the transparency of the KDP Template group and zoom in on the corners to check that the KDP Template group lines up with the margin and bleed that we set up in our document. If everything lines up, we can go ahead and move the template to the bottom of the layer stack and lock it by clicking the Lock/Unlock button at the top right of the Layers panel with the KDP Template group selected.

Step 2

The margins and bleed are set up, and we can now start placing the frames that we will add art and text to. Activate the Snapping with the magnet icon on the command bar at the top. Then click the dropdown next to it, and select Curve drawing from the preset dropdown menu. This will snap to all of the shapes in the KDP Template.

4. How to Prepare the Assets

I’m going to be using some assets from Envato Elements for this demo. If you’d like to follow along using those assets, head over to the collection on Envato Elements and download them. If you’re using your own assets, go ahead and skip to section 5.

If you don’t have a barcode from the commissioning publisher or author, I’ve also included a placeholder barcode, which I will also be using. When you’re given a barcode, information such as regional pricing, and unique identifiers like an ISBN will also be included. All of this information will need to fit into the barcode placeholder area. Of course, since we’re using Amazon KDP for this template, if the author is publishing on Amazon’s platform, they will receive a barcode image from Amazon that fits perfectly within the provided space once they register their book with Amazon’s platform and receive an ISBN number. If you’re creating a cover for a different publisher, it’s crucial to make sure that the barcode, pricing, and ISBN information fit within their respective placement guidelines.

Each of the assets I’ve selected comes with vector versions included. For each pack, extract the provided zip file. On macOS, double-click the zip archive, and it should open automatically by default, creating a folder next to the zip file. Depending on which version of Windows you have, you may need to right-click on the zip file and select Extract, and then choose the folder where you want to extract the contents to.

Each asset pack contains multiple versions of the assets in different file types. We will be using all vector assets for this demo. You’re free to use whichever version you prefer, but if you’d like to follow along exactly with me, refer to the associated screenshot or the following table to see which file to open for each asset pack.

5. How to Place the Assets

Step 1

Let’s start with the background. Use the Picture Frame Rectangle tool to draw a frame over the entire page including the bleed area. Rename the frame to “Background Stars” in the Layers panel. Then, with the new Background Stars frame selected, go to File > Place, navigate to Night Stars.svg from the Night Stars asset pack, and click Open.

If you’d like to reduce the brightness of the stars, make sure the Background Stars layer is selected, and then click Adjustments and add a Gradient Map, selecting colors with less contrast. Once we’re done with the Amazon KDP template, we can also reduce the opacity.

Step 2

We want to be able to access the vector shapes in the other files, so we’ll go ahead and open them all directly in Affinity Publisher. For each of the following packs, business-set-of-flat-design-style-elements, Package Line, and planet-element-solar-system-2023-11-27-05-26-17-utc, open the file indicated in the table above directly in Affinity Publisher.

Step 3

It can be difficult to snap if the KDP Template isn’t visible, so we can move it to the top of the stack and set its blend mode to Soft Light and its Opacity to about 70%. This just helps Affinity Publisher understand what we want to snap to.

Draw a white rectangle over the barcode space. We’ll need to use the Rectangle tool. If you don’t see that on the toolbar, you may need to click and hold on whatever shape is available to get a dropdown with all of the parametric shapes, including the Rectangle tool. I’ve also changed the name of the rectangle to Barcode Box and set the fill color to white and the stroke color to none.

Now copy the barcode group from the Package Line and paste it into the Book Cover Template file. Select the barcode group, hold the Shift key, and select the Barcode box that we just created. Then use the Alignment panel to center the barcode to the white Barcode box. Use the Align to option on both the Vertical and Horizontal alignment sections to align to the last selected, which should be the white box. This way, the barcode will snap directly into the center of the box without moving it.

In the Layers panel, drag the barcode layer onto the Barcode Box layer so that the entire Barcode Box layer is highlighted in blue. When you release the mouse button, it will be parented to the Barcode Box layer and will also clip to that layer.

Step 4

Next, let’s paste the planet on the front cover. Switch to the tab with the Cartoon Venus.svg file. This content is not grouped, so use Command-A to select everything, and then press Command-G to group it, and name the group “Planet” in the Layers panel. We’ll scale the planet once we have all of the other assets in place.

Step 5

At this point, we should have the KDP Template on top in the layer stack, followed by the Barcode Box, then the Planet layer, and finally the Background Stars. 

We’ll use the Rectangle tool again to block out the spine of the book so that text is readable and make sure that that layer is above the Planet layer. Draw the box with the Rectangle tool, making sure that it snaps to the light dotted lines in the KDP Template horizontally and extends to the end of the bleed region vertically. Rename it “Spine Box” in the Layers panel, and make sure it’s above everything except the KDP Template

Step 6

Finally, we will just scale up the Planet layer so that it fills most of the front and back cover and then rotate it. The Planet layer extends far off the edge of the page, but that’s fine. If we click the Toggle Preview Mode button on the command bar, it will show the page as it will print.

6. How to Add the Text

Now that we have the art in place, we can add the text. I’m using a font called Quick which is available on Envato Elements and is included in the collection on Envato Elements. 

Step 1

First, use the Artistic text tool to create the title “Dune” on the front cover. You can modify the color and size to taste, but make sure that it fits within the safe area defined on the KDP Template. 

Step 2

We can duplicate the Artistic text box by holding Option while we click and drag the text box. Rotate it 90 degrees to the right either by holding the Shift key while rotating with one of the corner handles or by clicking the Rotate Clockwise button on the command bar. We can duplicate the box again and change the text to “by Frank Herbert”, set it to 30 pt, and change the font to Quick Light.

We’ll also duplicate the “By Frank Herbert” text from the spine, place it on the front cover, and rotate it counterclockwise.

Step 3

We’ll add the text box on the back for the blurb using the Frame text tool. If you don’t already have blurb text, you can add filler text by going to the Text menu and selecting Insert Filler Text. Since the Quick font doesn’t have a lowercase set of characters, I’ll be using PT Sans for the blurb text, which is available free on Google Fonts. 

Step 4

Now we can adjust the color, size, and other aspects of the text boxes to make sure they’re readable. We’ll tweak the size of the text boxes to make sure none of them extend into the red areas of the KDP Template. Then we’ll hide the KDP Template so that we can tweak the colors of the text and make sure it is readable over the artwork. It may also be helpful to change the Snap preset to Page Layouts with Objects. 

Conclusion

Now that we have our art, text, and barcode in place, we are ready to export our book cover. The format will depend on the publisher or printer that will be printing the book, of course, but most likely you will be exporting to a PDF. Since we set up the margin and bleed for our book cover in Affinity Publisher, we can enable printer’s marks if needed so that the printer can trim off the excess. If you’re uploading to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform, this template as we’ve created it will already be perfectly formatted to print correctly. 

Of course, always remember to hide the KDP Template so that it does not show up on the final book cover when printed.

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